Myanmar’s crisis puts ASEAN on the edge of an abyss

6 April 2021

More than two months have passed since the coup in Myanmar by the Tatmadaw, the country’s military. Its citizens seem to be in open, albeit peaceful, rebellion against the junta and the Tatmadaw have responded with intensifying violence. Civilian casualties are mounting, exceeding 500 at the time of writing — including children. Several of Myanmar’s many armed ethnic groups have engaged in clashes with the Tatmadaw in response to the coup, with reports of the military using airstrikes against groups like the Karen National Army, jeopardising Myanmar’s delicate ethnic arrangement. Refugees in the Karen area even tried to flee for safety across the border to Thailand, only to be allegedly forced back by the Thai military.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) — the region’s main inter-state grouping — seems increasingly lost as the Myanmar crisis unfolds. Amid the brewing unrest, ASEAN has managed just two statements presented by Brunei, the chair for 2021: the first on the first day of the coup and the second a month afterwards. Aside from an informal ministerial meeting and ongoing efforts by member states Indonesia and Singapore to push for an ASEAN meeting on the coup and resulting crisis, there appears to be little movement by ASEAN to address the worsening situation.

ASEAN’s woes were already becoming apparent before the Myanmar crisis with debates over whether to expel certain members but the silence as the situation deteriorates really underscores how much rethinking may be necessary.

In fact, the ASEAN Chiefs of Defence Forces Meeting on 18 March even included participation by Min Aung Hlaing, head of the Myanmar junta, in full military regalia. Such a performance is likely to put off partners like the European Union and the United States, which ASEAN seeks to engage simultaneously with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

A paralysed ASEAN

ASEAN and its members are finding themselves on the back foot in the face of what may be Southeast Asia’s biggest crisis and the organisation’s greatest challenge in a generation. Growing instability in Myanmar serves neither the grouping’s collective interest nor those of its individual members. Prolonged unrest may see large numbers of refugees escaping conflict by land and sea straining neighbouring countries, as is already the case with the Rohingya who fled Myanmar for Bangladesh. Then there are the risks of human trafficking, a revival of the narcotics trade, conflict gemstones, piracy near the northern entry to the Malacca Strait, and efforts to control the profits from such activities. This is a familiar script for states facing the breakdown of governance and order. ASEAN and its members have clear incentives to prevent these developments before they become even more difficult to manage.

Stasis as problems snowball in Myanmar is a sure way for ASEAN to lose credibility among partners and, increasingly, members as well, calling into question its relevance and aspirations for centrality in regional affairs. Such concerns are likely to be in the minds of Indonesian, Malaysian, Singaporean, and Filipino officials as they seek some way to spur the grouping into action. Yet, rather than addressing the situation through some ASEAN framework first and then reaching out to Beijing with a common position, each of these governments seems to be separately sending envoys to the PRC as they search for some sort of solution. This state of affairs creates an impression of asking for leadership from Beijing if not implying deference — an image not helped by Malaysian Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein claiming that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi would “always” be his elder brother. These optics look like a lack of ASEAN initiative thereby forcing members to run to the nearest major power for help.

Things did not have to turn out this way for ASEAN and its members. Its current difficulties may well be a consequence of a persistent unwillingness to consider serious reform, possibly borne out of innate conservatism and overabundant cautiousness. Calls for ASEAN reform arose at several points in its past, notably following the Cold War, after the 1997-8 Asian Financial Crisis and its aftermath, as well as in the wake of ongoing territorial disputes with the PRC over the South China Sea. Proposals calling for a “two-speed” ASEAN, an ASEAN High Council to handle disputes, and preventative diplomacy were proposed and even adopted despite under-specified mechanisms, with a view that there can be learning by doing. Yet, the prevailing sentiment among ASEAN elites was that nothing should get in the way of the operating principles of consensus, non-intervention, and respect for sovereign autonomy. Compromise has been unthinkable.

Risking irrelevance

Insistence on preserving ASEAN’s old ways comes from a certain comfort in the grouping’s past success that does not fully account for the changes in the world around it. As a small set of authoritarian, developmentalist, and anti-communist states, ASEAN demonstrated remarkable success in holding at bay the Cambodian government installed by occupying Vietnamese forces between 1979 and 1991 — in conjunction with Washington and Beijing. ASEAN members also enjoyed remarkable rates of economic growth from the grouping’s inception through its 1997 expansion and after. These events perhaps represented the apex of ASEAN’s diplomatic and political achievements. ASEAN’s modus operandi since the end of the Cold War has rested on an assumption that members would face neither serious internal disarray nor growing major power friction. Yet, this is exactly the world that ASEAN is facing today and why the grouping and its members find addressing the Myanmar crisis as well as the host of implications that follow especially tricky.

ASEAN’s woes were already becoming apparent before the Myanmar crisis with debates over whether to expel certain members but the silence as the situation deteriorates really underscores how much rethinking may be necessary. Such discussions point to a need for ASEAN members to either consider serious and thorough institutional reforms or to consider alternative configurations that can tide them through a period of greater US-PRC contestation and domestic brittleness within Southeast Asian states.

Reform of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations could simply mean streamlining the organisation to enable more effective commitment to overcome coordination and collective action problems with no change in mandate, even if this implies greater flexibility over consensus, non-intervention, and autonomy. Otherwise, Southeast Asian states could find alternative arrangements with each other as well as perhaps extra-regional states and entities to address common aversions and pursue common wants. Sadly, Southeast Asian states, distracted by domestic concerns and cowed by fears of upsetting either Beijing or Washington, are unlikely to find the wherewithal to fundamentally improve regional cooperation and end up subjecting themselves to forces of greater uncertainty.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Ja Ian Chong is an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore. His research focuses on regional security and politics in Northeast and Southeast Asia. Comments here are his own. Image credit: Flickr/US Secretary of Defense.