[China & SEA] ASEAN-US Special Summit, Strategic Gaming and the Preservation of Autonomy
Jie Zhang, researcher at the Institute of Asia-Pacific and Global Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
(Records of all previous summits between ASEAN and the United States)
On 12-13 May, the second ASEAN-US Special Summit was held in Washington. At a time when the strategic game between the US and China is intensifying, the war between Russia and Ukraine is raging, and the epidemic continues to rage, the ASEAN leaders' participation in the US was quite "grand", but the outcome was rather limited. The "Joint Vision Statement" issued after the meeting adopted a more ASEAN-tinged formulation on some key issues, reflecting the reluctance of ASEAN countries to compromise in their relations with the US.
The "Special" of the Special Summit
The overall relationship between ASEAN organisations and countries and the United States was conceived during the Cold War. The two sides established dialogue in 1977 and launched an annual leaders' meeting in 2009, which was renamed the ASEAN-US Summit in 2013. In 2015, ASEAN-US relations were further upgraded to a "strategic dialogue relationship".
"The ASEAN-US Special Leaders' Summit has been held on an irregular basis, twice in total. The first Special Summit was held in California in February 2016, when ASEAN declared a "community" and its relationship with the US was upgraded to "strategic partner". The second special summit, just held to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the ASEAN-US dialogue, was more politically symbolic than the regular annual summits between the two sides.
The special summit had a series of twists and turns from proposal to realisation. During the 7th ASEAN-US Summit in November 2019, then US President Trump moved to hold a second special summit to mark the fifth anniversary of the ASEAN-US strategic partnership, initially scheduled for March 2020 in Las Vegas and later postponed due to the new crown epidemic. in October 2021 the 9th During the ASEAN-US Summit (held online), the new President Biden reiterated the US initiative to convene a second Extraordinary Summit. In January 2022, Biden wrote to Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia, the rotating chair of ASEAN, to extend a formal invitation to ASEAN countries. A month later, Hun Sen wrote to Biden expressing his full support, and the two sides agreed to hold the special summit offline in Washington in late March, which was postponed again due to the unavailability of a number of ASEAN leaders for other important events, and in mid-April the two sides rescheduled the current meeting.
The special summit was attended by ASEAN leaders including Brunei King, Cambodian Prime Minister, Indonesian President, Laotian Prime Minister, Malaysian Prime Minister, Singaporean Prime Minister, Thai Prime Minister and Vietnamese Prime Ministe. The Philippines was represented by Foreign Affairs Secretary due to the post-presidential election transition period, while Myanmar was excluded from the summit due to well-known domestic political issues.
The wind is strong, while the rain is weak.
The special summit finally took place, reflecting the mutual strategic and practical needs of ASEAN and the United States against the backdrop of accelerating international change. As the most symbolic outcome of the summit, the two sides announced that they would further upgrade their relationship to a "comprehensive strategic partnership" at the 10th ASEAN-US summit in November 2022, with Biden gleefully declaring to a large number of journalists that the US-ASEAN relationship "a new era".
In terms of concrete outcomes, the ASEAN-US Special Summit highlighted eight major cooperation agendas: the epidemic, "economic connectivity", maritime security, humanistic exchanges, sub-regional development, technological innovation, climate change, maintaining peace and building trust. The ASEAN-US Special Summit highlighted an eight-pronged agenda for cooperation. However, cooperation around these areas has been frequently mentioned in the outcome documents of high-level engagement between the two sides in recent years, such as the ASEAN-US Strategic Partnership Action Plan (2021-2025) released in September 2020, the 9th ASEAN-US Summit in October 2021, where Biden presented the The "New US-ASEAN Initiative", also overlapping with the US Indo-Pacific Strategy document released by the White House in February 2022, is not new and hardly a "breakthrough".
The U.S. side pledged at the special summit to provide a total of $150 million in matching funds for related cooperation, of which $60 million will be used to strengthen "maritime security cooperation", with the U.S. Coast Guard responsible for developing specific plans and allocating them. The news was met with international ridicule, with some media ridiculing the amount as so small that it was "insulting" to ASEAN. In a unilateral "briefing", the US side said that the US$150 million in official aid would stimulate private financing, which could reach "billions of dollars". Even US academics have questioned this. It is also clear from the fact that the funds are mainly used for "maritime security cooperation" that the US policy towards ASEAN is still difficult to break out of its security and political focus and has no intention or ability to complement ASEAN's "shortcomings" in economic development. The "all-round strengthening of cooperation with ASEAN" is, to a considerable extent, a bluff.
