Asean
Thailand-Cambodia Dispute a Test for ASEAN
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is trying to negotiate an end to the clash between Thai and Cambodian forces. The fighting is the most serious conflict ever seen between two ASEAN countries and is seen as a test of the organization’s ability to maintain peace and stability in the region. Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa traveled to Phnom Penh on Monday. Indonesia has the chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which is trying to persuade Bangkok and Phnom Penh to call a ceasefire and negotiate an end to fighting that began Friday. On Monday, fighting was again reported near the Preah Vihear Hindu temple, a 900-year-old along the border. The fighting has rattled other members of ASEAN, and challenges one of its main purposes – to maintain stability and peace in the region. Some regional security experts say the organization’s core principle of not interfering in the internal affairs of its members limits its effectiveness. Carl Thayer, a Southeast Asia specialist with the Australian Defense Force Academy, is concerned by the lack of restraint by both sides. He calls the escalating conflict the most serious dispute between ASEAN members since the organization was founded in the 1960s. “I am worried about good command and control and the politicization of the issue,” Thayer admitted. “In other words this is not the way two ASEAN countries should be behaving. And if it is the rules of engagement are tit for tat, that is a sad commentary on the professionalism of the forces on either side.” Thayer says resolving this crisis will be a test for the Indonesia, as chairman of ASEAN. Because Indonesia is a respected, neutral party, Thayer says Natalegawa could succeed in persuading both sides to pull back before the entire region is affected. “It can bring home to Cambodia the impact this is going to have on its neighbors,” Thayer said. “It affects overall perceptions of the region and its ability to put its house in order and therefore those countries that more virtuous and better governed are punished for the action of Thailand or Cambodia because of exaggerated nationalist claims.” Thayer says Natalegawa is likely to propose a number of measures to stabilize the situation, such as removing troops from the area, and allowing in foreign observers to make assessments. If mediation fails, Thayer says ASEAN can impose economic sanctions but it has never in the past taken coercive measures on one of its members.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is trying to negotiate an end to the clash between Thai and Cambodian forces. The fighting is the most serious conflict ever seen between two ASEAN countries and is seen as a test of the organization’s ability to maintain peace and stability in the region.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa traveled to Phnom Penh on Monday. Indonesia has the chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which is trying to persuade Bangkok and Phnom Penh to call a ceasefire and negotiate an end to fighting that began Friday.
On Monday, fighting was again reported near the Preah Vihear Hindu temple, a 900-year-old along the border.
The fighting has rattled other members of ASEAN, and challenges one of its main purposes – to maintain stability and peace in the region. Some regional security experts say the organization’s core principle of not interfering in the internal affairs of its members limits its effectiveness.
Carl Thayer, a Southeast Asia specialist with the Australian Defense Force Academy, is concerned by the lack of restraint by both sides. He calls the escalating conflict the most serious dispute between ASEAN members since the organization was founded in the 1960s.
“I am worried about good command and control and the politicization of the issue,” Thayer admitted. “In other words this is not the way two ASEAN countries should be behaving. And if it is the rules of engagement are tit for tat, that is a sad commentary on the professionalism of the forces on either side.”
Thayer says resolving this crisis will be a test for the Indonesia, as chairman of ASEAN. Because Indonesia is a respected, neutral party, Thayer says Natalegawa could succeed in persuading both sides to pull back before the entire region is affected.
“It can bring home to Cambodia the impact this is going to have on its neighbors,” Thayer said. “It affects overall perceptions of the region and its ability to put its house in order and therefore those countries that more virtuous and better governed are punished for the action of Thailand or Cambodia because of exaggerated nationalist claims.”
Thayer says Natalegawa is likely to propose a number of measures to stabilize the situation, such as removing troops from the area, and allowing in foreign observers to make assessments.
If mediation fails, Thayer says ASEAN can impose economic sanctions but it has never in the past taken coercive measures on one of its members.
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Thailand-Cambodia Dispute a Test for ASEAN
Asean
ASEAN weathering the COVID-19 typhoon
Author: Sandra Seno-Alday, Sydney University
The roughly 20 typhoons that hit Southeast Asia each year pale in comparison to the impact on the region of COVID-19 — a storm of a very different sort striking not just Southeast Asia but the world.
Just how badly is the COVID-19 typhoon thrashing the region? And what might the post-crisis recovery and reconstruction look like? To answer these questions, it is necessary to investigate the strengths and vulnerabilities of Southeast Asia’s pre-COVID-19 economic infrastructure.
Understanding the structure of the region’s economic house requires going back to 1967, when Southeast Asian countries decided to pledge friendship to one another under the ASEAN framework. While other integrated regions such as NAFTA and the European Union have aggressively broken down trade barriers and significantly boosted intra-regional trade, ASEAN regional economic integration has chugged along slower.
Southeast Asian countries have not viewed trade between each other as a top priority. The trade agreements in the region have been forged around suggestions for ASEAN countries to lower tariffs on intra-regional trade to within a certain range and across limited industries. This has lowered but not eliminated barriers to intra-regional trade. Consequently, a relatively significant share of Southeast Asian trade is with countries outside the region. This active extra-regional engagement has resulted in ASEAN countries’ successful integration into global value chain networks.
A historically outward-facing region, in 2010 around 75 per cent of Southeast Asian commodity imports and exports came from countries outside of ASEAN. This share of extra-regional trade nudged closer to 80 per cent in 2018. This indicates that ASEAN’s global value chain network embeddedness has deepened over time.
Around 40 per cent of ASEAN’s extra-regional trade is with the rest of Asia. From 2010 to 2018 Southeast Asian countries forged major trade relationships with four Asian countries: China, Japan, South Korea and India. Outside Asia, the United States is the region’s major trading partner. ASEAN’s trade focus on Asia’s largest markets is not surprising. Countries tend to establish trade relationships with large, geographically close, and culturally similar markets.
Fostering deep relationships with a few large markets, however, is a double-edged sword. While it has allowed ASEAN to benefit from integration in global value chains, it has also resulted in increased vulnerability to the shocks affecting its network connections.
ASEAN’s participation in global value chains has allowed it to transition from a net regional importer in 1990 to a net regional exporter in 2018. But the region’s deep embeddedness in a small and tightly-coupled network cluster of extra-regional global value chain partners has exposed it to disruption to any and all of its external partners. By contrast, ASEAN’s intra-regional trade network structure is much more loosely-coupled: a consequence of persistent intra-regional trade barriers and thus lower intra-regional trade intensity.
In the pre-COVID-19 period, ASEAN built for itself an economic house held up by just five extra-regional markets, while doing less to expand and diversify its intra-regional trade network. The data shows that ASEAN trade became increasingly concentrated in these few external markets between 2010 and 2018.
This dependence on a handful of markets does not bode well for risk and crisis management. All of the region’s major trading partners have been significantly affected by COVID-19 and this in turn is blowing the ASEAN economic house down.
What are the ways forward? The immediate task at hand is to get a better picture of the region’s position in global value chain networks and to get on top of managing its network risk exposure. Already there are red flags around the region’s food security arising from its position in food value chains. It is critical to look for ways to introduce flexibility into existing supply chains for greater agility in responding to crises.
It is also an opportune time for ASEAN to harness the technology transfer gains of global value chain participation and invest in innovation-driven diversification of products and markets. The region’s embeddedness in global value chain networks certainly places it in a strong position to readily access large export markets not just in Asia but also Europe and the Americas.
Over the longer term, ASEAN is faced with the question of whether it should seriously look…
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