Binary Trap Threatens ASEAN’s Hedging Role | East Asia Forum

Author: Cheng-Chwee Kuik, National University of Malaysia

Since its creation in 1967, ASEAN has served as a platform for its member states and their dialogue partners throughout the Asia Pacific community. A relatively understudied function of ASEAN is its role as a platform for institutional “cover” in the post-Cold War era.

In Southeast Asia, ASEAN and the ASEAN+ multilateral mechanisms have provided a pathway for small and medium-sized states To cover against multiple risks associated with the rise of China, US-China competition, and broader strategic uncertainties. The states’ convergent Efforts (not necessarily collective or coordinated actions) occur alongside unilateral and bilateral channels for coverage and allow them to simultaneously carry out actions that involve and restrict China at regional level.

The commitment is the active use of multilateral and bilateral processes to forge ever closer, more comprehensive and productive ties with China and, indeed, with all the great powers. The restraint involves the contradictory action of limiting the influence of the rising power by taking advantage of the presence of other powers to provide checks and balances in Beijing. Commitment and restriction are two sides of the hedging coin.

ASEAN-focused platforms create the room for maneuver and compensation for weaker states to keep their options open in dealing with the rise of China and broader power uncertainties. This allows smaller states to avoid becoming subservient to or overly dependent on their giant neighbor, thus hedging the risks of ‘unrestricted commitment’. They can also avoid antagonizing any power or foregoing any economic gain (hedging the risks of ‘restrain without commitment’) while mitigating the dangers of entrapment and abandonment. in the face of uncertainty.

This space can be contraction. The power dynamics surrounding the South China Sea have challenged the cohesion of Southeast Asia and the centrality of ASEAN. Beijing’s increasingly assertive actions are not significantly constrained by any actor or arrangement. The United States’ unpredictability under the Trump administration it may have been subdued, but it remains a factor under the Biden administration and weakens the ability of ASEAN+ platforms and processes to enforce restrictions. The growing US-China rivalry and Washington’s emerging emphasis on a ‘split’ of democracies versus autocracies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine further reduces the space for compromise.

This is all coming at a time when China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and various Beijing-initiated multilateral mechanisms (such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) are gaining momentum in Eurasia and beyond. China’s expanded global economic footprint and Japan’s corresponding infrastructure-focused policy are turning connectivity cooperation into a new chess board of Asian geopolitical competition.

As geoeconomics converge with geopolitics in Asia, the United States and other Western nations have largely remained onlookers. Although Western nations eventually announced ‘alternative’ schemes such as the EU-Asia Connectivity Strategy (2018), the Blue Dot Network (2019), the Global Gateway (2021) and the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (2022), these schemes have so far stood as advertisements rather than concrete and credible alternatives to the BRI.

This is a cause for concern. In Southeast Asia, infrastructure development is much more than an economic issue: the ruling elites of the ASEAN states see infrastructure as the key to governance performance on which they are based to improve or preserve their political authority. the BRI and Beijing’s new initiatives may not necessarily translate into increasing Chinese influence, but a simultaneous increase in incentive from China and a perceived unpredictability in US external commitments after 2024 may accelerate power shifts and order transitions.

ASEAN remains a useful platform for coverage of Southeast Asia precisely because of these uncertainties and challenges. The ASEAN forums are the only institutional pillars of Asian architecture that are not centered or dominated by major powers.

Preserving this institutional buffer role is crucial to preserving a stable distribution of power, sustainable peace, and lasting prosperity in Asia.

One danger of the ongoing transitions of order is that more and more Southeast Asian states are turning to Beijing to benefit from China’s economic opportunities and growing geopolitical influence. Over time, if more ASEAN states repeatedly show greater commitment to the preferences of their great-power patron than to the interests of other members of the group, ASEAN will risk splittingweakened and marginalized.

The growing gravitational pull of China’s power is not the only concern for the cohesion and centrality of Southeast Asia. The US and its allies are forging coalitions of ‘like-minded’ nations (such as the Quad and AUKUS), pursuing ‘de-risking’, and planning to open a NATO office in Asia. They threaten to turn their current efforts of restriction into containment, thus dividing the region and undermining the role of ASEAN as a coverage platform.

The current coverage stance of Southeast Asian states is far from optimal choice for anyone. But there is no optimal, risk-free policy in the real world. Hedging is the next best thing that everyone is interested in, including China and other powers. The current ambiguity of active multi alignment it’s much better than open rivalry, open confrontation, or total tug-of-war.

Any power can make some immediate gains by inducing other states to side with it. But short-term gains would come at the long-term expense of causing other powers to back down. This could create a vicious cycle of actions and reactions that distracts states from national governance, deepens alignment dilemmas, creates camps, exacerbates existing disputes, and leads to conflicts that neither state wants.

ASEAN’s role as hedge platform —despite all its shortcomings and shortcomings—is good for all states of Southeast Asia and also good for all other powers and players How ASEAN consolidates that role in the short term is critical to long-term regional stability in the face of strategic competition between the United States and China, threats from armed interdependenceeconomic decoupling and a dangerous binary trap.

Cheng-Chwee Kuik is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for Asian Studies, Institute of Malaysian and International Studies, at the National University of Malaysia.

An earlier version of this article appeared in a 2018 issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly‘Why ASEAN Matters’, Vol 10, No 1.