ASEAN assessment of Indo-Pacific strategic competition is somewhat at odds with the western liberal-democratic conception of great power competition.[4] A view in which Chinese aggression and unavoidable great power competition between Beijing and Washington are headline acts. However, our visiting ASEAN fellows have tended to minimise the uniqueness of great power competition in terms of articulating security challenges facing their nation.[5] When it comes to ASEAN security concerns, most fellows cite transnational crime, terrorism, piracy, and, Illegal, Unreported, Unregulated (IUU) fishing, as the leading security challenges facing their nations. Indeed, ASEAN fellows are largely concerned with how these matters manifest as domestic security crises—e.g., arms trafficking increasing the level of armed citizens. This is a reality which Western countries with warfare-centric navies tend to miss.
A view in which Chinese aggression and unavoidable great power competition between Beijing and Washington are headline acts.
The perspective that we have come to appreciate from ASEAN fellows is that security co-operation brings prosperity, confidence and trust among neighbours. There is opportunity for the region to collectively alleviate poverty and elevate living standards of millions of people, regardless of national borders. Further, one must view Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions as closely integrated and interconnected—politically, economically, social-culturally, and environmentally. There is potential for misunderstanding the complex interconnectedness of concerns if we hold ourselves to a narrowly-defined, reductionist mindset of security, warfare, and military power. ASEAN conceptions of security differ between the nations, but our U.S.-centred assessment of the region assumes cookie-cutter concerns and this essentially leads to inappropriately designed responses.[6]
A clear example is the illusive grey zone. An artefact of the western way of thinking, the broad term seems to have become a synonym for complex, ambiguous, or opaque—a category of situations that don’t fit neatly or are difficult to understand. Listening to our ASEAN Fellows’ perspective has made us consider whether grey is just the norm for the region. We are likely the ones complicating things by expecting the clear black-and-white that comes with a traditional western-focused understanding of ASEAN and a reductionist view of security, warfare, and military power. The reality of interconnected complex relationships is that it is mostly grey. Of course, where ambiguous relationships and ill-understood boundaries exist, adversaries can exploit a seam, exposing crucial partnerships that take decades to mature to increased risk of being undermined. This is what the west is at risk of.
Increasingly, Australian analysts note there are concerns from ASEAN states surrounding AUKUS developments—specifically the acquisition by Australia of nuclear-powered submarines.[7] While fellows agree that this capability development would alter the strategic balance of the Indo-Pacific, in our people-people engagement over many coffees, fellows are quick to underscore that ASEAN concern stems from the potential of nuclear-armed submarines, not necessarily the acquisition of submarines per se. This position is in line with ASEAN political stance on nuclear weapons: in that, nations seek to maintain a region of nuclear-free arms (and proliferation).
A Potential Response: Avoiding Miscalculating ASEAN Solutions
“ASEAN also needs to continue being an honest broker within the strategic environment of competing interests.”[8]
Our person-to-person engagement via the ASEAN fellows program has also prevented the misinterpretation of the ASEAN Way, referring to a mode of cooperation between nations that places national interests and national sovereignty first. This is often used in conjunction with ASEAN centrality, the process through which national interests and sovereignty are protected by non-interference and upheld via decision-making, which is based on consensus and non-confrontation principles. Our Defence research centres work with counterparts at Defence’s International Policy Division and ASEAN policy officers throughout government to host research conferences to showcase the work (and thought) of our ASEAN military fellows.
