TY - JOUR
AU - Tan, See, Seng
AB - Abstract This article assesses how south-east Asian countries and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have responded to the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategies promoted by the United States and the other countries in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the ‘Quad’: US, Japan, Australia and India). Their nuanced ripostes imply a persistent commitment to hedging and shifting limited alignments in the face of growing great rivalry and the lack of a clear FOIP vision among Quad members. In the face of external pressure to take sides, the ASEAN states are likely to keep hedging through working selectively with China and the United States. Given the United States' apparent preference to balance China and Trump's disregard for multilateralism, ASEAN's ability to maintain its centrality in the evolving regional architecture is in doubt—despite the Quad countries' (belated) accommodation of ASEAN in their FOIP strategies. However, the success of the US strategy depends on Washington's ability to build and sustain the requisite coalition to balance Beijing. ASEAN has undertaken efforts to enhance bilateral security collaboration with China and the United States respectively. In doing so, ASEAN is arguably seeking to informally redefine its centrality in an era of Great Power discord and its ramifications for multilateralism. How have member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN),1 as well as ASEAN itself, responded to the idea of the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) as broadly conceived and promoted by the United States and a number of other external powers? Crucially, how have south-east Asian (or ASEAN) states sought to maintain the declared ‘centrality’2 of ASEAN in the region's evolving security architecture? It is argued below that the nuanced reactions shown hitherto by the ASEAN states imply a consistent and persistent commitment to strategic non-alignment and hedging—if only to avoid the impression that they are taking sides in the face of growing Great Power rivalry. The ambiguity of their responses also reflects the lack of a common vision and strategy for the FOIP among the members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (informally known as the Quad), namely, Australia, India, Japan and the United States.3 That said, the ability of the south-east Asians to hedge has been eroded by a hardening of the US position towards China, which is increasing the pressure on them to take sides. In the face of such pressure, the ASEAN states are likely to work selectively with China and the United States, rather than siding entirely with one or the other. In this context, it is of interest to examine how the United States and other regional powers have accounted for ASEAN's regional centrality in their respective FOIP strategies. The aim of this article is to examine how individual south-east Asian countries and ASEAN as a group have responded to—and, if only indirectly, reshaped—Washington's evolving FOIP strategy. In the face of a hardening by Washington of its efforts to balance China's power and influence, the south-east Asians, it is argued, have continued to hedge against the two big powers and sought ways to preserve ASEAN's privileged place and role in the regional order. If Great Powers are the key makers of regional order,4 then the FOIP can be understood as America's effort to determine the shape and role of the Indo-Pacific—even as China appears to be doing likewise with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).5 In short, power matters. However, local responses to power can play and have played significant parts in the construction of regional order.6 Nowhere is this more evident than in south-east Asia. For a grouping of small and/or weak states, ASEAN has enjoyed a marked degree of influence in the shaping not just of south-east Asia but of the wider east Asian region as well.7 That said, with US–China rivalry likely to persist and the Trump administration apparently uninterested in multilateral diplomacy,8 increased institutional balancing between the two major powers within ASEAN-led regional arrangements—such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus)—has threatened ASEAN's ability to sustain Indo-Pacific cooperative multilateralism.9 In response, ASEAN has undertaken efforts—known within regional circles as ‘ASEAN plus one’ arrangements—to enhance practical bilateral collaboration with China and the United States respectively. In this way, ASEAN is arguably seeking to informally redefine its regional centrality in an era of Great Power discord and its potentially negative ramifications for multilateralism. In other words, at both national and regional levels, south-east Asians are likely to persist with their hedging strategies and to eschew taking sides in the face of increased pressure to do so. All about China? Beyond a common preference among its promoters for rules-based order, freedom of navigation, respect for sovereignty, open markets and the like,10 the FOIP has remained relatively ill-defined, not least because the visions and strategies of the Quad countries regarding the Indo-Pacific differ, at times markedly. The origins of the Quad, an informal strategic dialogue between Australia, India, Japan and the United States, arguably date back to humanitarian relief collaboration among those four countries in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Formally initiated in 2007 by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, the Quad parallels a joint maritime exercise (named Malabar) that has been conducted regularly since 1992. Presented then as a means to defend the international rules-based order and ensure an ‘arc of freedom and prosperity’,11 the grouping hit a snag in 2008 when Australia withdrew out of concern that participation might jeopardize its economic ties with China. Since then, the Australians have returned to the fold with a fresh view of the Quad as an important piece of the regional architecture to facilitate economic, military and strategic cooperation in the region.12 Whether justly or not, the Quad has come to be seen by the Chinese and others as an anti-China coalition, which Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi dismissed as a ‘headline-grabbing idea’ that would dissipate ‘like the sea foam in the Pacific or Indian Ocean’.13 Wang has a point. So far, only the United States and Australia have openly and regularly referred to the Quad and the FOIP together, at times interchangeably, and even then with the Australians worrying about their growing economic reliance on China and perceiving a need to diversify both the FOIP and the Quad away from an exclusive focus on defence.14 Japan, for its part, has resisted twinning the FOIP with the Quad and has emphasized the economic dimension of the former, as evidenced by Tokyo's proactive role in establishing the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and its promotion—together with India—of economic connectivity via the Asia–Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC).15 In a similar vein, it has been argued that Australia should follow Japan's and India's example of providing the region with economic alternatives to China's BRI.16 India's prime minister Narendra Modi spoke expansively about the Indo-Pacific in his 2018 Shangri-La Dialogue address without once mentioning the Quad.17 That said, despite their nuanced differences, the Australian, Indian and Japanese perspectives appear equally committed to treating the Indo-Pacific as an inclusive region, in contrast to the Trump administration's more exclusivist approach.18 In recent times, America has hardened its stance on China in ways that risk narrowing its FOIP strategy into an exclusive and comprehensive counterbalance against the Chinese. For the United States, the FOIP is part of its effort to reduce a huge annual trade deficit with China, whose global aspirations in aerospace, artificial intelligence, biotech and robotics, in Washington's view, are being achieved partly through the theft of US technology by Chinese and/or pro-China actors.19 It also views China's aggressive land reclamation and militarization in the South China Sea as unlawful and inimical to the freedom and security of the seas. Although Washington has withdrawn from the original Trans-Pacific Partnership (the precursor to the CPTPP) and declared the demise of former US president Barack Obama's pivot (or rebalance) to Asia strategy,20 and appears to have ‘abandoned’ the broad international leadership it had provided over the previous seven decades,21 it has nonetheless retained significant facets of US engagement with Asia while promising to enhance others. As such, it could perhaps be said that the Obama pivot is survived by an FOIP strategy that is sufficiently distinct but no less important or comprehensive, even if its coherence and consistency have occasionally