[China & SEA]Strengthing with Flexibility - ASEAN's Selective Cooperation with the US Indo-Pacific Strategy
Zhai Kun, Professor, School of International Relations, Peking University and Distinguished Fellow, Institute for International Strategic Studies
With the ASEAN-US Special Summit held in Washington on 12-13 May, the centrality of Southeast Asia to the Biden administration's Indo-Pacific architecture has taken shape. Biden's Indo-Pacific strategy is an "ASEAN improvement" over its predecessor, involving three areas: building systemic strengths, raising the profile and optimising resource allocation. In this regard, ASEAN has been selective in its approach, consolidating its centrality through converging cooperation projects and acting as an interconnected buffer zone between the US and China.
1. The "ASEAN Improvement" in the US Indo-Pacific Strategy
The Biden administration's Indo-Pacific Strategy is indeed "progressive" compared to the Trump era, in that it recognises that Southeast Asia is at the heart of the strategic competition between the US and China and that strategic US resources need to be integrated and deployed to ensure US dominance in Southeast Asia and to make every effort to against China.
i. Emphasising on systemic advantage. The US's greatest advantage in the region is systemic advantage. Since the end of the Cold War, the US system of regional hegemony has remained the most comprehensive and enduring, with military pillars, financial pillars, cultural pillars, and the alliance system all being systemic forces that can be employed. Also in the Indo-Pacific strategy, the systematic differences between Biden and Trump are: 1. No longer mainly emphasising military means of checks and balances, but a multi-pronged approach in politics, security and economics, especially in economics with the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) to make up for the shortcomings of the regional economic cooperation mechanism, and with most of its members being ASEAN countries. 2. The US’s Indo-Pacific strategy is part of its global strategy, and Biden supports the Indo-Pacific strategy of European countries, supported their engagement with ASEAN, formed a global allocation of strategic resources, and used the US version of "global connectivity" to support ASEAN's global connectivity. 3. Playing the role of US cultural soft power, Biden has continued the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) launched by Obama for young elites. The US also provided $16 million in education-related loans to Southeast Asia, focusing on science and technology, English, digital skills, technical and vocational education and training (TVET), to reserve human capital for the long-term development of economic, cultural and technological relations with ASEAN, and to promote U.S. standards and norms. 4, focusing on the long-term layout, to create the capacity and resilience to deal with challenges on a lasting basis. Public opinion generally doubts the sustainability of Biden's Indo-Pacific strategy and is not optimistic about Biden's mid-term elections as well as his re-election. But it should be seen that Biden's Indo-Pacific strategy inherits the legacy of Obama and Trump, and has been systematically optimized. This means that the likelihood of the next president, whether Democrat or Republican, continuing this strategic framework is high.
ii. An attempt at a change of heart. In his Indo-Pacific strategy released in February, Biden made it clear that the US alone is powerless and needs the support of all parties to shape the environment to contain and influence China. This shows that the US in the Biden era has shifted from being "the boss" to "please everyone", seeking the cooperation and support of ASEAN. In the report, Biden emphasises respect for the centrality of ASEAN, mentioning it 19 times. However, the presidential policy report ignores the fact that ASEAN is most concerned about its centrality: the US does not mention the ASEAN Indo-Pacific Vision (AOIP). In order to "accommodate" ASEAN's reluctance to choose sides between China and the US, the US no longer seeks to "choose sides" for ASEAN, but instead shifts its focus to "providing choices" and responding to ASEAN's concerns in areas such as security, economic, health and environmental issues. In addition, in order to ensure that the US has a strong interest in ASEAN, the United States has been able to make a significant contribution to the region. In addition, the US-ASEAN summit was formally held on 12 May, despite repeated delays, to ensure the US's strategic credibility with ASEAN. Biden, the first president in US history to bring ASEAN leaders to the White House for a dinner, told ASEAN leaders, "We are beginning a new era in US-ASEAN relations that will last for years and decades to come." Significantly, the ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook was clearly elevated in the joint statement subsequently agreed upon by both sides as a mutually agreed norm and value.
