"One clear voice"?

Indonesia’s foreign minister has prioritized the need for ASEAN to speak with “one clear voice” on international issues…

Aside from the difficulties of this (the EU hasn’t managed it yet), is it wholly desirable?

Surely the usefulness of one clear voice depends on what that voice articulates.

ASEAN’s most telling defence of its driving-seat position in regional architecture is that the organization is non-threatening. A key factor in this profile is SEA’s capacity, corporately and individually, to practise the kind of balancing that engages all the major powers, and exclusively favours none of them. This strategy has made an important contribution to regional peace and confidence-building to date. Even now, with a recalibration of the balance under way in certain countries over the South China Sea, no state wants all its eggs in one basket.

If the evolution of “one clear voice” were to also equate with an unequivocal leaning towards or away from any one particular power or perceived array of powers, this would not bode well.

And part of the reason ASEAN looks unthreatening lies in its very variety. Its components have politico-security feet in many different camps, and may at any given time be leaning in slightly different directions, at slightly different angles. If one country adjusts its balance slightly, therefore, this does not imply the tilt of the whole region in the same direction. Such a move can be compensated for on a regional level by the dozens of other micro-balancing manoeuvres that are constantly taking place. The ASEAN states are not a solid mass of colour, as it were – they are more akin to a variegated, “twinkling” pattern.

And that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Such an entity is far more likely to forestall a dangerous regional binary.