been threatened by Trump's capricious conduct.22 Specifically, what seems to have gained in coherence is America's position on China. For example, the Trump administration's National Security Strategy (NSS) 2017 and National Defense Strategy (NDS) 2018 documents contain repeated references to China's purportedly revisionist and aggrandizing proclivities; the NSS 2017 claims that China seeks to ‘challenge American power, influence, and interests, [and is] attempting to erode American security and prosperity’, that it aims ‘to shape a world antithetical to US values and interests [and] seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favour’, and further that China's ‘dominance risks diminishing the sovereignty of many states in the Indo-Pacific’.23 Similar characterizations also dotted US Vice-President Mike Pence's addresses to the Hudson Institute in October 2018 and the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in November 2018.24 The vice-president levelled six specific accusations at China: of mounting an all-out effort to advance its own interests at the expense of America and other countries; of interfering in America's domestic politics; of pursuing unfair trade practices; of using ‘debt diplomacy’ to undermine the sovereignty of countries participating in the China-led BRI; of displaying aggression in the South China Sea; and of practising religious intolerance at home.25 Pence's contention was that America's past failure to persuade China to be a ‘responsible stakeholder’ in world affairs alongside the United States compelled the US to take a new tougher stance towards Beijing.26 That stance has come to include presenting the FOIP strategy—discussed in greater detail in the following section—as an alternative model to China's authoritarian rule and state-directed lending for infrastructure projects, which have, it is alleged, resulted in debt-trapping and increased dependence on Beijing. Hence, rather than retreating into isolationism and abandoning its global leadership (as some have suggested27), the Trump administration could be signalling its readiness to compete rather than retreat—which in itself arguably constitutes a different and narrower form of leadership than that previously exercised.28 However, while many countries of the region may share Washington's concerns about China's conduct, they do not necessarily support the way in which the Trump administration has approached China. As Michael Swaine has persuasively argued: [President Trump's] FOIP would aim to defend against the ways a rising China ostensibly threatens the rules-based international order, universal liberal values, and free access to the maritime global commons. In reality, however, FOIP is likely to have the opposite effect, provoking Beijing, alarming other Asian nations, and driving the region toward a highly tense, zero-sum competition. By adopting an ideological and confrontational posture toward China, the Trump administration risks creating a pointless Cold War with Beijing. What Asia needs instead is a far more constructive regional approach grounded in a stable balance of power and in mutual compromise.29 If Trump's FOIP strategy is to succeed, it will need to gain the support of its allies and partners—many of whom harbour growing reservations over the reliability of the United States as a strategic partner. Indeed, according to two US analysts, Trump's FOIP strategy is flawed precisely because it lacks collective ‘buy-in’ from south-east Asian leaders in the face of the US President's absence from the suite of ASEAN-hosted summits in November 2018 in Singapore, which, in their view, dealt a blow to the credibility of the strategy.30 South-east Asians face a dilemma in seeking to balance their longstanding preference for the active presence and participation of the US president at ASEAN-led forums against a wish to avoid the embarrassment of hosting a US president given to attacking globalization, multilateralism and indeed the very institutions he has been invited to address. Take, for example, Trump's conduct at the 2017 APEC summit, where he accused APEC members of having ‘cheated’ America.31 As Sheldon Simon has wryly observed, Trump's FOIP speech, delivered at that same summit, was surreal in its excoriation of multilateral collaboration and institutional inclusivism—the very components of the open regionalism that has characterized Asia in the post-Cold War era, not to mention the very forum at which the US President delivered his tirade.32 Indeed, it cannot be assumed that the other Quad members, let alone other regional countries, are prepared to go along with the Trump administration's hardening stance towards China. In one respect, it could be argued that Trump's FOIP strategy is more similar to Obama's pivot than Trump would care to admit, in that both are founded on a need for—and the concomitant renewal of commitments to—a framework of allies, partners and friends, without which America's efforts to balance China are unlikely to succeed. Incorrigible hedgers What, then, have the responses from south-east Asia been to this US approach? Historically, the foreign policy conduct of the ASEAN member states has included a mix of hedging and shifting but ultimately limited alignments.33 Alignment involves some correspondence in the foreign policy of a smaller or weaker country with that of a larger power on which it is to some degree dependent.34 As a number of scholars have noted, south-east Asian alignments with external powers have been limited at most, not least because engagement with the region by major powers such as the United States has been ambivalent.35 But even as Great Power engagement has grown less equivocal in the present climate of intensified rivalry, those alignments have remained limited precisely because south-east Asian states are not ready to throw in their lot with any one big power. They may show signs of shifting from one external power to another, but arguably not by much. This seems to have been the case with America's allies, Thailand and the Philippines, swaying towards China under their leaders Prayuth Chan-o-cha and Rodrigo Duterte respectively, but subsequently welcoming overtures from the Trump administration.36 There have also been suggestions that China's image (whether or not well-grounded) as a bully has rendered ASEAN states less, not more, enamoured with the Chinese. As David Shambaugh has noted, ‘Beijing is quite capable of overplaying its hand, becoming too demanding and even dictatorial toward south-east Asian states. Evidence of this behaviour already can be found in Chinese interactions with Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand.’37 Hence, while it makes good conceptual sense to distinguish between alignment and hedging, the ambivalence of south-east Asia's limited alignments with external powers could conceivably be explained by the shared propensity of the region's states to hedge. Hedging is typically defined as a middle way between balancing and bandwagoning; it is, if you will, a third strategic choice.38 In the academic literature, hedging is understood in a number of ways. States hedge so as to minimize strategic risks and to ensure ‘dominance denial’, as one analyst has it.39 As David Kang has put it, rising and/or revisionist powers are often neither balanced against nor bandwagoned with, but are simply accommodated by their regional neighbours with no fundamental change either way in military stance or alignment posture.40 Interestingly, such conduct is not, as once presumed, the exclusive preserve of small states, but can also be practised by Great Powers either seeking to avoid out-and-out confrontation with their peer competitors or responding to an uncertain international strategic environment.41 According to Lim and Cooper, hedging can be understood as signalling that generates ambiguity over the extent of the hedging state's shared security interests with Great Powers. On the basis of this consciously narrowed definition of hedging as an ambiguity-generating strategy, they contend that south-east Asian states with existing treaty alliances with the United States or major territorial conflicts with China are, by this circumscribed definition, not hedgers, since their policy stances create path dependencies that reinforce balancing behaviour rather than hedging.42 However, as the relatively close ties that Thailand under Prayuth and the Philippines under Duterte enjoy with China suggest, their alliances with the United States do not preclude deep engagement with America's strategic rival.43 That said, it has been suggested that while the Philippines has reaped benefits from both China and the United States, the effectiveness of its hedging strategy has nonetheless been complicated by its domestic political situation and its ongoing territorial dispute with China.44 Finally, hedging is not the same as passive neutrality or fence-sitting. For the most part, south-east Asian countries consistently