Democracy's slow fixes

A propos my previous post, there have been some very interesting pieces on religion in Indonesia over the last couple of months.

Endy Bayuni, a senior editor at the Jakarta Post, recently warned that Indonesia risks a “downgrade of its democratic rating” on account of issues such as “the ridiculously light sentences meted by a court against the murderous perpetrators of a mob attack on followers of Ahmadiyah, a religious sect that mainstream Muslims in Indonesia have denounced as heretic”.

He’s right, insofar as Indonesia’s credentials to push human rights within ASEAN, which it has tried very hard to do, are undermined by events that clearly spotlight problems at home. There are many in Southeast Asia who would be happy to mention glass houses and stones.

And his warning may be a useful flea in the ear of a government that is very concerned with international image.

But at a time when various democratic endeavours are under way in the world, it is also worth remembering that democracy does not automatically equate with a linear or quick path to peace, and dealing with minorities is one of its toughest challenges.

As Tim Lindsey put it in an interview earlier this year, Indonesia is no longer a dictatorship, but a real multi-party democracy, with all the contestation that involves. So, the state often finds itself caught in the middle, between different representations of Islam. Because the president’s power is limited, and he needs to make deals with the legislature to get anything done, coalitions and alliances are the order of the day. It is sometimes politically difficult to make a stand on issues that small but powerful groups of opponents can easily use against him. (No doubt such considerations were also behind FM Marty's bland response to the Ahmadiyah verdicts.)

Furthermore, as Lindsey points out, radical conservative Islamist groups don’t do well in Indonesian elections: “These tensions aren’t because the conservatives are winning, it is precisely because they are losing in mainstream politics. Their votes have fallen, they have less control. What they do have is a little bit of leverage. And they are maximising the benefit they get from that.”

Unfortunately, he continues, they have been able to hijack the debate. Islam in Indonesia “is still overwhelmingly extraordinarily tolerant. Extraordinarily moderate. And very open. But you wouldn’t know it, reading the newspapers, not just internationally, but in Indonesia as well.” (And one of my fears is that every post like this one, however well-meant, distracts attention from that key point.)

Decentralization – on the face of it also a democratic impetus – has brought problems, too. In a recent piece for Inside Indonesia, Melissa Crouch notes that an increasing number of district and provincial governments have sought to limit Ahmadiyah’s activities, even though the legal grounds for doing so are shaky. There is a sort of vicious circle at work here: attacks on Ahmadis appear to have motivated local governments to introduce bans.

I had many conversations on this subject in Indonesia earlier this year. Absolutely everyone I spoke to roundly condemned the violence. But I also talked to many people who were highly educated, thoroughly democratic, thoroughly opposed to intimidation and brutality, and absolutely not religiously “hard line” – yet still thought there should be some limitations on Ahmadiyah.

Commentary perhaps too readily assumes that “democratic” will automatically and immediately equate to “secular” and a particular kind of “liberal”. Polls in SEA still throw up many results that do not fit that mould (this is one example). And I have had many conversations with students who wholeheartedly desire political participation, but are less eager to embrace across-the-board liberalization.

Many “vibrant debates” are going on in Indonesia about how to be “a multi-ethnic, multi-faith country of tolerance” – but every new democracy will have to work out its own way of doing that. And the working-out process is often not going to look very glorious.

Indonesia: Questions over "?"

I watched Hanung Bramantyo’s "?" (Tanda Tanya, or Question Mark) on the last night of the Indonesian Film Festival in Melbourne last week. Set in Semarang, in Central Java, it looks at relations between communities that are sometimes at odds with each other – Muslims and Christians, Chinese and Javanese.

The movie is much more complex than the snapshot provided in the trailer. It tries to portray the intensity and anguish of religious feeling, and the difficulty of relating to those of other faiths – issues that are perhaps hard to understand in more secular societies. It shows how religious motivations become more complex when they get entwined with issues of family status or ambition. But it also tries to soften stereotypes. In this movie, no community has a monopoly on either wise or not-so-wise people and behaviour; every community has its heroes. Often using humour, it tries to help us understand that each person’s search is, at root, very similar.

But as I watched, I couldn’t help wondering how it had gone down in Indonesia, where it’s much harder to be just a dispassionate observer of religion. It was easy to imagine how parties on all sides might feel misrepresented or aggrieved. Fishing through various blogs the next day, I found the movie had indeed caused controversy. And sure enough, yesterday came the news that private broadcaster SCTV had been pressured by Front Pembela Islam (FPI, or Islamic Defenders’ Front) into not showing "?" as scheduled.

