'Regional resilience' and competence power in ASEAN
Together, Wendt, Carroll and Arendt help us understand power in ASEAN in terms of the competence motive. From constructivists we learn that conceptions of power, like all 'social facts' are not given by a state of anarchy but are constructed endogenously through socialization processes; hence we can expect particular intersubjective understandings of power to vary across time and space. Carroll's research bears this point out. For present purposes, then, this raises the possibility that power in the context of ASEAN is a distinct social construction, one that departs from the 'top dog', hegemonic power/force equation. Indeed, Carroll's suggestion that 'underdogs', or in Dahl's formulation 'B' states, are likely to be global norm innovators suggests to us the that is a point worth investigating further. To assess how ASEAN members view their relation to the wider world, we examine several key ASEAN institutions and practices which have emerged from the interaction of the group's members over the years (Taylor 1979:88-9, quoted in Manzer 2003: 381).Following constructivist logic, the intersubjective view of power developed among the ASEAN states will be embedded in the group's constitutive and regulative norms, which serve to 'define and regulate appropriate state behaviour and assign rights and responsibilities regarding' particular issues (Bernstein 2001: 5).
A common underpinning of several key ASEAN institutions and practices is the principle of 'regional resilience' a concept that is functionally similar to the competence view of power advanced by Carroll.Regional resilience which Wanandi (2001: 26) identifies as a stated principle of the 1977 Kuala Lampur Declaration, is closely related to Soeharto's doctrine of 'national resilience'. According to Dewi Fortuna Anwar (2000: 82-3), national resilience has two distinctive features: first, it is oriented towards internal rather than external threats and, second, it is marked by nationalist sentiment that is the legacy of a long history of colonialism. If national resilience is realized in the achievement of domestic stability regional resilience has a largely parallel aim. Wanandi (quoted in Drwitt 1994:4) describes the intent of the principle as follows: 'if each member nation can accomplish overall national development and overcome internal threats, regional resilience can result in much the same way as a chain derives its overall strength from the strength if its constituent part'. We see in the chain analogy that regional resilience is both an other - and environment-referent principle. Implicitly a strong chain is desirable because it is something to draw across the region with which to keep intrusive forces out.However, the concept is also environment referent in so far as regional resilience is associated with intrinsic benefits for each member in terms of political stability and national development. Particularly instructive in divining the high value that ASEAN members place on the principle of regional resilience are two agreements that the Association's members negotiated in the 1970s. First, the 1971 Declaration calling for a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) initially sought to have the three major powers, the United States, the Soviet Union and China, guarantee Southeast Asia's neutrality but was later modified to request that the great powers respect the region as a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (Khaw 1992).Hence, ZOPFAN was an attempt to turn back the pressure that the great powers were putting on ASEAN members in the interests of regional autonomy. Second at the first ASEAN Summit in Bali in 1976 the leaders signed a benchmark treaty known as the treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC). The TAC set out five key guiding principles for conduct of relations among the member states: 'mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and identity of all nations'; 'the right of every state to lead its national existence free from external interference, subversion or coercion'; 'non-interference in the internal affairs of one another'; 'settlement of differences or disputes by peaceful means'; 'renunciation of the threat of force; effective cooperation among themselves’. The norms set out in the TAC essentially became the norms associated with the ASEAN Way and have, by and large, governed intra-ASEAN relations since 1976. Certainly, both these agreements, along with the practices of the ASEAN states, demonstrate that the ASEAN members were intent on employing the Association in order to try to ensure that they gained as much autonomy as they could.It terms of ASEAN members’ exercise of power, then, it was as a means of promoting regional autonomy, not in trying to coerce other into action they would otherwise not have undertaken.
This approach to power underpins constructivists' assessment that in fact ASEAN is powerful. ASEAN has been able to reduce regional tensions and increase regional economic cooperation to its advantage by having regional states sign on to norms and follow its practices. To be sure, as realist are quick to remind us, part of what draws ASEAN members together is perception of a 'common fate' which means, essentially, that they choose to hang together rather than hang separately in the face of certain external threats (Buzan, quoted in Nabers 2003:115).However, We argue that this is not a sufficient explanation for the evident 'bindingness' of the region. It seems that a good deal of ASEAN's success is attributable to the marshalling of competence power in pursuit of the intrinsic aim of regional resilience.The most recent manifestation of ASEAN success in this regard was the formal signing of the TAC by China and India at the Ninth ASEAN Summit and the APT Summit in Bali in early October 2003. Since then Japan and South Korea have acceded to the treaty with, most recently, New Zealand and Australia also agreeing to sing (ASEAN 2005). With so many key Asian states agreeing to the TAC principles, ASEAN can quite justifiably feel it has set the stage more stable relations across much of the region. As Dr. N. Hassan Wisajuda, Indonesian foreign minister has noted, there are now 'almost three billion people grouped under the same rules of good conduct' (BBC News Online 2003). This is major achievement for ASEAN and would seem to be ample demonstration of its power to act.