look for opportunities to pursue deep engagement with external parties and powers. As one cabinet minister of an ASEAN member country recently explained, ‘I don't think we want to be in the position whereby we are only dealing with one and not the other, and I believe this is the same position for the rest of the Asian countries as well. Everybody wants to be plugged in.’45 This, however, does not mean that south-east Asian countries behave uniformly; Shambaugh, for example, has identified a number of distinct positions taken, in his view, by south-east Asian states towards China and the United States.46 But these countries rarely stay rooted indefinitely in those positions because of their propensity to hedge—vis-à-vis China, America and one another.47 The challenge for these countries and the rest of their south-east Asian counterparts is to navigate their increasingly close relations with China without becoming overly dependent on it. It is fair to say, given the ambiguity surrounding the meaning and relevance of the FOIP—beyond a shared anxiety about China and the perceived need somehow to manage Beijing's increasing power and influence—that south-east Asians have, by and large, responded to the idea with uncertainty, most adopting a ‘wait and see’, even agnostic, attitude.48 But while south-east Asians may have in common, for the most part, this overall pattern of behaviour, their approaches have differed in terms of their readiness to share their views openly. So far, only a few countries have publicly expressed their views on the FOIP and/or on the position they believe ASEAN should adopt towards the concept. According to the Thai pundit Kavi Chongkittavorn, countries such as Cambodia and the Philippines have largely avoided discussing the Indo-Pacific ostensibly out of fear that ‘it might hurt ASEAN centrality’, whereas Laos, Brunei and Myanmar (Burma) have been silent on many, if not most, issues.49 Of those that have offered a response of some sort, Indonesia has been the leading voice on the Indo-Pacific concept since 2013—well before the United States got in on the act—when it proposed a friendship and cooperation pact.50 However, this initiative received only lukewarm support from Indonesia's fellow members of ASEAN. The current Indonesian administration under President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo has since revived interest in the Indo-Pacific idea following Trump's remarks at the 2017 APEC summit, with a new emphasis that rebrands Indonesia as a maritime power.51 In January 2018, Jakarta proposed an ‘Indo-Pacific (cooperation) concept’ which differs from the FOIP in that the Indonesian version includes all 18 members of the East Asia Summit (EAS)—an idea Jakarta wants ASEAN to endorse as its own. According to Leo Suryadinata, Indonesia views its concept as a way to resist attempts by both China and the United States ‘to draw Indonesia over to their side’.52 However, the proposal did not quite garner the affirmation the Widodo administration had hoped for from its fellow south-east Asian governments, in part because Jakarta, in the opinion of a long-time insider on regional affairs, ‘was unable to clarify its own thinking on [the] FOIP’.53 While it is fair to say that Jakarta's Indo-Pacific initiative reflects Jokowi's step back from his initial rebuff of ASEAN,54 his south-east Asian counterparts might have other worries on their minds, including their longstanding concern over making the EAS the default mechanism of regional diplomacy.55 Other ASEAN states such as Malaysia and Vietnam remain ambivalent towards the FOIP out of reservations about its potential conflation with the Quad. Malaysia's behaviour also reflects a mix of shifting limited alignment as part of a longer-term dedication to hedging.56 Under the Pakatan Harapan government, Malaysia's foreign policy—defined by what its deputy defence minister has labelled the Mahathir doctrine of ‘recalibrated equidistance’—is reportedly shifting from the tacitly pro-Beijing stance adopted by its former prime minister Najib Razak back to one of practical neutrality characterized by deepening engagement with all regional powers including China and the United States, consolidating ASEAN centrality and strengthening ASEAN-led multilateralism.57 A doctrine of recalibrated equidistance implies that the swing away from China would assuredly not take Malaysia into the embrace of Trump's FOIP, but rather lead to the search for opportunities afforded by the somewhat different versions of the FOIP promoted by the other Quad members. At the same time, despite cancelling US$22 billion worth of BRI-related projects, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has continued to speak highly of both the BRI and China more broadly.58 Vietnam, for its part—referred to elsewhere as a ‘balanced hedger’59—is, in the view of one analyst, likely to endorse Washington's FOIP but in a ‘low-key manner’, not least because strategic thinkers in Hanoi are still vigorously debating the merits of the strategy. According to Le Hong Hiep, Vietnam's support for the FOIP is likely to be tacit at best.60 In Hiep's view, Vietnam is likely to continue deepening its strategic cooperation with the major powers, especially members of the Quad—as evidenced perhaps by Hanoi's hosting of the second Trump–Kim summit in February 2019—as part of its quest to enhance its security in the region and strengthen its bargaining position with respect to China. Ironically, many of the express principles of the FOIP—freedom of navigation, rule of law, respect for sovereignty, open markets and the like—are in fact attractive to many ASEAN member states. However, they hesitate to lend their full support to the concept, owing to their fears about the potential damage to the centrality of ASEAN. Thus, despite its close security ties with the United States, Singapore has indicated an unwillingness to join the FOIP group.61 The Singaporeans have identified three key concerns around the FOIP, which they feel remain as yet unanswered: whether the FOIP maintains the centrality of ASEAN; whether it facilitates trade, investment, infrastructure and connectivity; and whether it supports a world order based on international law.62 Moreover, Singapore's Prime Minister has cautioned against any undesirable formation of ‘rival blocs’ to manage China's rise, and has suggested that, ideally, the Quad could evolve into part of ‘an inclusive and open regional architecture’.63 His words reflect the constant Singaporean preference for hedging and eschewing taking sides.64 Similarly, it has also been suggested that Indonesia's proposal of its EAS-based Indo-Pacific concept was grounded in a belief that if ASEAN were to remain passive rather than coming up with its own ideas about the FOIP, its centrality in the regional architecture could be compromised.65 In essence, the ASEAN states are basically looking for assurances and guarantees that the FOIP strategies of the Quad countries will not jeopardize the regional centrality currently enjoyed by ASEAN. As Graeme Dobell has put it, ‘south-east Asia might be in the centre of the geography [of the FOIP] but ASEAN feels outside the idea’.66 On the one hand, the metaphorical ball is therefore in the court of the Quad members, who need to give greater clarity to still amorphous concepts, demonstrate greater commitment—consistent with their public advocacy of a rules-based order—to maintaining international order based on international law, and avoid marginalizing ASEAN in the process. On the other hand, it is also true that ASEAN could well inadvertently let developments pass it by if it were to remain passive, and so the ball is equally in ASEAN's court in terms of the future of its pride and place. As Chongkittavorn has argued, it is incumbent on ASEAN to reach out to the Quad members to ascertain that their emerging broader strategy will place ASEAN at the centre of the FOIP.67 Getting south-east Asia's ‘buy-in’ Crucially, whether the FOIP can succeed in securing the support of the south-east Asian countries is likely to depend on how far the US President goes in pushing his grievances on trade. A key aspect of Trump's FOIP is the focus on achieving ‘fairer trade’ for America. With the sole exception of Singapore, the other nine south-east Asian economies all enjoy trade surpluses with the United States.68 President Trump has made it his mission to ‘rebalance’ those trade surpluses, and is likely to seek to achieve this through bilateral deals.69 Should the United States precipitate a trade war against south-east Asia, Vietnam—the biggest winner from the US–China trade war70—is likely to be the biggest loser, with Indonesia and the Philippines close behind.71 According to US trade official Jeffrey T. Gerrish, the United States expects ASEAN to do more for it in terms of improving access to south-east Asian markets, whether this concerns agricultural imports in Thailand, vehicle barriers in Vietnam, localization