The actions both of the FPI, which represents a very small constituency in Indonesia, and of SCTV have subsequently been roundly criticized. The variety of perspectives from which this criticism has come is in itself interesting. Both the movie and the reactions it has provoked are a reminder that Indonesia’s religious landscape is complex and emotive, and the worst way to understand it is to stereotype it.

UPDATE: Inaya Rakhmani has an interesting review of Tanda Tanya, along with a discussion of the public debate surrounding it.

It's not the EU...

ASEAN continues to suffer from comparisons with the EU. Another example popped up in my academic database updates only today.

As with the international-versus-supranational question, it is acknowledged in theory that it is not fair to compare. Europe, after all, had enough cultural commonalities for some sense of unity to develop even while intra-continental wars were still happening; its economic development levels are generally much higher; the disparities between EU members are much less stark. And so on.

But still, these comparisons keep swirling around. Sometimes, they’re hidden comparisons. When ASEAN is described as “weakly institutionalized”, with “informal mechanisms”, the EU does not necessarily appear in the same sentence. But hanging there in the background is always the comparison – “weakly institutionalized” and “informal” compared to what? Presumably there are other bodies compared to which ASEAN might seem quite strongly institutionalized and quite formal?

Of course, ASEAN doesn’t always help itself in this regard, and comparisons with the EU often find their way into the pronouncements of its leaders and officials. (This is no doubt partly due to genuine admiration, but with substantial funding coming from Europe, it might also appear churlish to try to distance yourself too overtly from the acclaimed example of your big mentor.) And if negative comparisons with the EU can shock Southeast Asian states into not actually fighting over disputed issues – into adhering, in other words, to their own Treaty of Amity and Cooperation – then maybe they have their value. EU states still have plenty of quarrels, but they no longer reach for the guns to settle them.

But there’s also something profoundly pernicious about comparing these apples and pears. It bothers me that Southeast Asian students so routinely tell me what a wonderful institution the EU is, and how good its rules are, and how “European” its citizens feel. To them, the EU has arrived. It is everything it should be. And regardless of the different circumstances, it is what ASEAN should be, too.

I am absolutely not an EU-basher – the very reverse – but seeing this organization as the holy grail of all regional effort, against which ASEAN should be measured, is dangerous.

By ignoring differences, such comparisons provide fodder for unfair criticism that only makes it harder for ASEAN to generate the public momentum it needs in order to evolve.  

We know, for example, why Europe and Southeast Asia now work with very different conceptions of sovereignty. In Europe, the supreme disaster of two world wars was understood to stem from states, whose unrestrained desire to compete with each other brought them (and the rest of the world with them) into repeated conflict. The European desire for integration, and for a supranational body that can act over the head of states, is therefore a long-term experiment in curbing state power.

In Southeast Asia, the perception is entirely different. The supreme disaster of colonialism was understood to stem from the weakness of states, which left breaches that outsiders could muscle their way through. This lesson was reinforced by their Cold War experience. It is therefore harder to see “less state” as the answer to anything, and ideas of integration or supranationalism are the subject of much political conflict, even fear. While wanting the benefits of greater integration, few states are keen to sign away an independence that has only recently been won. While wanting the benefits of international standards, publics are also often unwilling to brook criticism from outside. ASEAN’s “non-interference” policy is not carried out to the letter, and a lot of “interference” actually does take place. But states – and publics – in Southeast Asia are reluctant to do away with this safety blanket. None of them can yet trust that future interference will not go too far, and deprive them – again – of their national right to self-government.

Slanted comparisons also close down possibilities. No-one thinks ASEAN is OK as it is. Ideas of sovereignty and community need to evolve, and slowly they are doing so. But by focusing on only one model for this process, by flooding the market of ideas with only one type of improvement possibility, we are making it more difficult for Southeast Asia’s states and peoples to come up with something that could eventually be much, much better than either ASEAN or the EU has yet become.

ASEAN, its parts, and its people

I complained recently that ASEAN is often unfairly maligned. I think one of the reasons is that it serves as a convenient target for criticism that actually should be directed elsewhere. 

In theory, everyone probably understands that ASEAN is an international, not a supranational, organization. Its members have to agree to do things. ASEAN can't order them to do things.

But when it is being exhorted, as it so often is, to move further, faster, and on a straighter course, the point somehow gets lost.

