The Asean Way to peace in Northeast Asia

This competition over who sets the new rules of the game in Northeast Asia is just as important as the battle for resources, and is exacerbated by old rivalries, old wounds and long memories.

Finding a consistent historical and normative narrative across Japan, the Koreas and China is impossible. But those in Northeast Asia can take solace, as Southeast Asia is not immune to these dangers either.

In Southeast Asia, old biases breed distrust and in many ways still hold us back from becoming a true community and have led to territorial disputes.

Asean has found a way to work around these differences. The Asean Way, formalised in the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, has been the centrepiece to Asean’s survival for the past 48 years.

It stresses the respect for independence and sovereignty, the need for non-interference in neighbours’ affairs, renunciation of the use of force, and most importantly effective cooperation and diplomatic solutions to disputes.

These rules and norms haven’t been accepted across the region by design or because of a particular effort by Asean, but it is because they already complement the Asian values and customs of our ancestors.

The Eastern tradition is not one of “winner-takes-all”, or blunt confrontation, but rather to move towards win-win accommodation and consensus-based collective decisions for the greater common good.

This year is the 48th anniversary of Asean; the principle of non-interference has remained at its core since that time. 

It has given us time to overcome misunderstandings or long-held grudges. Most importantly, it has given us the space to learn the importance of starting to build trust. Starting small with the Asean Way has also built the foundation which has finally driven a transformation in what Asean is and what it strives to achieve.

Today, Asean is making a transition towards more of a rules-based Community under the Asean Charter rather than an association guided by the Asean Way. The Asean Way has built the trust, cooperation and consultation required to start building up and uniting this community for 48 years. 

Turning to the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative, I believe the NAPCI can take solace from what Southeast Asia has achieved. Southeast Asia has historical grievances. It has competition. It has suspicions and mistrust. But Asean has outlined a blueprint through which those problems can be eventually set aside.

The NAPCI and Asean also share one important Asian Way. In

Asia we value intermediaries, neutral coordinators, third parties which seek to reduce tensions, foster dialogue, facilitate agreements and prevent potential conflict situations from getting out of control through quiet diplomacy.

It is here where NAPCI has the potential to play this essential role as a neutral party to build trust, engage participants and create a private space for negotiation and reconciliation to take place.

In this context, the Asian Peace and Reconciliation Council (APRC), of which I am currently chairman, was founded in September 2012 on the premise that all differences are reconcilable through peaceful processes.

In fact, the APRC is a track-one-and-a-half, which brings together former heads of state, former prime ministers and ministers from various regions of the world who are interested in and concerned with peace, stability and progress in Asia. 

Over the past two years, one issue we have paid particular attention to is the South China Sea. APRC members have met policymakers of both claimant and non-claimant states, including opinion leaders, civil societies and academia to seek solutions to reduce tensions in the South China Sea.

Chinese statesman Deng Xiaoping once advised that all parties should consider shelving their territorial claims and instead focus on cooperation for mutual benefits. To shelve the territorial claims is not to relinquish them.

Back in 1979, Thailand and Malaysia agreed to a Joint Development Area in the Gulf of Thailand for exploration and extraction of oil and gas in their overlapping maritime areas. Profit-sharing arrangements still function amicably, even without agreed maritime boundary delimitation. Thailand and Malaysia are akin to “Brothers drinking from the same well”.

The sovereignty problem has been shelved to make use of the mutual economic benefits of the Joint Development Area. The two countries prefer to benefit on functional cooperation while leaving the territorial sovereignty issues to the legal experts till whenever to be settled.

There are many more examples of claimant states that prefer such a solution, including countries in Northeast Asia. Building on these precedents and the expertise of the region’s elders, functional cooperation across East Asia’s contested maritime borders can produce tangible benefits for the conflicting parties and reduce tensions in the region. Ongoing dialogues on all tracks, technical exchanges and informal consultations between all stakeholders can help foster trust and confidence. Discussing the tenets of a functional

 cooperation agreement is more conciliatory than claims on sovereignty. It is a confidence-building process which will complement the atmosphere in the discussions on territorial boundary and on the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea.

We Asians are enriched with thousands of years of indigenous wisdom upon which we can learn to base our diplomacy and initiatives to move forward. Both Asean and the NAPCI must be people-centric in their perception and implementation. When people-centric and based on our own Asian wisdom, peace and cooperation will not be beyond our reach.

In the shadow of uncertainty, we must help to outline the contours of hope.

 

Excerpts of the speech given by Surakiart Sathirathai, chairman of the Asian Peace and Reconciliation Council and former deputy prime minister and foreign minister, at the international conference on Asean’s Multilateral Cooperation and Its Lessons for NAPCI, in Seoul on Monday.