requirements in Indonesia or emerging barriers to electronic payment services in several countries.72 Washington, Gerrish states, seeks to work with its south-east Asian partners to address and resolve those issues successfully and to everyone's mutual benefit. The reason offered for this approach was that multilateral and multinational agreements tend to limit the depth of commitments that participating countries make and do not allow agreements to be customized to the particular circumstances of the countries involved. Hence the emphasis on bilateralism, a reminder of the US President's relative distaste for and distrust of multilateralism. On the other hand, much as trade could significantly complicate the Trump administration's efforts to get south-east Asian countries to support the FOIP, it has been argued that the US President's evident willingness to eschew bringing democracy and human rights into his interactions with the ASEAN states—presumably a function of his known preference for a transactional rather than values-based approach to foreign policy73—has helped or can help to smooth relationships with the region. As Bill Hayton has observed, Trump may prove ‘a good fit for south-east Asia’, especially if he hits it off with the region's illiberal leaders.74 In contrast, despite Obama's rebalance towards Asia and his personal courting of the region, America's relations with several key US allies and partners cooled significantly over that period, owing in part to the Obama administration's responses to the military coup in Thailand in 2014, the revelations about massive high-level corruption in Malaysia over the 1MDB case,75 and the extra-judicial killings of thousands of drug users in the Philippines under Duterte—all of which posed serious difficulties for an administration committed to promoting good governance throughout south-east Asia.76 How all this squares with the apparent crystallization of Trump's FOIP strategy into a more muscular counterbalancing of Chinese power and influence remains to be seen. To put the matter simply, reducing the FOIP not just to a ‘China only’ matter but presumably even to a ‘containment of China’ strategy is not likely to garner full support from all south-east Asians. As one analyst has noted, if FOIP is viewed too narrowly as being only or mostly about getting tough on China, it will find fewer takers in the region relative to a more comprehensive approach that recognizes the fluidity of regional alignments and the importance of other intraregional security challenges, ranging from transnational crimes to climate change.77 For its balancing strategy to work, the United States would need to convince countries inside and outside south-east Asia about the negative implications of China's rise and mobilize their cooperation to manage those ramifications. Commitments to maintain and even increase America's naval presence in the region, as well as to finance the enhancement of the naval and coastguard forces of ASEAN member countries, would have to be made and sustained. For the record, it does seem that the Trump administration is headed in that direction. At the ASEAN (and ASEAN-plus) ministerial meetings in August 2018 in Singapore, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced an investment package of US$113 million in technology, energy and infrastructure initiatives, which he called ‘a down payment on a new era of US economic commitment to the region’.78 He followed that with a pledge of nearly US$300 million in new security funding for south-east Asia. Four months later, on the last day of December 2018, President Trump signed into law the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (ARIA), which focuses on US relations with China, India, the ten ASEAN member states, and its allies Japan and South Korea. The ARIA authorizes US$1.5 billion in annual spending for a range of US programmes in east and south-east Asia that support the development of ‘a long-term strategic vision and a comprehensive, multifaceted, and principled United States policy for the Indo-Pacific region, and for other purposes’—including working with US allies and partners to conduct joint maritime training and freedom of navigation operations in the Indo-Pacific region in support of a rules-based international system benefiting all countries.79 The ARIA represents a welcome change for US allies and partners in the region, many of whom reacted with disappointment to the decision in 2018 by the US Congress to slash funding for the extant Asia Maritime Security Initiative by about half to US$48.2 million.80 Where south-east Asia is concerned, the ARIA devotes particular attention to the South China Sea, where it calls on the United States to support the ASEAN nations as they adopt a code of conduct in those maritime commons with China. Although the programmes mentioned above pale in comparison to the US$1 trillion of investments reportedly involved in China's BRI,81 they reflect gains that the ASEAN region stands to make. While they seem to contradict the US President's demand for greater burden-sharing among America's allies,82 they also indirectly raise the question of whether the United States can afford to undertake trade-related punitive actions against south-east Asian countries, on one hand, while expecting them to support the FOIP by making the requisite security contributions on the other. As Robert Kelly has pointed out, the key issue—if indeed the strategy is to succeed—is how to encourage US allies and partners not only to spend more of their own resources on their own defence and power projection, but also to commit to developing hi-tech, highly-trained forces capable of interoperability with the contemporary American military; in short, Kelly urges the cultivation of a ‘general strategic seriousness’ among US allies.83 But it is not only the challenge of getting the south-east Asians on board with which the Trump administration is faced. As the preceding section has shown, the likelihood is that it will also have to contend with a lack of clarity and consensus about the FOIP—and, by extension, agree on a strategy to deal with China—among the other members of the Quad. Locating ASEAN in the FOIP Quite possibly the biggest challenge facing ASEAN is the fact that the FOIP—and, it could be said, the China-led BRI—emerging at a time of growing rivalry between the major powers, is perforce ushering in a new era of bilateralism. This poses a fundamental problem for ASEAN centrality, which is predicated upon the multilateral house of post-Cold War Asia built by ASEAN and its dialogue partners.84 As Ian Storey and Malcolm Cook have argued: FOIP and US–China strategic competition poses a deeper problem for ASEAN centrality than the absence of the US President from the EAS and the US–ASEAN Summit. Since 2013, Indonesia has been seeking, with little success, ASEAN agreement on its own Indo-Pacific concept based on enhancing the EAS. The crystallizing of the overlapping Indo-Pacific concepts of the US, Japan, Australia and India may well mean that ASEAN has lost the ability to lead the development of this concept and use it—as they did with the idea of the Asia–Pacific—to tie major powers more closely to the ASEAN-led regional architecture.85 However, there are some countervailing factors—not least the growing chorus of assurances from the Quad countries over ASEAN's concerns about the FOIP. At the Shangri-La Dialogue in June 2018, Modi emphasized that south-east Asia was at the centre of Delhi's view of the Indo-Pacific, and that ASEAN had been and would remain central to the future of the Indo-Pacific. India's support for ASEAN has since been echoed by its fellow Quad members. At the ASEAN meetings in Singapore in August 2018, Pompeo reassured his fellow ministers that the US remained committed to ASEAN centrality, and emphasized his own expectation and eagerness for US engagement with the region on that basis.86 Pompeo's assurance came in the wake of similar remarks in July by his Japanese counterpart, Taro Kono, to the effect that ASEAN was equally at the heart of Japan's FOIP vision.87 As a Japanese foreign ministry official reportedly insisted, ‘there has been some misunderstanding about the [FOIP] strategy but I can assure you that ASEAN sits right in the centre of the Indo-Pacific’ and, he said, ASEAN is central to the FOIP concept.88 In response, the region has welcomed Japan's promotion of international law and its focus on building ‘high-quality infrastructure’ as the core elements of its Indo-Pacific strategy.89 Whether these recent comments suggest that ASEAN is a mere afterthought where the FOIP is concerned is unclear. What could prove problematic, as some have pointed out, is the litany of issues—the hardy nature of illiberalism in south-east Asia, ASEAN's impotence vis-à-vis the South China Sea conflicts, and its inability to deliver on its own promised agenda of regional integration and community formation, among others—which potentially