In assessing whether ASEAN’s community-building endeavours are “travelling on a bullet train or a horse-drawn cart”, this is a key consideration. There is no point in blaming ASEAN for delays that are actually the fault of particular member states or particular constituencies within those member states.  

This is a region of huge disparities. History has offered states lots of reasons to not trust their neighbours, and the intrusions of outside powers have often stirred the pot of mistrust even more. It is not always easy, even at the best of times, and with the best of intentions, to align your national interests with those of your very different neighbours in order to craft a community endeavour.

The societies within these disparate states are often riven by huge cleavages, too, making it equally difficult to sell those painfully crafted alignments to the wide array of constituencies at home. So the “parts” of the ASEAN cooperative effort become even more complex when its societies are added to the mix.

ASEAN's troubles are often ascribed to its elitism, and the Association is acutely aware that it needs to reach out to its people. This means, firstly, publicizing itself better, so that the region’s inhabitants are more aware of its possibilities and constraints, and secondly, fostering the kind of regional identification that will help ordinary people to see themselves as Southeast Asians, as well as Indonesians, Singaporeans, or whatever. The first of these two steps is costly, but relatively straightforward. The second is much more complex. And the two are not necessarily synergistic. Becoming more "people-centred", while necessary, is likely to make cooperation harder, not easier, at least in the short term.

“ASEAN? Is it useful for Indonesia, except [for getting] free visas?” – this is a very understandable question, and showing how it can be answered in the affirmative might well produce another ASEAN supporter. (Many of the people I talk to in Southeast Asia don’t know that much about ASEAN, and it is often judged on the basis of inadequate information.)

But this "what's in it for me" approach is premised on the idea that “ASEAN is good because it can be useful to me and to my country”. This is helpful in making the organization seem more meaningful. But what’s the logical next step? “How can we make sure ASEAN is more useful to my country – even though this may not necessarily be good for all the other countries?” or “How can we avoid the painful steps that other ASEAN countries think are useful for them, but don’t seem that great for us?”

It's a long leap to the follow-up question that would really help ASEAN: “How can ASEAN become more useful to the region as a whole – even if this involves sacrifices within my country in the short term?” What is needed to faciliate this response is smart policy on the part of individual governments – policy that can smooth the road for those who temporarily suffer for the sake of ultimate communal gain. But that can't be done by ASEAN.

Useful, too, as ASEAN Foundation head Makarim Wibisono points out, would be a sense of a common regional identity. Such an identity would mean that “if an Indonesian migrant worker is abused, we feel that it will affect ASEAN [rather than just Indonesia]. So far, we haven’t had such feeling.”

This is very true – these are precisely the kinds of problems that frequently drive strongly nationalistic popular responses. Nationalist outrage over some issue or another – often triggered by subjects that touch on cultural pride, but usually exacerbated by economic disparity – makes it even more difficult for governments to reach pragmatic cooperative solutions.

The impression is sometimes given that if we took Southeast Asia’s governments out of the picture, what would be left would be a peaceful and harmonious community of people. This is not borne out by the evidence.

Problems can usually be sorted out between governments, Makarim comments, because channels have been created for their regularized interaction and communication, and they know what to do to solve problems calmly. “But this is not the feeling of most people. So, it is important to intensify contact among the mass media, political parties, militaries and NGOs in ASEAN.” 

And, alongside increased contact, it is important, as Yayan GH Mulyana points out, to strive for the kind of “we-ness” that instinctively reaches for peaceful means to settle disputes. He looks forward to seeing the violent elements of nationalism “overcome by a constructive macro-nationalism”.

Fostering a regional outlook is not something that can be achieved overnight. But that's not all ASEAN's fault – such an outcome also needs governments, officials, and societies to climb on board. 

Amitav Ghosh's River of Smoke

I have just finished reading River of Smoke, the second part of Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, and the sequel to Sea of Poppies.

As the titles suggest, these are novels about the opium trade in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Historical? Yes. Dry? Absolutely not. Ghosh has a huge talent for combining meticulous research with a wonderful sense of colour, character, and atmosphere. So these books are immensely enjoyable yarns.

But they also have some serious politics at their heart.