ASEAN strives to maintain strategic autonomy
After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the United States, on the one hand, fully engaged in Europe to fight a "proxy war", on the other hand, forcibly maintain the momentum of the implementation of the "Indo-Pacific strategy", making it clear that the basic direction of strengthening the containment of China will not be loosened because of the changes that occurred in Europe, and even trying to "bundle" China and Russia together to suppress them. In this regard, the United States in the "Indo-Pacific" intensified to pull in Japan, Australia, South Korea, India and other allied partner countries, while seeking to convert Vietnam, Indonesia and other countries, the Asia-Pacific region faces a greater risk of being dragged into the "new cold war" by the United States. Against this backdrop, the outside world was very concerned about the "sparks" that would emerge at the special summit between ASEAN and the US, which was trying to bring it in. ASEAN has proved to be highly autonomous in its strategy.
On 5 May, just before the special summit, the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution in support of the special summit. The resolution used the South China Sea issue at length to "smear" China, "suggested" that ASEAN should issue a "common position paper" on the so-called "international ruling on the South China Sea arbitration case" as soon as possible, and criticised individual countries in Southeast Asia for "democratic regression" and "human rights". It also criticised individual countries in Southeast Asia for "democratic regression" and "human rights violations". The Biden administration, for its part, has repeatedly urged ASEAN to join in condemning and sanctioning Russia after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and has pushed hard for the special summit to highlight the importance of so-called "shared values". However, the joint statement issued at the summit generally did not echo the tone set by the US administration and Congress, and made no mention of the so-called "democracy" and "human rights" issues, emphasising support for ASEAN's efforts to promote "a peaceful solution in the interests of the Burmese people" on Myanmar. On Myanmar, it stressed its support for ASEAN's efforts to promote "a peaceful solution in the interests of the Burmese people" and welcomed the coordination between the ASEAN Chair's Special Envoy on Myanmar and the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy on Myanmar. On the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the sensitive maritime issue, no country was named and the use of targeted and exclusive language was deliberately avoided. Such a statement has distinctive "ASEAN characteristics", reflecting ASEAN's consistent attitude of adhering to the "balance of powers" strategy and refusing to "choose sides".
Of course, it should also be noted that the common statement of the summit includes "respect for the sovereignty, political independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine", which is different from the two collective statements issued by ASEAN after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which were neutral in tone and showed that ASEAN could not completely avoid the concerns of the US side. On the South China Sea, the joint statement included such allusions as "the need to maintain and promote an environment conducive to the negotiation of a code of conduct in the South China Sea" and "the implementation of practical measures that can help reduce tensions, accidents and the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation". It is obvious that ASEAN took into account the feelings of other countries in the region and the United States after a difficult communication, but it did not touch the bottom line and did not fundamentally change ASEAN's position.
On 4 May, the foreign ministers of Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand issued a joint statement saying that they would continue to invite all members, including Russia, to their respective summits. Indonesia, for its part, had previously extended an invitation to Ukrainian President Zelenski to attend the G20 summit. This has had the effect of clearing the way for the ASEAN-US special summit and has helped to strengthen ASEAN's sense of strategic autonomy in diplomatic practice.
After the second ASEAN-US Special Summit, Biden went to Japan to attend the offline summit of the US-Japan-India-Australia Quadrilateral Mechanism (QUAD) and visited South Korea to continue promoting the creation of a confrontational bloc in the Asia-Pacific. The Biden administration's mooted "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework" will also become more concrete, and countries such as Singapore and the Philippines have already indicated that they welcome it. These new developments will intensify the strategic rivalry between China and the US, impacting on ASEAN's "unity" and "centrality" in regional cooperation affairs and making it more difficult for it to maintain its strategic autonomy.
It can be expected that ASEAN will continue to use the ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook as a grip to actively play the role of a "thread of the needle" among the major forces in the region by strengthening the ASEAN community and using the ASEAN-led regional mechanism, while taking a highly pragmatic stance to gain multiple benefits, with the aim of buffering the game of major powers and guiding the construction of an open, inclusive and cooperative regional order. The aim is to buffer the game of the major powers and guide the building of an open, inclusive and cooperative regional order, so as to continue to act as a "bridge" and avoid becoming a "pawn". For us, it is imperative that we continue to raise the profile of our neighbourhood diplomacy, strengthen the planning of our own Asian strategy, maintain the momentum of China's relations with ASEAN, and effectively safeguard the mutual benefits of both sides.