undermine ASEAN's case for centrality in the FOIP and render it difficult for democratic leaders in Washington, Tokyo and Canberra to accept it in that role.90 As Singapore's Lee Hsien Loong has opined, the principle of ASEAN centrality is by no means a given because ASEAN, in Lee's view, has ‘no automatic right’ to be at the centre of regional architecture, but must prove its worth through greater institutional cohesion and deeper regional commitment among its members.91 On the other hand, inasmuch as persistent China–US competition is clearly going to pose a serious challenge to ASEAN's centrality in cooperative multilateralism, there are indications of attempts by some ASEAN members to redefine and reinterpret ASEAN centrality in a way more appropriate to developments in the region. Nowhere was this more evident than in ASEAN's pursuit of regional security cooperation in 2018. Using the ‘ASEAN plus one’ format, ASEAN and China jointly conducted a maritime exercise involving more than 1,100 personnel and eight ships off the coast of Zhanjiang city in Guangdong province in October 2018. The exercise, which allowed the navies of China and the ASEAN member states to practise applying the code of unplanned encounters at sea (CUES), followed an earlier table-top exercise held in Singapore two months earlier.92 Even before the start of this exercise, the defence ministers of Singapore and the United States confirmed on the sidelines of the ASEAN-led defence ministers' meetings that October that ASEAN and America would conduct their own version of a joint maritime exercise some time in 2019, probably in conjunction with the US-led exercise South-East Asia Cooperation and Training (SEACAT).93 In themselves, these joint exercises, significant as they are for various reasons—for instance, the ASEAN–China maritime exercise was the first ever between the two entities—might not seem extraordinary, in that they are treated as dimensions of the ADMM-Plus, the multilateral defence framework comprising the ten ASEAN member states plus Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the United States.94 But what is interesting is the way in which ASEAN members have sought to redefine such engagements with the Chinese and the Americans at the ‘ASEAN plus one’ level—fairly or otherwise—as proof of the continued relevance of ASEAN's regional centrality.95 ASEAN's ability to collaborate separately with China and the United States on maritime security is arguably an indication that the grouping has regained the regional initiative, not least where maritime security cooperation is concerned. As I have suggested elsewhere, those efforts ‘reflect [ASEAN's] belief that the ADMM [comprising the ASEAN members] and ADMM-Plus are vital elements of the region's security architecture—providing platforms that are open and inclusive, and bringing together all-important regional stakeholders for dialogue and cooperation’.96 What the above developments may possibly imply, at least in the context of regional security cooperation, is a readiness by ASEAN—through activities deemed useful by the Chinese as well as the Americans—to reassert its position as the ‘go to’ regional actor in an era of growing Great Power discord in which its centrality in cooperative multilateralism is increasingly in question. Furthermore, ASEAN's conduct in this context is notable in its efforts to demonstrate its relevance to the major powers in concrete ways, rather than relying on rhetorical declarations alone. More broadly, it also reflects ASEAN's persistent commitment to hedging and non-alignment in the face of increasing pressures on its member states from China and the United States to choose sides in the strategic rivalry between the Chinese and the Americans. As Shambaugh has observed, ‘ASEAN is not a completely passive party; it has proven itself adroit at flexible manoeuvring and hedging behaviour’.97 ASEAN's recent initiatives with China and the United States in maritime security cooperation are reflective of its propensity to hedge. Conclusion This article has sought to assess the ways in which south-east Asians have responded—and indirectly reshaped—the FOIP strategy. The hardening of Trump's own stance in relation to China is challenging to south-east Asia in two interrelated ways. First, it could impel south-east Asians to choose sides amid a deepening confrontation between China and the United States. Second, ASEAN's centrality in the regional architecture, which has long been predicated on Great Power consensus and cooperation, is at serious risk. On the other hand, Washington's need to secure south-east Asian support for the FOIP means that the region stands to gain from attempts by both the Chinese and the Americans—as well as other members of the Quad seeking to win regional support for their respective FOIP strategies—to woo the ASEAN member states. Such gains, however, are likely to be short term at best, because the region would be likely to suffer in the face of a prolonged confrontation between China and the United States. Despite the seeming readiness of the Quad countries, including America, to acknowledge ASEAN's centrality, the notion that ASEAN could fit comfortably in the FOIP—particularly if that strategy assumes an anti-China slant—presents a multitude of complications. What is also apparent, as this article has sought to argue, is that ASEAN is seeking to redefine its centrality by proving its utility and relevance to the major powers—especially at a time when its centrality in the context of cooperative multilateralism is in jeopardy because of Sino-American tensions. In making the FOIP all about balancing China, the Trump administration seems intent on providing a crystal-clear conception of its strategy. But, as argued here, the ability of the United States to implement that strategy is far from certain, not least because its success depends on Washington's ability to build and sustain a broad coalition as a viable counterweight to Chinese power and influence. There are apparent incongruities between the tough language the United States uses and the complex character of US foreign policy towards south-east Asia. As the United States continues to work with its allies and partners—including the ASEAN states—in dealing with China, the likelihood is that the evolving FOIP strategy will become a mutually negotiated process. In a sense, the uncertainty of all this suggests that the concept of the FOIP remains ‘free and open’, literally, to definition and interpretation. In response to that uncertainty, the south-east Asians, notwithstanding their nuanced conduct, have demonstrated their persistent propensity to hedge against the Great Powers. Footnotes 1 The ten south-east Asian countries that make up the membership of ASEAN are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. 2 See Seng Tan, ‘Rethinking “ASEAN centrality” in the regional governance of east Asia’, Singapore Economic Review 62: 3, 2017, pp. 721–40. 3 Harsh V. Pant and Kartik Bommakanti, ‘India's national security: challenges and dilemmas’, International Affairs 95: 4, July 2019, pp. 835–58; Brendan Taylor, ‘Is Australia's Indo-Pacific strategy an illusion?’, International Affairs 96: 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 95–110; Corey Wallace, ‘Leaving (north-east) Asia? Japan's southern strategy’, International Affairs 94: 4, July 2018, pp. 883–904; Shogo Suzuki and Corey Wallace, ‘Explaining Japan's response to geopolitical vulnerability’, International Affairs 94: 4, July 2018, pp. 711–34; Joseph S. Nye, Jr, ‘The rise and fall of American hegemony from Wilson to Trump’, International Affairs 95: 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 63–80. 4 See Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and powers: the structure of international security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Peter J. Katzenstein, A world of regions: Asia and Europe in the American imperium (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). 5 Astrid H. M. Nordin and Mikael Weissmann, ‘Will Trump make China great again? The Belt and Road Initiative and international order’, International Affairs 94: 2, March 2018, pp. 231–50; Masanori Hasegawa, ‘The geography and geopolitics of the renminbi: a key regional currency in Asia’, International Affairs 94: 3, May 2018, pp. 535–52. 6 Amitav Acharya, ‘Review: the emerging regional architecture of world politics’, World Politics 59: 4, 2007, pp. 629–52. 7 Amitav Acharya, Whose ideas matter? Agency and power in Asian regionalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014); Marty Natalegawa, Does ASEAN matter? A view from within (Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak, 2018). 8 Colum Lynch, ‘Trump's war on the world order’, Foreign Policy, 27 Dec. 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/27/trumps-war-on-the-world-order/. (Unless otherwise noted at point of citation, all URLs cited in this article were accessible on 29 Sept. 2019.) 