What do you do if you want to buy lots of someone else’s stuff, but they don’t want to buy so much of yours? What's more, your trade is governed by all kinds of rules and restrictions that you find very irksome. This was the dilemma of the Europeans dealing with China in the late 1700s. The Chinese produced highly covetable silk, porcelain, and lacquerware. Particularly, they produced that increasingly popular beverage, tea. But because they didn’t import so much of what the foreigners were offering, the balance had to be made up in foreign silver. And if you don’t want to keep raiding your treasury for silver, what do you do? Simple – you focus on a product that will always be wanted. Opium. You can't sell it legally, of course. But there’ll always be a demand for narcotics, so there will always be ways and means – as we can still confirm. By the 1820s, so much opium was being funnelled into China that the balance of trade had shifted. Now the silver was flowing out.

The Chinese, understandably, became keenly aware of the need to stop both the leakage of their silver, and the slow poisoning of their people. Commissioner Lin’s very serious attempt to clamp down on the trade is the main theme of River of Smoke.

Unfortunately, this principled stand brought retribution, and presumably the next volume in Ghosh’s trilogy will cover the tragedy that was the 1839-42 Opium War, after which Britain bullied China into accepting the Treaty of Nanjing. This paved the way for more "unequal treaties" with more states. One of the effects was to permit the opium trade.

This experience of injustice and humiliation, of course, is still one of the threads that inform Chinese foreign policy today.

Ghosh depicts very cleverly the events that sparked the Opium War, never letting his narrative sink into a simple division between “good” and “bad” sides. Many Chinese, too, profited from the opium trade. Among the multinational company of merchants, there were those who realized the iniquity of the trade, and wanted it to stop, and there were those who had not so much chosen the trade as been corralled into it by a combination of bad circumstances. Nevertheless, as even Chris Patten admits, these are not stories that show the British in a good light.

As the merchants thunder about the “God-given” right to free trade – happily ignoring that this right is ruining vast quantities of lives, and this trade is one that would not be countenanced at home – and as they rail against the cruelty of the tyrannical Chinese empire, you can’t help recalling that liberalism has always had that worrying capacity to unite a genuine desire for freedom with large quantities of hypocrisy and much potential for material gain. Walter Russell Mead’s memorable exegesis of Lewis Carroll’s The Walrus and the Carpenter puts it admirably. The pair have such a laudable desire to clean up all these messy beaches. Who could object to that? But at the end of the day, the particular beach they're sitting on is not cleaned up, and the duo has dined very well on a large quantity of the beach's occupants… “Fairly or not, the psalm-singing, pocket-picking emissaries of the Anglo-Saxon world are met with suspicion wherever they go. So many beaches unswept; so few oysters uneaten. It begins to look almost like a pattern.”

So what does this have to do with Southeast Asia? Well, this is a region that still has to cope with a China that remembers, and still has to handle a liberalism that is both kind and cruel.

And, of course, the opium trade impacted heavily on colonial Southeast Asia itself. As Carl Trocki explains, behind the worthy civic buildings in British Singapore was an economy that was oiled by opium. It seeped into the social structures and the political dynamics. And because silver was flowing out of China to pay for opium, and China was becoming poorer in relation to the West, more of its people were taking refuge overseas, many in Southeast Asia.

The globalization of commodity and people flows, as River of Smoke makes so clear, is not a new invention, and Southeast Asia has always played a role as source, conduit or destination for whatever is flowing.

Informative, thought-provoking, and a darn good read – hope we don’t have to wait too long for the next one.

Can Thailand and Cambodia get beyond the quarrel potential?

I managed to get to one day of the very informative Thai Studies Conference in Melbourne last week (Andrew Walker has a summary here).

Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker did a great opening presentation on how the recent election fits into wider social and political trends.

During question-time, they were asked about the temple conflict with Cambodia. The previous Thai government had a particularly bad relationship with Cambodia, for various reasons, so did a change of government herald better things?  

Chris Baker underlined that there is now a great opportunity to move forward. He felt that most people in Thailand don't really care all that much about this issue, and basically wonder what all the fuss is about, and why opportunities are being wasted to develop this site for everyone's benefit. Older people remember the original decision (when the International Court of Justice decided in 1962 that the temple belonged to Cambodia) – in fact, people remember it in the way others recall the death of Kennedy, remembering where they were and what they were doing when it happened. But younger people are not that interested.

But the shrill voices of extreme nationalism are still very powerful, and even though the moment is ripe for finding a solution, it will take a lot of nerve, Baker continued, to face the nationalists down. There will be "lots of shouting and screaming", he predicted.