iii. Emphasising on emerging instruments and strategic resourcing.1 both comprehensive and focused, as well as surprising. Biden placed emphasis on multiple types of funding and investment to ensure that there was no "vacuum" of US resources to support his full spectrum of strategic competition with China. Biden has focusedon cooperation in areas such as Coast Guard cooperation, Indo-Pacific maritime awareness, and combating illegal fishing. As the US Coast Guard has already achieved a permanent deployment in Northeast Asia and the South Pacific, the Indo-Pacific maritime cooperation is aimed at the South China Sea, where Biden hopes to establish a permanent military presence to strengthen the security of relevant countries in Southeast Asia while ensuring long-term deep US involvement in the South China Sea. Among the surprises was the proposal to promote programs to help ASEAN become more "digitally literate," as well as programs for the disadvantaged and disabled in ASEAN. Enhancing digital literacy is an important step for the US to break free from domestic political constraints and promote job recovery in Southeast Asian countries, as well as facilitating the implementation of digital standards and rules in the region. Care-based programmes can add a human dimension to US foreign aid and achieve differentiated competition.2. Planting small multilateral security mechanisms such as AUKUS and QUAD in the Indo-Pacific region. This will help the US to encourage Japan, South Korea, Australia, India and other countries to play a role in Southeast Asia, so that allies can make more "incremental" contributions and thus control their own operational and strategic costs. In response to the concerns of some ASEAN countries about AUKUS and QUAD, the US has also proposed dovetailing QUAD with ASEAN and using QUAD to provide epidemic management assistance to the region. 3. Specialisms. As ASEAN is more focused on cutting-edge issues in its integration process, Biden is using incremental thinking in related areas to leverage the US' comparative advantage in science and technology to attract ASEAN.
2. ASEAN's Selective Response to the US Indo-Pacific Strategy
i. System to system. ASEAN is keenly aware of the systemic shift in the US Indo-Pacific strategy, at least stronger than under Trump, and therefore adopts a strategy of going with the flow. ASEAN is better at leveraging the US systemic advantage to improve its own system. The ASEAN system is the "ASEAN Plus" structure of regional cooperation and the regional peace ecology that ASEAN has built with the major powers. In response to the US Indo-Pacific Strategy's "ASEAN improvements", ASEAN has responded as follows: 1. On issues such as containment of China and the Russia-Ukraine conflict: Cambodia, which is seen as pro-China, has been particularly active in participating in the US-ASEAN summit as the rotating chair of ASEAN. Several ASEAN countries became the first members of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), while actively implementing the RCEP. the summit joint statement on the Russia-Ukraine war included "reaffirming respect for sovereignty, political independence and territorial integrity" and "calling for compliance with the UN Charter and international law". 2. ASEAN welcomes the entry of European countries into the region in the form of an Indo-Pacific strategy and asks them to support the ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook. For example, ASEAN has approved the EU as a strategic partner and the UK has become the first additional dialogue partner in the last 25 years. These help ASEAN to become an open hub for Indo-Pacific connectivity, and thus advance a more balanced version of ASEAN's global connectivity.3. By adhering to long-termism, ASEAN's balance-of-power strategy is clearly more sustainable and resilient. ASEAN made every effort to ensure that the summit statement was formulated without overt targeting or exclusivity, guiding regional countries to address issues of common concern through inclusive cooperation. ASEAN took full advantage of the global exposure of its leaders in Washington to demonstrate its ability to act as a 'bridge' for great power coordination rather than a 'pawn' in the game, and to enhance its international standing and the attractiveness of the 'ASEAN Plus' structure. "
ii. Adhering to the principle of the centre stage and resource adaptation. The main function of the ASEAN balance of power and its centrality is to bring together the strategic cooperation project of the major powers through their competition in the region, and to become a centre stage for regional cooperation, helping the major powers to dovetail efficiently while avoiding friction. A successful centre stage relies on the adaptation of back-office resources to ensure consistency between the type of resources and the organisation's objectives, corresponding to ASEAN's "choosing good over evil". In November last year, China and ASEAN signed a joint statement mapping out a package of cooperation for the China-ASEAN Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, covering almost everything from traditional to emerging areas. And the list of cooperation in the US ASEAN Joint Statement is highly overlapping with the content of China's ASEAN cooperation. ASEAN has been selective in accepting the cooperation offered by the US, and has accepted a wide range of useful cooperation projects as they come. For example, the US has offered to promote investment in high-standard, transparent, low-carbon and climate-resilient infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia. While this will increase the cost of related financing, it will still help to meet the strong infrastructure needs of the ASEAN region, particularly for infrastructure at different levels of development, and promote diverse participation in local infrastructure projects. ASEAN countries welcome this and are further deepening their cooperation with the US on transport connectivity, hoping to drive sustainable infrastructure development through transport facilitation measures and emerging technologies such as electric vehicles. The ASEAN countries, on the other hand, remain distant and wary of "toxic and harmful" things, such as the fact that most ASEAN countries are opposed to AUKUS and have not responded positively to how it will interface with QUAD. ASEAN is mainly concerned that these two small multilateral mechanisms implanted by the US in the region will catalyse regional security dilemmas and nuclear arms races, leading to more aggressive actions by major powers in the region and heightening tensions to avoid undermining the function of China and Taiwan through resource conflicts.