9 On institutional balancing in the Indo-Pacific context and its impacts on ASEAN, see Kai He, ‘Institutional balancing and international relations theory: economic interdependence and balance of power strategies in south-east Asia’, European Journal of International Relations 14: 3, 2008, pp. 489–518; See Seng Tan, ‘When giants vie: China–US competition, institutional balancing, and east Asian multilateralism’, in Huiyun Feng and Kai He, eds, US–China competition and the South China sea disputes (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), pp. 116–33. 10 G. John Ikenberry, ‘The end of liberal international order?’, International Affairs 94: 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 7–24; Constance Duncombe and Tim Dunne, ‘After liberal world order’, International Affairs 94: 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 25–42; Inderjeet Parmar, ‘The US-led liberal order: imperialism by another name?’, International Affairs 94: 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 151–72; Wu Xinbo, ‘China in search of a liberal partnership international order’, International Affairs 94: 5, Sept. 2018, pp. 995–1018. 11 Kevin Rudd, ‘The convenient rewriting of the history of the “Quad”’, Nikkei Asian Review, 26 March 2019, https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/The-Convenient-Rewriting-of-the-History-of-the-Quad. 12 Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, as quoted in ‘“The Quad” will meet in Singapore—can it balance China's influence or is it “stoking a new cold war”?’, South China Morning Post, 15 Nov. 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/diplomacy/article/2173306/quad-will-meet-singapore-can-it-balance-chinas-influence-or-it. 13 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, ‘Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets the press’, 9 March 2018, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1540928.shtml. 14 See Mark J. Valencia, ‘What does a “free and open Indo-Pacific” actually mean?’, The Diplomat, 30 March 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/03/what-does-a-free-and-open-indo-pacific-actually-mean/; Michael Wesley, ‘China–Australia relations: how life might be under the new hegemon’, The Australian, 8 Dec. 2017, https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/chinaaustralia-relations-how-life-might-be-under-the-new-hegemon/news-story/2426b9e9366ed20356221f270ddb4557; David Brewster, ‘A “free and open Indo-Pacific” and what it means for Australia’, The Interpreter, 7 March 2018, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/free-and-open-indo-pacific-and-what-it-means-australia. 15 See Hardeep S. Puri, Hidetoshi Nishimura, Sachin Chaturvedi and Anita Prakash, Asia Africa growth corridor: partnership for sustainable and innovative development. A vision document (Jakarta, Delhi and Tokyo: Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, Research and Information System for Developing Countries and Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization, 2017); Mercy A. Kuo, ‘Japan and the emerging Indo-Pacific strategy’, Japan Times, 8 Aug. 2018, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2018/08/08/commentary/japan-commentary/japan-emerging-indo-pacific-strategy/#.XADkti2p28V. But where a zero-sum mentality would treat the AAGC as a rival initiative to China's BRI, the warming ties between Beijing and Tokyo could conceivably lead in the foreseeable future to Sino-Japanese agreements to cooperate on infrastructure projects in third-party countries. See Walter Sim, ‘Japan's free and open Indo-Pacific strategy is open to all, including China, Tokyo policy forum told’, Straits Times, 13 Sept. 2018, https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/japans-free-and-open-indo-pacific-strategy-is-open-to-all-including-china-tokyo. 16 Brewster, ‘A “free and open Indo-Pacific” and what it means for Australia’. 17 Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Prime minister's keynote address at Shangri-La Dialogue’, 1 June 2018, http://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/29943/Prime+Ministers+Keynote+Address+at+Shangri+La+Dialogue+June+01+2018. Moreover, New Delhi regards the whole of the Indian Ocean as part of the ‘Indo’ in ‘Indo-Pacific’, whereas the US Indo-Pacific Command's (INDOPACOM) theatre of operations begins at the west coast of the United States and ends at the westernmost edge of India, effectively splicing the Indian Ocean into two halves. See Sinderpal Singh, ‘The Indo-Pacific and India–US strategic convergence: an assessment’, Asia Policy 14: 1, 2019, pp. 77–94, esp. p. 79. 18 On Japan's and India's differences from the United States on the FOIP, see Amitendu Palit and Shutaro Sano, ‘The free and open Indo-Pacific strategy and uncertainties for India and Japan’, Asia Pacific Bulletin, no. 442, 11 Oct. 2018. 19 Charles Wallace, ‘Intelligence chiefs back Trump on Chinese technology theft’, Forbes, 30 Jan. 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleswallace1/2019/01/30/intelligence-chiefs-back-trump-on-chinese-technology-theft/#4580eafb23a0. 20 Ankit Panda, ‘Straight from the US State Department: the “pivot” to Asia is over’, The Diplomat, 14 March 2017, https://thediplomat.com/2017/03/straight-from-the-us-state-department-the-pivot-to-asia-is-over/. 21 Sheldon Simon, ‘Abandoning leadership’, Comparative Connections: A Triannual E-Journal on East Asian Bilateral Relations 19: 3, 2018, pp. 41–52. See also William T. Tow, ‘Sea change or more of the same? Trump's security policies in Asia’, Asia Policy 13: 4, 2018, pp. 10–16. 22 According to Silove, the US strategy to preserve a power balance in Asia favourable to Washington actually began well before not just the Obama administration's enunciation of the pivot/rebalance, but indeed before the Obama presidency. See Nina Silove, ‘The pivot before the pivot: US strategy to preserve the power balance in Asia’, International Security 40: 4, 2016, pp. 45–88. 23 The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Dec. 2017 (Washington DC, 2017), pp. 2, 25, 46. In contrast, the National Security Strategy of 2015 provides a good example of past US perspectives on and strategy towards China: ‘The United States welcomes the rise of a stable, peaceful, and prosperous China. We seek to develop a constructive relationship with China that delivers benefits for our two peoples and promotes security and prosperity in Asia and around the world … While there will be competition, we reject the inevitability of confrontation. At the same time, we will manage competition from a position of strength while insisting that China uphold international rules and norms.’ Cited in Michael D. Swaine, Creating an unstable Asia: the US ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ strategy (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2 March 2018), carnegieendowment.org/2018/03/02/creating-unstable-asia-u.s.-free-and-open-indo-pacific-strategy-pub-75720. 24 Demetri Sevastopulo and Shawn Donnan, ‘Trump to accuse China of “economic aggression”’, Financial Times, 16 Dec. 2017, www.ft.com/content/1801d4f4-e201-11e7-8f9f-de1c2175f5ce. 25 Ian Storey and Malcolm Cook, The Trump administration and south-east Asia: America's Asia policy crystallizes, Perspective no. 77 (Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, 29 Nov. 2018), p. 3. 26 Jane Perlez, ‘Pence's China speech seen as portent of “new cold war”’, New York Times, 5 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/10/05/world/asia/pence-china-speech-cold-war.html. 27 Simon, ‘Abandoning leadership’. 28 According to Bilahari Kausikan, ‘Neither NSS 2017 or NDS 2018 are isolationist documents. These documents and Vice-President Pence's speech make clear that the Trump administration believes that this is an era of great power competition and that it is determined to compete, not withdraw. They represent a narrower and less generous concept of leadership, a preference for bilateralism over multilateralism, and a return to an old approach of peace through strength. One may well have serious reservations about this concept of leadership and the approach. But they cannot be accurately described as a “retreat”.’ See Bilahari Kausikan, ‘South-east Asia's economic success should not be in hands of US or China: Bilahari Kausikan’, Mothership, 9 Oct. 2018, mothership.sg/2018/10/asean-us-china-relationship-economic-bilahari-kausikan-eria/. 29 Swaine, ‘Creating an unstable Asia’. 30 Amy Seawright and Brian Harding, Good message, wrong messenger (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 17 Dec. 2018), https://www.csis.org/analysis/good-message-wrong-messenger. 31 Oliver Holmes and Tom Phillips, ‘Trump attacks countries “cheating” America at APEC summit’, Guardian, 10 Nov. 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/10/trump-attacks-countries-cheating-america-at-apec-summit. 32 Simon, ‘Abandoning leadership’, p. 42. 