There have been some signs of movement (it's interesting that most of this article gives details of meetings, but it is headlined "Border observers not needed" – the border observers would be Indonesian, of course, and although Indonesian attempts at damage control were well meant and certainly very much needed, they also raised resentment about "interference").

But when nationalism is high, there is always something to get annoyed about – the hand position, or jeeb, that is often seen in traditional dance, for example... Is it Cambodian or is it Thai? This kind of cultural tussle is reminiscent of the tug-of-war between Malaysia and Indonesia over batik, which periodically raises huge tension.

I'm not underestimating or mocking these sensibilities. After all, Australia and New Zealand still squabble over who invented the pavlova. 

But in Southeast Asia, where cultural influences were flowing and spreading a long time before national borders were demarcated, there are likely to be many such trigger points. They need to be kept in proportion. Otherwise, a much larger regional project will be jeopardized.

Culture and democracy -- more

There’s been a bit of a break, but I’ve not forgotten about the culture-and-democracy question.

And I’ve been spurred on to pursue this thread, despite the brain-ache it gives me, by several interesting pieces on governance/democracy in SEA lately – among them, a couple of fairly pessimistic ones by Joshua Kurlantzick, a much more upbeat one by Michael Vatikiotis, and a kind of in-the-middle one by Ernie Bower.

So here’s the next little bit:

The previous post made the point that culture affects the way we "do" democracy. In many cases, it was democracy as modelled in the West that was imported into newly democratizing countries – hence the feeling (expressed by the student quoted in the last post) that this imported “jacket”, though better than nothing, didn’t quite fit.

Where does that leave us?

Well, certainly not with the conclusion that democracy and Southeast Asian cultures don’t belong together. After all, many communities in SEA (and in the rest of Asia) have enthusiastically embraced democracy. And anyway, there are all kinds of participatory or consultative traditions in all kinds of cultures. They may not call themselves democracy, but they have a similar aim: making sure the larger group shares in the task of governing. (It’s interesting to speculate on what different kinds of participatory or consultative traditions might have taken root in different parts of the world if the slow consolidation of democracy in the West hadn’t coincided with the slow expansion of colonialism... But that’s a cat that is well out of the bag.)

Arguably, unless we are ancient Greeks, democracy is a borrowed jacket for all of us. What we practise today is nothing like the process the word first described.

But the older democracies had many centuries to tailor something that felt comfortable. By the time they’d done that, they’d amassed, as a group, quite considerable power.

Their version of democracy certainly seemed (to many, at least) genuinely appealing. People generally do want more say in how to organize their lives. But it also came inextricably packaged up with power. Passively, power always makes things look just that little bit more attractive. And actively, once the constraints of the Cold War were removed, democratic power was freed up to incentivize democratization by adding conditions to aid, investment, loans, and so on, and to make “freedom and democracy” an important global narrative.

So, we have to wonder not only about the relationship between culture and democracy, but also about where power fits into it all. How much choice do newer democracies get over the “jacket” they borrow? And how much choice do they get in the way they can tailor it?

This rather one-way dynamic has probably not worked out well for the older democracies either. Many of these older democracies are facing pretty tough times at the moment. Could they not benefit, too, from some cross-cultural input on how to optimize democracy?

Fred Dallmayr writes: “The only proper way to mobilise democracy cross-culturally is through reciprocal engagement and recognition”. It’s a two-way thing, based on a sense of equality and mutual respect. Rather than “the unilateral export of western democracy to the rest of the world”, what is needed, he says, is “the creation of a space or arena where learning about democracy can happen”. In such an arena, “Western advocates of democracy may discover that some of their beliefs have congealed into ideologies, perhaps even dogmas – requiring renewed self-scrutiny… On the other hand, societies or cultures which are novices to modern democracy may … discover in their own traditions resources for the development of their own kind of modernity and their own version of modern democracy.”

Learning from each other, cross-culturally, about what makes for better participation, consultation, and governance – so that we all end up with a better product – sounds like a good idea to me.

To be continued… Endlessly, probably…

Can we please give ASEAN a bit of a break?

Yesterday was ASEAN's 44th birthday. I don't know if there was a cake, but there was a bit of a celebration at the Secretariat, and the ASEAN flag was flown across the SEA region and overseas.

I'm so used to reading about "inept ASEAN", and its "continuing impotence", that  I wasn't unduly surprised to see some of the birthday headlines: "ASEAN commission 'fails miserably in promoting, protecting human rights'", and "It is finally time for ASEAN to get it right on Burma".