iii. Leveraging the momentum to consolidate ASEAN centrality. Since 2016, the US, Japan, India, Australia and other countries have launched an "Indo-Pacific" strategy to support ASEAN's centrality. The ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook, launched in 2019, has given ASEAN some autonomy in the face of the Trump administration's Indo-Pacific strategy. However, the escalation of the Quadrilateral Mechanism after Biden's rise to power and the establishment of the US-UK-Australia Trilateral Security Partnership (TSP) have intensified strategic competition between China and the US, and anxiety among ASEAN countries has risen significantly. In the current round of interaction with the US, ASEAN countries have insisted on putting ASEAN's centrality first and resisted attempts to induce them to join the US anti-China alliance. As the rotating chair of ASEAN, Cambodia's approach to any Indo-Pacific initiative has been guided by the three principles of peaceful development, not making enemies and respecting the centrality of ASEAN. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visited Washington at the end of March to prep for the summit. Lee sought to reaffirm his "strong support" for ASEAN centrality and an ASEAN-centric regional architecture in a joint statement by the two leaders, while welcoming QUAD's support for ASEAN centrality. During the summit, Vietnamese Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính expressed his hope that the major powers would respect the centrality of ASEAN to the fullest extent possible and consult fully with ASEAN. In response, Biden said ASEAN centrality was at the heart of future US strategy, and he also nominated Abraham as the new ambassador to ASEAN, filling a vacancy in the post since 2017. The joint statement issued after the meeting fully reflects the ASEAN centre. Firstly, none of the documents mention China, reflecting the US compromise on ASEAN's insistent position. Secondly, the joint statement begins by emphasising the need to adhere to the key principles, shared values and norms contained in the ASEAN Charter, the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, the Southeast Asia Nuclear Free Zone Treaty and the ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook, i.e. using the ASEAN Centre as a bridge between the ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook and the US Indo-Pacific Strategy. Finally, the Joint Statement highlights connectivity to mitigate the weakening of the ASEAN-centric regional multilateralism architecture by various small multilateral mechanisms, in particular by emphasising the promotion of global supply chains and seamless regional connectivity, and explicitly resisting the US proposal of "decoupling". In summary, ASEAN has successfully continued its multilateral philosophy of demilitarisation, de-ideologisation and regional integration through connectivity, transcending the trap of 'choosing sides' and strengthening its centrality and strategic autonomy.
A preliminary summary could be made as below: 1. Southeast Asia is at the heart of the US-China strategic game, and the countries in the region are well aware of the principle that "when the elephants fight, the lawn suffers". 2. The US-China game is long-term and strategic. ASEAN's long-term approach and deep involvement in the regional architecture can, to a certain extent, restrain the rigidity of the US Indo-Pacific strategy and safeguard the strategic autonomy of its member states.3. Up to now, the conflict between China and the US has not escalated to a military conflict, and the two countries continue the benign competition formed under the ASEAN Plus framework, which benefits ASEAN as a whole and consolidates its central position.4. The ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook is a pact between China and the US. Although the US still holds a zero-sum game mentality at this stage, Biden's "four no's and one no intention" statement shows that there is hope that China-US relations will not deteriorate further. Against the backdrop of the difficulty in achieving an optimal solution for substantive improvement in US-China relations, the ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook is a viable solution that can help China and the US address long-term challenges and achieve peaceful co-existence and co-governance in the region.5 ASEAN is not what it used to be and can play the role of an interconnected buffer zone between China and the US, which is conducive to the construction of an inclusive regional order. On this basis, the parties concerned can form a system of rebalancing the power of the major powers with ASEAN at its core, and promote a positive, smooth and orderly evolution of the international landscape.
In conclusion, against the backdrop of the current intensification of the strategic game between China and the US, ASEAN can make a contribution to the shaping of a new type of international relations that treats each other as equals, helps each other and focuses on development by actively participating in the construction of a regional order with softness and rigidity.