33 See Cheng-Chwee Kuik, ‘How do weaker states hedge? Unpacking ASEAN states' alignment behavior towards China’, Journal of Contemporary China 25: 100, 2016, pp. 500–514; Evelyn Goh, ‘South-east Asian strategies toward the Great Powers: still hedging after all these years?’, Asian Forum 4: 1, Jan.–Feb. 2016, pp. 18–37; John D. Ciorciari, The limits of alignment: south-east Asia and the Great Powers since 1975 (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010). 34 See Thomas S. Wilkins, ‘“Alignment”, not “alliance”—the shifting paradigm of international security cooperation: toward a conceptual taxonomy of alignment’, Review of International Studies 38: 1, Jan. 2012, pp. 53–76; Steven R. David, ‘Explaining Third World alignment’, World Politics 43: 2, Jan. 1991, pp. 233–56. 35 Ciorciari, The limits of alignment. See also Joseph Chinyong Liow, Ambivalent engagement: the United States and regional security in south-east Asia after the Cold War (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2017). 36 See Jitsiree Thongnoi, ‘Thailand's arms deals with US a sign of closer ties: but China's influence not waning, as junta also buys arms from it’, Straits Times, 17 May 2018, www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/thailands-arms-deals-with-us-a-sign-of-closer-ties; Ralph Jennings, ‘Turnaround seen for US–Philippine ties; China wary’, Voice of America, 2 Feb. 2018, www.voanews.com/a/turnaround-us-philippines/4235941.html. 37 David Shambaugh, ‘US–China rivalry in south-east Asia: power shift or competitive coexistence?’, International Security 42: 4, Spring 2018, pp. 85–127 at pp. 98–9. 38 See John David Ciorciari, ‘The balance of Great-Power influence in contemporary south-east Asia’, International Relations of the Asia–Pacific, no. 9, 2009, pp. 157–96; Kei Koga, ‘The concept of “hedging” revisited: the case of Japan's foreign policy strategy in East Asia's power shift’, International Studies Review 20: 4, 2018, pp. 633–60. 39 Alan Bloomfield, ‘To balance or to bandwagon? Adjusting to China's rise during Australia's Rudd–Gillard era’, Pacific Review 29: 2, 2016, pp. 259–82 at p. 259. 40 David C. Kang, ‘Between balancing and bandwagoning: South Korea's response to China’, Journal of East Asian Studies 9: 1, 2009, pp. 1–28 at p. 1. 41 Evan S. Medeiros, ‘Strategic hedging and the future of Asia-Pacific stability’, Washington Quarterly 29: 1, 2005–2006, pp. 145–67. 42 Darren J. Lim and Zack Cooper, ‘Reassessing hedging: the logic of alignment in east Asia’, Journal of Security Studies 24: 4, 2015, pp. 696–727. 43 See Prashanth Parameswaran, ‘What's next for China–Thailand defence ties?’, The Diplomat, 18 June 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/06/whats-next-for-china-thailand-defense-ties/; Edcel John A. Ibarra, ‘The Philippines' “pivot” to China: a review of perspectives’, CIRSS Commentaries 4: 9, 2017, http://www.fsi.gov.ph/the-philippines-pivot-to-china-a-review-of-perspectives/. 44 Ryan Yu-Lin Liou and Philip Szue-Chin Hsu, ‘The effectiveness of minor powers' hedging strategy: comparing Singapore and the Philippines’, unpublished paper, 2017, p. 3. 45 Singapore's trade and industry minister Chan Chun Sing, cited in ‘Singapore wants to remain open to both China and US: Chan’, Straits Times, 22 Feb. 2019, p. A10. 46 Shambaugh, ‘US–China rivalry in south-east Asia’, pp. 100–103. 47 Van Jackson, Whose rules, what rules? A contest for order in the Asia-Pacific (Chicago: Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 6 Dec. 2017), www.thechicagocouncil.org/publication/whose-rules-what-rules-contest-order-asia-pacific. 48 As Kausikan has elsewhere argued, ‘the United States, Japan, India, and Australia do not as yet have a common understanding of the concept or how it will be implemented, beyond their security concerns about China and a desire to present an alternative to China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This is too narrow a basis to attract wider support. ASEAN members have their own anxieties about China, but at the same time, given China's economic weight, are wary about anything that smacks of “containment”, particularly at a time when China appears more cooperative about negotiating a code of conduct for the South China Sea’. See Bilahari Kausikan, ‘ASEAN: agnostic on the free and open Indo-Pacific’, The Diplomat, 27 Apr. 2018, thediplomat.com/2018/05/asean-agnostic-on-the-free-and-open-indo-pacific. 49 Cited in Nazia Hussain, ‘Indo-Pacific: juggling for clarity’, Khmer Times, 28 Dec. 2018, www.khmertimeskh.com/50563870/indo-pacific-juggling-for-clarity/. 50 Marty Natalegawa, ‘An Indonesian perspective on the Indo-Pacific’, keynote address by H. E. Dr R. M. Marty M. Natalegawa, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia, 16 May 2013, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC, https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/legacy_files/files/attachments/130516_MartyNatalegawa_Speech.pdf. 51 The challenge facing Indonesia's maritime aspiration is not insignificant, given that Indonesia still has difficulty securing its own archipelagic waters owing to its limited resources and assets. See Robert Cribb and Michele Ford, ‘Indonesia as an archipelago: managing islands, managing the seas’, in Robert Cribb and Michele Ford, eds, Indonesia beyond the water's edge: managing an archipelagic state (Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak, 2009), pp. 1–27; Vibhanshu Shekbar and Joseph Chinyong Liow, Indonesia as a maritime power: Jokowi's vision, strategies, and obstacles ahead (Washington DC: Brookings, 7 Nov. 2014), www.brookings.edu/articles/indonesia-as-a-maritime-power-jokowis-vision-strategies-and-obstacles-ahead/. 52 Leo Suryadinata, Indonesia and its stance on the ‘Indo-Pacific’, ISEAS Perspective no. 66 (Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak, 23 Oct. 2018), pp. 1–7 at p. 4. 53 Kausikan, ‘ASEAN: agnostic on the free and open Indo-Pacific’. Indeed, ASEAN's response to the Indonesian proposal could be described as non-committal at best. According to the joint communiqué of the ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting held in early August 2018 in Singapore: ‘We noted the briefing on Indonesia's Indo Pacific concept. We looked forward to further discussion on the Indo Pacific concept, which embraces key principles such as ASEAN centrality, openness, transparency, inclusivity, and rules-based approach, while contributing to mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual benefit’. The paragraph was relegated to no. 72 in a document comprising 79 paragraphs. See Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Joint communiqué of the 51st ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting (AMM), 2 August 2018, Singapore’, asean.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/51st-AMM-Joint-Communique-Final.pdf. 54 Chris Lundry, ‘Assessing Indonesia's foreign policy under Jokowi’, Asia Policy 13: 4, Oct. 2018, pp. 30–35. 55 See Seng Tan, Multilateral Asian security architecture: non-ASEAN stakeholders (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), pp. 159–61. 56 Cheng-Chwee Kuik, ‘Malaysia between the United States and China: what do weaker states hedge against?’, Asian Politics and Policy 8: 1, Jan. 2016, pp. 155–77. 57 Cheng-Chwee Kuik and Chin Tong Liew, ‘What Malaysia's “Mahathir doctrine” means for China–US rivalry’, South China Morning Post, 20 Aug. 2018, www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2160552/what-malaysias-mahathir-doctrine-means-china-us-rivalry. 58 Weida Li, ‘Malaysia's Mahathir positive about Belt and Road initiative’, gbtimes, 20 Aug. 2018, gbtimes.com/malaysias-mahathir-positive-about-belt-and-road-initiative. 59 Shambaugh, ‘US–China rivalry in south-east Asia’. 60 Cited in ‘Hanoi will endorse America's Indo-Pacific push, but “in a low-key manner”, predicts Singapore-based researcher’, Business Times, 16 Aug. 2018, www.businesstimes.com.sg/asean-business/hanoi-will-endorse-america%E2%80%99s-indo-pacific-push-but-%E2%80%98in-a-low-key-manner%E2%80%99-predicts. 61 Clarissa Yong, ‘Singapore not joining US, Japan-led free and open Indo-Pacific for now: Vivian Balakrishnan’, Straits Times, 14 May 2018, www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-not-joining-us-japan-led-free-and-open-indo-pacific-for-now-vivian-balakrishnan. 62 Vivian Balakrishnan, ‘Speech by minister for foreign affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan during the committee of supply debate, 1 March 2018’, Russia–Singapore Business Council, www.rsbctrade.com/mfa-press-release-speech-by-minister-for-foreign-affairs-dr-vivian-balakrishnan-during-the-committee-of-supply-debate-1-march-2018/. 63 Cited in Valencia, ‘What does a “free and open Indo-Pacific” actually mean?’. 64 ‘We play in a space where we want to remain neutral, remain open so that this is a place where US, China, Europe can come, be engaged and conduct productive economic activities’, as a Singapore cabinet member recently stated. See ‘Singapore wants to remain open to both China and US: Chan’. 