Of course, ASEAN does need to do better on human rights, and the situation in Myanmar/Burma is a case in point. But these headlines pass over the point that ASEAN is doing better on human rights than it was, say, on its 24th birthday, and that no-one -- anywhere in the world -- seems to have much idea of how to "get it right on Burma".

Now, I am far from starry-eyed about ASEAN. After several years of research, I think I'm pretty clear about its manifold weaknesses and massive challenges.

And I don't want coverage of ASEAN to be all bland and polite. Criticism is important, even harsh criticism -- partly because it gets people talking, and partly because it can be part of a "good cop/bad cop" routine in allowing more "moderate" voices to push the envelope on change.

But my concern is that the balance is currently a bit out of whack. ASEAN often doesn't get a "fair go".

It's often expected to do things it really can't -- things that are actually the responsibility of its member states.  It's often expected to be something it's not, and probably shouldn't be. (Yes, I'm thinking of all those comparisons with the EU... I'm a huge EU fan, but in talking to people from SEA, I often get the distinct impression they think it's better than it actually is...)

ASEAN is also often encouraged to change practices like consensus and non-interference in favour of alternatives whose consequences remain vague. If we don't have convergence, and don't practise consensus, what do we use? Coercion? Trouble is, that's a bit one-way. We're often really happy to coerce other states into fast-tracking the agendas we're interested in -- but less happy to be on the receiving end of that coercion, when we're not keen, for domestic political reasons, to go racing ahead with other people's agendas.

And if we abandon the idea of non-interference, will that actually solve the underlying problem of lack of trust among SEA's states? And without more trust, will more interference bring a more peaceful SEA, or a less peaceful one?

No, ASEAN can't stay as it is. That's for sure. And yes, the people of SEA deserve something better. But I really wonder whether continually talking something down is the best way of improving it.

Other (not-quite-birthday) articles offer much less black-and-white perspectives on ASEAN diplomacy, Myanmar and the ASEAN chair, and economic cooperation. There's not a shred of complacency in any of these -- but no ASEAN-bashing either, and no easy answers.

Read all about it

People often ask me about sources of information on Southeast Asia. So here are some ideas.

Caveats first: This is absolutely not an exhaustive list. And, of course, all sources of information need care, so make your own mind up about the various editorial slants you’ll find represented here. But I use these sites regularly, and if you’re looking for up-to-date reportage and comment from SEA, they're a good place to start. A lot of them have Facebook pages, and/or opportunities to sign up for email updates.

Best of all, they’re free…

The ASEAN Studies Centre has just upgraded its website, which now looks very slick.

The S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), part of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, is a treasure trove of useful material, and you can sign up for alerts of various descriptions. The Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies is based there, and covers issues related to the environment, energy, human rights, migration, and lots more.

Many of SEA’s countries have think-tanks. The Singapore Institute of International Affairs and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta are very informative sites.

The US also has its Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which has a very useful Southeast Asia Program. This includes the CogitAsia blog and a very active FB page. Their regular newsletter will help you keep track of what's been happening in the region. The Pacific Forum bit of CSIS produces the quarterly Comparative Connections, which contains segments on US-SEA relations and China-SEA relations (and of course the ever influential US-China relations).

Also from the US, and also covering all of Asia but with interesting items on SEA, are the Council on Foreign Relations, with its Asia Unbound blog, and the Asia Foundation, with its In Asia blog.

The Diplomat has a section on the region, as well as a SEA blog called ASEAN Beat (not sure about that title...) And the Asia Correspondent site comprises a variety of columns, many of SEA interest.

International Crisis Group produces very insightful material, based on lots of local research, on Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, and the Philippines.

New Mandala, which covers mainland SEA in a very lively fashion, is one of the sites that are based at the Australian National University. Another is the East Asia Forum. As the name indicates, this one covers the whole region from Japan to India to New Zealand, but there's plenty on SEA. There's also the Indonesia Project, which focuses on the Indonesian economy.

It's also worth checking out some of the material from The University of Melbourne. The Asialink site has links to a variety of essays, media reports, interviews, and so on. It covers the whole of Asia, but SEA is well represented. The Asian Law Centre is also a good source, especially for things Indonesian, as is the Centre for Islamic Law and Society.

The Lowy Institute in Sydney has an East Asia Program that includes SEA. It also hosts The Interpreter, a great zine/blog that is a good source of information on all manner of things, including SEA.

On Thailand, you can't go past the amazingly in-depth Bangkok Pundit, but I also find 2Bangkok very useful, especially for its coverage of Thai-language press.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg...

Inspector Singh investigates...

I have to confess I’m a great fan of Shamini Flint’s idiosyncratic Singaporean detective. The grumpy-but-lovable Singh is a very engaging character, and his intricate cases are a good way of introducing vibrant and multi-faceted Southeast Asia to a much wider audience.

Of course, I have my quibbles. The latest, ‘A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree’, maybe gives a bit too much ground to the popular impression that Cambodia is mainly Angkor and the Khmer Rouge.

And I’m not sure Inspector Singh’s impressions of Cambodia would encourage people to go there – which would be a pity, as it’s a highly rewarding place to visit, on many levels.

But Flint writes very enjoyably, and aspects of her stories have a habit of staying with you long after you’ve forgotten about more “serious” books.

I can imagine using this series with undergrads in an Introduction to Southeast Asia course. “You’ve enjoyed the stories, now critique the political aspects” – that kind of thing.

Yep, I know how to take the fun out of anything…  

ASEAN and the South China Sea in the eye of the beholder

The South China Sea is a thorn in the flesh for ASEAN.

The story so far:

The sea contains lots of international shipping lanes, lots of fish, and probably lots of hydrocarbons, and six states lay claim to all or part of it: China, Taiwan, Viet Nam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei.

A “Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea” was signed in 2002, but the problem was never really solved, and has come roaring back in recent years. Chinese maps continue to depict an ominous tongue-shaped line that appears to be licking up most of the sea, and there has been some fairly rough argy-bargy between various claimants, with high levels of nationalism and provocative acts on all sides.

Since the middle of 2010, and a stormy meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the US has also been outspokenly involved. It lays no claim to any of the sea, but has declared its interest in protecting the international character of this busy stretch of water, and – somewhat disingenuously – has offered to mediate.

The US was encouraged to take this stance by some of the ASEAN countries, particularly Viet Nam. And it is clear that Chinese action, in the months leading up to Hillary Clinton’s resolute speech, had worried its smaller southern neighbours considerably, apparently undoing years of patient “charm diplomacy” on China’s part.

But, of course, inviting your giant cousin into the dispute carries its own risks as well. Are some of the parties now more ready to be less diplomatic with China, feeling that they have a big protector at their back? Will the US use this leverage to push its way further into SEA’s affairs than the region will ultimately feel comfortable with? Will rivalry between the US and China make escalation in the South China Sea even more likely?

These and other questions will not be answered in this post.

What this post is interested in is the tone of the commentary about the latest moves to solve – or at least calm – the dispute.

In the ARF meeting at the end of July this year, ASEAN and senior Chinese ministers endorsed "Guidelines on the Implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea". Here are some of the reactions:

Joshua Kurlantzick is keen to deflate any celebration over the "vaguely worded" deal. Luke Hunt is similarly unimpressed with an agreement "to agree on what they had agreed to previously".

But Ernie Bower notes the "markedly different" narrative and "more cooperative tone" in this year's ARF. Rodolfo Severino, whose former position as ASEAN secretary-general gives him plenty of insight into diplomatic nuance, recognizes "progress of sorts". Clearly, the proof of this knotty pudding will be in the eating, but the guidelines represent "a step forward".

The comments that have struck me the most are these:

Mark Valencia, who has dealt extensively with this dispute over the years, acknowledges the limitations of the deal, but describes the outcome as "unfairly maligned" and – in light of the tense climate in the lead-up to the meeting – "uplifting".  "Even if the forward movement is small and fragile," he writes, "it is in the right direction." He too acknowledges that we are far from the end of the story, but "this crisis brought out the best in many of the countries involved and that bodes well for Asia’s future".

And The Economist, while beginning and ending its piece with the usual swipes at the "ASEAN way" and firing off plenty of shots on the way, points to "noticeable movement" on the South China Sea. "Rapid progress" it isn't. But:

"That ASEAN enables them to try to negotiate from a less weak position is an achievement for the organisation. So is its provision of a forum where regional-security concerns can at least be raised, and where, in the margins, useful bilateral talks can be held."

High praise indeed, coming from The Economist...

In my research into ASEAN, one of the phrases I heard most often was the "glass-half-empty or glass-half-full" metaphor. Truly, the success of ASEAN and its efforts are in the eye of the beholder.