In addition to their internal factors or weaknesses, Southeast Asian countries are always vulnerable to external challenges and threats. This vulnerability significantly influences them in their approach to, and compliance with, the ‘ASEAN way’. In fact, a key and declared goal of non-Communist Southeast countries when establishing ASEAN in 1967 was to foster and strengthen their collective position against a threatening external environment: the rise of communism in their region and communist insurgencies in their own countries (Jorgensen-Dahl 1982: 73; Jetschke 2009: 411). This communist threat also defined ASEAN’s evolution in the 1970s and 1980s (Tasker 1987: 106; Stubbs 2008: 456). For instance, their concern about a victorious Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 was the main reason behind unprecedented summit in Bali in 1976, during which they signed two major documents, i.e. the ASEAN Concord I and the TAC (Ganesan 1995: 214; Tenorio 1997; McDougall 2008: 46; Narine 2008: 415). In these two texts, which remain ASEAN’s important documents, notably the latter, ASEAN leaders were strongly determined to ensure their region and their respective countries from external interference in any form or manner. Vietnam’s intervention in Cambodia in 1978 made ASEAN more committed to its key norms, notably non-interference (Busse 1999: 48-50). In fact, these norms enabled
114 Even though it is increasingly becoming a multi-religious space, Europe remains a Christian continent.
In fact, Christianity has significantly shaped European integration, identity and politics (Leustean and Madeley 2009; 2010; Leustean 2013).
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ASEAN to sustain the Cambodian conflict on the international agenda despite its limited material capabilities and the marginal international interest in its region at that time (Khong and Nesadurai 2007: 35). For example, as noted in Chapter 3, in the Joint
Statement on Political Issues with the EC in 1980, ASEAN states emphasised the need
for all states to observe strictly the principles of national sovereignty and non- interference, which they regarded as vital importance to inter-state relations (AEMM 1980b, point 1). In this sense, ASEAN’s principle of non-interference is aimed at restraining interference not only from a member state but also from major powers outside the region. That is why Yeo (2009b: 195) argues that ASEAN was also built on the need to restrain any interference from external powers.
With the end of the Cold War and the resolution of the Cambodian conflict, ASEAN states no longer faced communist threats. Yet, other challenges have emerged. China’s rise and the recent tensions between China and some ASEAN members over the territorial disputes in the South China Sea are among the major security issues that ASEAN and its members have to face (Busse 1999: 51; Baviera 2004). To deal with the region’s volatility and its members’ vulnerability, ASEAN has attempted to shape the wider regional environment by engaging with China and other major powers to discuss and address shared regional problems, but based on its principles and practices (Nesadurai 2008: 227). In reality, as noted early, since the end of the Cold War, ASEAN has become more active in its dealing with the outside world (Busse 1999: 54). For instance, ASEAN’s TAC has become one of the strongest symbols of ASEAN’s influence in the Asia Pacific region (Narine 2008: 415). Chapter 2 underlines that the ecological process, i.e. the pattern of relations between actors and their environment, leads political actors to generate or maintain their norms (Kowert and Legro 1996: 470- 82). This is very true in ASEAN’s case because the regional and international setting during and after the Cold War has played a key role in prompting ASEAN to maintain and advocate its core norms.
ASEAN’s strong focus on its ASEAN way and some ASEAN leaders’ promotion of Asian values in the first years of the 1990s were also due to the West’s insistence on the promotion of human rights following the collapse of the communist bloc. These principles and values became a useful means for them to deflect calls by the western powers to fully democratise, respect individual human rights (Nesadurai 2008: 228). As will be shown in the next chapter, ASEAN states often referred to these two sets of norms and values to resist the respect and promotion of democratic norms insisted by
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the West and the EU in particular in the early 1990s. ASEAN states opposed the EU’s insistence on the promotion of human rights in the early 1990s, i.e. prior to the 1997/1998 Asian financial crisis, partly because by the early 1990s, they were no longer the junior partners vis-à-vis the European countries. According to Manners (2002: 240), the EU’s hybrid polity and its political-legal constitution also make the EU’s normative premises differ from those of political actors. These two elements also exist in ASEAN. While ASEAN is much less institutionalised and legalised than the EU, it is an elite- driven polity or entity, whose normative constitution is defined by its key documents. If the EU’s core norms, e.g. democracy and human rights, are enshrined in its main treaties and declarations, in the same vein ASEAN’s fundamental norms are preserved in its main documents.
In short, a number of ‘we-group’ factors define ASEAN’s normative foundation and make it differ from the EU’s. Chief among these is Southeast Asian countries’ common colonial past. Though they are culturally, politically and economically heterogeneous, all Southeast Asian countries, but Thailand, shared colonial experiences and consequences. Another notable reason behind the ASEAN way is that before and ASEAN’s foundation and even now, ASEAN members always have to deal with different external powerful forces or ‘they-groups’ actors and factors. The promotion and prolongation of their ASEAN way are a feasible way for them to cope with those external challenges. Due to these ‘we-group’ and ‘they-group’ factors, ASEAN and its members had – and continue to embrace – shared objectives, namely protecting their respective national sovereignty and the region as a whole (from any external interference and intervention) and enhancing the stability of their respective countries and the region as a whole. In other words, like the EU and its normative underpinning, ASEAN its and ASEAN way are defined by both their ‘we-group’ factors, e.g. their shared colonial experience, and their ‘they-group’ ones, e.g. the communist threats during the Cold War, China’s rise and the West’s promotion of liberal values.
As a way of concluding, this chapter compares ASEAN’s normative foundation with the EU’s one examined in the last chapter. Such a comparison enables the thesis to illustrate the differences between ASEAN’s norms and the EU’s, the reasons behind their normative differences, and most importantly, the impact of their normative divergences on their interaction, which will be the focus of its subsequent chapters. By doing so, three important points can be drawn here.
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First, while norms play an integral part in the internal and external relations of the EU and ASEAN, the key normative premises that constitute them as actors in world politics fundamentally differ from each other. The EU espouses a set of liberal and cosmopolitan values, e.g. human rights and democracy. These values, which lie at the heart of the EU, define its international identity and role. In fact, promoting those values has been a key objective of its foreign policy, its interregionalism and its relations with ASEAN since the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, given its strong focus on the promotion of its normative framework, the EU is even willing to interfere, to varying degrees, in others’ domestic politics (bold for emphasis). In contrast, ASEAN is premised on a set of communitarian/Westphalian norms, e.g. national sovereign and non-interference. Indeed, in its regional and international relations, ASEAN has fervently maintained and promoted its ASEAN way and notably its core principle of non-interference, which strongly discourages any external interference in its internal affairs, in any form or manifestation (bold for emphasis). This means their respective standardised ways of regulating activities and perceiving the world are radically different from each other.
Second, the defining factor that led the EU and ASEAN differ to develop and promote two contradictory sets of norms is that they were born and evolved in two contrasting historical, cultural and geopolitical contexts.115
“because their ideological starting point is very different. As ASEAN countries acquired sovereignty only 50 years ago, they emphasise the traditional attributes of national sovereignty and independence. In contrast, as European countries have sovereignty for centuries, it is much easier to pool and delegate sovereignty” (Interview, 2009).
In other words, the ‘we- group’ and ‘they-group’ factors and actors that define their respective collective identity and their normative underpinnings differ. In fact, with the exception that they were born and developed in the context of the Cold War and that they both faced communist threats until the end of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the contexts, in which the two organisations were established and developed, were essentially different. The officials and experts the author interviewed all strongly highlighted that fundamental difference. For instance, according to an EU official, the EU and ASEAN have different ways of perceiving a number of issues
115 It is for this reason that the EU and ASEAN followed “two different and contradictory models” of
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This second point illustrates well that, like other actors in world politics, the EU, ASEAN and their respective norms are always shaped by their own context-specific conditions. It is also for this reason that, as underlined in the previous chapters, this study strongly focuses on the temporal and spatial backgrounds of the EU and ASEAN to explain and illustrate their normative foundation and differentiation.
Finally, as illustrated in the preceding chapters and this one, both the EU and ASEAN are norm entrepreneurs and normative powers in world politics. As seen in Chapter 4 different actors in the EU, e.g. its Commission and Parliament, engage in norm entrepreneurship. In contrast, as shown in this chapter, the key norm entrepreneurs in ASEAN are its member states because the Bangkok Declaration, the TAC and the ASEAN Charter were agreed at ASEAN’s ministerial meetings and summits. Chapter 4 has also shown that the EU promoted its norms to former communist CEE countries, which willingly accepted the EU’s norms. Thanks to this, the EU’s relations with these CEE countries did not experience any normative clash or division. This chapter has highlighted that ASEAN also sought to disseminate its norms in the Asia-Pacific region and many regional powers, e.g. China and India, embraced ASEAN’s normative preferences because ASEAN’s core norms are similar to those of these regional powers. That recognition is reflected by the fact that they admitted to ASEAN’s TAC and accepted the ASEAN way as the mode of function for the wider regional mechanisms, e.g. the ADMM-Plus and the EAS, of which they are also members. Given this, there was no major normative conflict between ASEAN and its regional partners. However, as illustrated by the EU’s relations with Turkey, when their norms differ with other countries or regional organisations, they will find it difficult to interact with the latter. Indeed, such normative differences can become a source of conflict. The next chapter, which examines the East Timor issue, will further illustrate the normative dissimilarities of the EU and ASEAN, the sources of their normative divergences, and especially the reasons why such divergences become a disruptive factor in their interaction.