65 Kausikan, ‘ASEAN: agnostic on the free and open Indo-Pacific’. 66 Graeme Dobell, ‘Indo-Pacific versus Asia–Pacific as Mackinder faces Mahan’, The Strategist, 5 June 2018, https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/indo-pacific-versus-asia-pacific-as-makinder-faces-mahan/. 67 Kavi Chongkittavorn, ‘ASEAN's role in the US Indo-Pacific strategy’, Asia Pacific Bulletin, no. 425, 27 June 2018, www.eastwestcenter.org/publications/aseans-role-in-the-us-indo-pacific-strategy. 68 See Hiroshi Kotani, ‘South-east Asia feared next on list for US trade sanctions’, Nikkei Asian Review, 9 April 2018, https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/Southeast-Asia-feared-next-on-list-for-US-trade-sanctions; Nirmal Ghosh, ‘US unlikely to target Singapore yet for punitive trade action’, Straits Times, 1 March 2017, www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/us-unlikely-to-target-spore-yet-for-punitive-trade-action. 69 An executive order the President signed back in March 2017 targeted countries which he labelled as ‘cheaters’—including among others Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam—for investigation over their allegedly ‘unfair’ trading practices. See Takashi Nakano, ‘South-east Asian capitals bristle at Trump's trade probe’, Nikkei Asian Review, 18 April 2017, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Southeast-Asian-capitals-bristle-at-Trump-s-trade-probe2. 70 Michelle Jamrisko, ‘Vietnam tops list of biggest winners from US–China trade war’, Bloomberg, 3 June 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-03/vietnam-tops-list-of-biggest-winners-from-u-s-china-trade-war. 71 FT Confidential Research, ‘Vietnam is most vulnerable in South-east Asia to trade war’, Nikkei Asian Review, 13 Aug. 2018, https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/FT-Confidential-Research/Vietnam-is-most-vulnerable-in-Southeast-Asia-to-trade-war. 72 Nirmal Ghosh, ‘US wants “rebalancing” in trade ties with ASEAN, says top Trump trade official’, Straits Times, 28 April 2018, https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/the-us-wants-rebalancing-in-trade-ties-with-asean-says-top-trump-trade-official. 73 Leon Hader, ‘The limits of Trump's transactional foreign policy’, The National Interest, 2 Jan. 2017, nationalinterest.org/feature/the-limits-trumps-transactional-foreign-policy-18898. 74 Bill Hayton, Trump may be a good fit for South-east Asia's strongmen (London: Chatham House, 9 Nov. 2017), https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/trump-may-be-good-fit-southeast-asia-s-strongmen. 75 1MDB refers to 1Malaysia Development Berhad, a strategic development company owned by the Malaysian government, which, since 2015, has been under intense scrutiny for dubious money transactions and evidence of alleged money laundering, fraud and theft. 76 Michael Larkin and Hunter Marston, ‘Democracy and human rights shouldn't take a backseat in US South-east Asia policy’, The Diplomat, 10 Jan. 2017, https://thediplomat.com/2017/01/democracy-and-human-rights-shouldnt-take-a-backseat-in-us-southeast-asia-policy/. 77 Prashant Parameswaran, ‘Trump's Indo-Pacific strategy challenge in the spotlight at 2018 Shangri-La Dialogue’, The Diplomat, 5 June 2018, thediplomat.com/2018/06/trumps-indo-pacific-strategy-challenge-in-the-spotlight-at-2018-shangri-la-dialogue/. 78 Cited in ‘US pledges nearly US$300 million security funding for south-east Asia’, Channel NewsAsia, 4 Aug. 2018, www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/asean-us-pledges-300-million-security-funding-south-east-asia-10588696. 79 Ankit Panda, ‘Trump signs Asia Reassurance Initiative Act into law’, The Diplomat, 3 Jan. 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/trump-signs-asia-reassurance-initiative-act-into-law/. 80 Ankit Panda, ‘What ARIA will and won't do for the US in Asia’, The Diplomat, 14 Jan. 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/what-aria-will-and-wont-do-for-the-us-in-asia/. 81 Jane Perlez and Yufan Huang, ‘Behind China's $1 trillion plan to shake up the economic order’, New York Times, 13 May 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/china-railway-one-belt-one-road-1-trillion-plan.html. 82 Indeed, for a person who prides himself as one who ‘tells it like it is’, Trump has a fairly astounding track record in self-contradiction. See Michael Kruse and Noah Weiland, ‘Donald Trump's greatest self-contradictions’, Politico, 5 May 2016, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-contradictions-213869. On Trump's demand that US allies undertake increased burden-sharing, see Doug Bandow, ‘Trump and US alliances: from burden-sharing to burden-shedding’, Foreign Affairs, 25 Jan. 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-01-25/trump-and-us-alliances. 83 Robert E. Kelly, ‘The misplaced burden-sharing fight’, The National Interest, 4 Dec. 2016, nationalinterest.org/feature/the-misplaced-burden-sharing-fight-18601. 84 For a treatment of this subject, see Tan, Multilateral Asian security architecture. 85 Storey and Cook, ‘The Trump administration and south-east Asia’, p. 6. 86 Zakir Hussain, ‘US remains committed to ASEAN centrality, Mike Pompeo tells foreign ministers’, Straits Times, 3 Aug. 2018, www.straitstimes.com/politics/us-remains-committed-to-asean-centrality-mike-pompeo-tells-foreign-ministers. 87 Walter Sim, ‘ASEAN at heart of Japan's free and open Indo-Pacific strategy: Kono’, Straits Times, 27 July 2018, www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/asean-at-heart-of-japans-free-and-open-indo-pacific-strategy-kono. 88 Sim, ‘Japan's free and open Indo-Pacific strategy is open to all’. 89 Seow Bei Yi, ‘Japan's Indo-Pacific strategy aligns well with Singapore, ASEAN priorities: PM Lee’, Straits Times, 15 Nov. 2018, https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/japans-indo-pacific-strategy-aligns-well-with-spore-asean-priorities-pm-lee. 90 Parameswaran, ‘Trump's Indo-Pacific strategy challenge in the spotlight’. 91 Urging his fellow south-east Asian leaders to ‘look beyond their domestic concerns [and] put emphasis on ASEAN’, Lee furnished a stark appraisal of the situation back in March 2018: ‘There is nothing to prevent other groupings or regional cooperation projects from being launched. Some will compete with ASEAN, others will contribute in complementary ways to regional cooperation and stability … Amidst this Darwinian process, ASEAN members must come together to maintain ASEAN's relevance and cohesion … Governing a country internally is already an all-consuming business, but ASEAN governments need to look beyond their domestic concerns … Invest political capital in the ASEAN project, and make a conscious effort to think regionally, not just nationally. Only with this commitment by member states, can we deepen our partnership and make progress on ASEAN’. Cited in Kelly Ng, ‘ASEAN has “no automatic right” to be at centre of regional architecture: PM Lee’, Today, 13 March 2018, www.todayonline.com/singapore/asean-has-no-automatic-right-be-centre-regional-architecture-pm-lee. 92 Koh Eng Beng, ‘ASEAN–China maritime exercise helps boost regional stability: Dr Ng’, Pioneer, 23 Oct. 2018, www.mindef.gov.sg/web/portal/pioneer/article/regular-article-detail/ops-and-training/2018-Q4/23oct18_news. 93 Ministry of Defence, Singapore, ‘ASEAN and US to conduct joint maritime exercise in 2019’, 19 Oct. 2018, https://www.mindef.gov.sg/web/portal/mindef/news-and-events/latest-releases/article-detail/2018/october/19oct18_nr2/!ut/p/z0/fY27DsIwFEO_hSFjdNOKRxkLDIAoXQoKWVBoLxAoN31EBf6egBiY2GzLxwYFEhTpzpy0M5Z06f1ODfejdDadi364TgdZIOJtlq0Gk_ViMxrCEtT_gl8wl7pWMajcksOHA3kzVOCRfzw5Js72hkwQ3luuqeDY-bRlotQOW8cbLFG36INQBBETNnf2gA0TwdjLINpTE75vwiaZJidQlXZnbuhoQb4BkF8A5C9QXdXheY97L8LD9Tw!/. 94 See Seng Tan, ‘The ADMM and ADMM-Plus: regional security mechanisms that work?’, in Tim Huxley and William Choong, eds, Asia–Pacific regional security assessment 2018 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies), pp. 165–75. 95 Redefining ASEAN's centrality is perhaps not difficult since ASEAN centrality is itself an ambiguous concept or principle: Tan, ‘Rethinking “ASEAN centrality”’. 96 See Seng Tan, ‘Singapore paving the way for greater regional security’, Straits Times, 23 Feb. 2018, p. A21. 97 Shambaugh, ‘US–China rivalry in south-east Asia’, p. 99. Author notes This article is part of the January 2020 special issue of International Affairs on ‘Unpacking the strategic dynamics of the Indo-Pacific’, guest-edited by Kai He and Mingjiang Li. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Consigned to hedge: south-east Asia and America's ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ strategy
JF - International Affairs
DO - 10.1093/ia/iiz227
DA - 2020-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/consigned-to-hedge-south-east-asia-and-america-s-free-and-open-indo-oaCf92GavV
SP - 131
VL - 96
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -