Five Decades of ASEAN: The History of a Political Miracle

Against all odds and expectations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has managed to survive 50 years and will celebrate its golden anniversary in 2017. In many ways, ASEAN is a political miracle and over the last five decades has faced significant challenges. If ASEAN can learn from its past, the miracle may continue well into the 21st century.

Regionalism in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asian history is replete with racial animosities, conflicts, and wars. Western colonial powers further divided Southeast Asian societies and turned their peoples into subjects of the British, French, and Dutch empires. Only Siam escaped colonization by surrendering its peripheral territories to the British and the French. During World War II, Japanese forces occupied all of Southeast Asia, but they accepted Siam as an ally. The Japanese promoted the idea of the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” under the leadership of Tokyo. Few in Southeast Asia then could imagine such a vision, let alone appreciate it.

After World War II, problems left behind by history, including territorial disputes and distrust, continued to divide Southeast Asians. Communist insurgencies gained ground in North Vietnam and posed a serious national security threat in many other Southeast Asian countries. The primary focus of all government leaders during the post-war era was on nation building and national security. They had no time for cooperation with neighboring countries. In fact the notion of regional cooperation seemed an alien concept.

Regionalism began to arrive in Southeast Asia in 1949 when the headquarters of the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), the predecessor of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), was moved from Shanghai to Bangkok. This was followed by the formation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) in September 1954, also based in Bangkok. In December 1966, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) opened its main office in Manila.

At a subregional level it was the Mekong Committee, established in Bangkok in 1957, that pioneered cooperation among Mekong River riparian countries (Laos, Cambodia, South Vietnam, and Thailand). But the Mekong Committee, which in 1995 was transformed into the Mekong Commission, had to rely heavily on funding and technical support from the West.

Initial indigenous efforts toward regional cooperation were short-lived. The Association of Southeast Asia (ASA), established in July 1961 by the Federation of Malaya (including Singapore), the Philippines, and Thailand folded within two years because of tensions between Kuala Lumpur and Manila over their Sabah territorial dispute. Maphilindo – formed of the Federation of Malaya, the Philippines, and Indonesia – lasted about one month in the summer of 1963. It was scuttled by the eruption of border clashes in the Konfrontasi (Confrontation) between Indonesia and Malaya/Malaysia from 1963-1966.

The end of Konfrontasi created a new opportunity for regional cooperation in Southeast Asia. This was when Thailand’s Foreign Minister Dr. Thanat Khoman put forth his initiative on establishing a regional organization so that Southeast Asian countries could get to know one another better, begin to work together for common regional interest, and coexist in peace.

At first Thanat thought about involving only four countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Singapore, which separated from Malaysia in August 1965, sent Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam to Bangkok to request the inclusion of Singapore in the formation of the new regional group. The other four agreed.

The foreign ministers of the five Southeast Asian countries met in Bangkok and the Thai beach resort of Bang-saen in early August 1967. They finally agreed to establish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In their declaration on August 8, 1967, the five ASEAN Founding Fathers listed one of the first purposes of ASEAN: “To accelerate the economic growth, social progress, and cultural development in the region through joint endeavor.”

Thanat explained in the preface of the book The ASEAN Reader, published in 1992 by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), that the most important reason why Southeast Asia needed ASEAN was because “with the withdrawal of the colonial powers, there would have been a power vacuum which could have attracted outsiders to step in for political gains. As the colonial masters had discouraged any form of intra-regional contact, the idea of neighbors working together in a joint effort was thus to be encouraged.”

Undoubtedly, few observers of Southeast Asian affairs at that time had high expectations for ASEAN. During its first decade, ASEAN didn’t even have a permanent secretariat. All of the five Founding Fathers would be pleasantly surprised to see ASEAN survive and grow to be what it is today. Thanat, the last of the five ASEAN Founding Fathers, passed away in Bangkok on March 3, 2016 at the age of 102.

At the birth of ASEAN, the Vietnam War was escalating. Two ASEAN members, the Philippines and Thailand, took an active role in supporting South Vietnam and the United States in the fighting against North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, including sending troops and opening their air and naval bases to U.S. forces. This in turn led to the intensification of communist insurgency with Chinese support both in the Philippines and Thailand. At that time, Beijing supported North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, and vehemently attacked ASEAN as just a “front organization” set up by the United States to contain communist China.

No Peace After End of Vietnam War

The end of the Vietnam War in 1975 – with the victory of communists in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos – inspired ASEAN governments to redouble their cooperation efforts in the face of the growing communist threat in Southeast Asia. The leaders of the ASEAN states met for the first time in history at the First ASEAN Summit in Bali over two days in late February 1976. They signed the historic Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC) to lay down key principles of inter-state relations in the region. The TAC is widely known for its principle of non-interference. But in fact the Treaty embodies several other peace-oriented principles, which have formed a firm foundation in Southeast Asia. The TAC now enjoys the support of all ten current ASEAN members and 25 other parties, including all the permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Another important decision at the First ASEAN Summit was the establishment of the ASEAN Secretariat. Indonesian President Suharto offered to host it in Jakarta and his four ASEAN colleagues agreed. With stronger institutional support, ASEAN could expand the scope of its cooperation efforts into new functional areas such as the environment, science, and technology, as well as preferential trade and industrial joint ventures.

The situation in Southeast Asia took an ominous turn for the worse when Vietnamese forces invaded Kampuchea (Cambodia) on Christmas Day 1978 and soon toppled the Khmer Rouge government in Phnom Penh. ASEAN took a firm stand in opposing Vietnamese aggression. Thailand, with active support from Singapore and China, assisted the Khmer Rouge in fighting against Vietnamese forces and resisting the Vietnamese occupation of the country.

More importantly, ASEAN successfully mobilized international support in defending the Kampuchean seat in the UN General Assembly for the Khmer Rouge government in exile based on the Thai-Kampuchean border. One key lesson for ASEAN members from the decade-long Kampuchean conflict was the advantage of taking an active united stand, speaking with one loud clear voice, and working internationally for peace in Kampuchea and Southeast Asia.

The success of ASEAN ultimately showed Hanoi the potential gains Vietnam could enjoy from ASEAN membership. The country suffered badly in the Kampuchean conflict, which included a bloody border war with China in March 1979. The Vietnamese economy was on the verge of collapse because of Western sanctions and diminishing Soviet support.

Vietnam subsequently acceded to the TAC in July 1992 and joined ASEAN in July 1995, becoming its seventh member. The ill feelings from the Kampuchean conflict soon disappeared. Ideological differences were no longer considered as an impediment to regional cooperation in ASEAN. ASEAN membership also gave Vietnam – even though it remains under a communist government – a new image of being pro-trade, open to foreign investment, pro-regional, and even peace-loving.

Earlier, Brunei Darussalam had joined ASEAN in January 1984, one week after gaining independence from Britain. The tiny sultanate needed ASEAN to help ensure independence, equality, and non-interference.

The ASEAN membership expanded further to include Laos and Myanmar in July 1997. The admission of Cambodia into ASEAN was postponed following a failed coup attempt in Phnom Penh in early July 1997. Cambodia eventually joined ASEAN in April 1999. In March 2011, Timor-Leste submitted its formal application for the ASEAN membership. The application remains under consideration.

The survival of ASEAN for five decades (and beyond) in spite of its immense internal diversities is truly a political miracle. Some of the diversities can be gleaned from details in the table below.