Edited by Ashley J. Tellis, Mercy Kuo, and Andrew Marble Regional Studies Southeast Asia: Strategic Diversification in the Asian Century Evelyn Goh restrictions on use: This PDF is provided for the use of authorized recipients only. For specific terms of use, please contact <publications@nbr.org>. To purchase the print volume Strategic Asia 2008 09: Challenges and Choices in which this chapter appears please visit <http://www.nbr.org> or contact <orders@nbr.org>. 1215 Fourth Avenue, Suite 1600 Seattle, Washington 98161 USA 206-632-7370
executive summary This chapter considers U.S. policy toward Southeast Asia. main argument: The strategically pragmatic Southeast Asian states prefer that the U.S. maintains a strong presence in the region because they see the U.S. as playing a critical role in ensuring regional stability, an imperative that has increased with the rise of China. Key countries in the region are increasingly asserting their own interests, however, leveraging both the second front in the war on terrorism card and the China card in relations with the U.S. policy implications: In order to win reciprocal support for U.S. global strategic priorities, the new administration will find it helpful to pursue policy options that support Southeast Asian autonomy and regional strategic preoccupations. Given the centrality of economic development in Southeast Asia s strategic world-view and because the primary threats and opportunities resulting from China s rise are economic, it is important that the new administration build sustained economic relationships with all Southeast Asian countries. Limits to U.S. bilateral defense cooperation in the region will push the new administration to focus on a relatively independent U.S. military role that acts more as a deterrent to China than as outright containment of the country. Rather than intervene directly to support moderate factions of political Islam in the region which might render moderate Muslim political and religious groups less credible at home the new administration would instead benefit from focusing on policies to boost the governance, accountability, development, and conflict resolution capacities of Southeast Asian states that face problems with terrorism.
Southeast Asia Southeast Asia: Strategic Diversification in the Asian Century Evelyn Goh In what has been widely touted as the Asian century, the fortunes of Southeast Asia, a relatively less significant subregion of Asia, have improved but remain uncertain. Over the last eight years the strategic landscape in Southeast Asia has been marked by a sense of great uncertainty but also by unparalleled opportunity. The uncertainty has been engendered by doubts concerning the continued strategic commitment of the United States to the region, by dissatisfaction over the U.S.-led war on terrorism, and by worries over the impact of that war on regional stability and domestic political security. Contributing to this uncertainty are continuing concerns with regard both to China s strategic intentions and to the at times difficult relations between China and other major powers (especially the United States and Japan). Southeast Asia has also, however, enjoyed a renaissance of opportunity arising both from the George W. Bush administration s explicit recognition of the region as a strategically important front in the global campaign against terrorism and from expanding relations with a rising China that by association have granted economic, political, and strategic significance to the region. By raising the region s strategic significance in military, political, and economic dimensions and by beginning to institutionalize important aspects of these higher-profile relationships with individual countries and with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a whole, the Evelyn Goh is Reader in International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London. She can be reached at <evelyn.goh@rhul.ac.uk>. This essay is based on Evelyn Goh, Southeast Asian Reactions to America s New Strategic Imperatives, in Asia Eyes America: Regional Perspectives on U.S. Asia-Pacific Strategy in the 21st Century, ed. Jonathan D. Pollack (Newport: Naval War College, 2007).
262 Strategic Asia 2008 09 Bush administration provided a critical post Cold War turning-point for Southeast Asia. This level of increased significance has, in turn, provided crucial reassurance and opportunities for Southeast Asia a region with a driving imperative for strategic diversification in order to avoid being dominated by any one power. The following analysis departs from much of the prevailing literature that suggests that power in the region is shifting away from the United States toward China, criticizes the Bush administration for its inattention to the region, and makes the claim that U.S. unilateralism has alienated Southeast Asian states. 1 This chapter argues that the strategically pragmatic Southeast Asian states prefer to have a strong U.S. presence in the region because they see the United States as playing a critical role in ensuring regional stability. This imperative has increased rather than decreased with the rise of China. As such, the Bush administration s renewed focus on the region has been fundamentally welcomed at the larger strategic level, even as the administration s policies have created problems at the domestic political level and U.S. unilateralism has engendered widespread criticism. Any conclusion that U.S. policy and interests in Southeast Asia are in jeopardy reflects a failure to understand the strategic world-view, preferences, and dynamics of the region. Thus, the incoming U.S. administration should approach Southeast Asia with the assurance that strategic partners and shared interests are to be found in this region, which welcomes U.S. attention, involvement, and preponderance. The new administration should be cognizant, however, that key countries in the region are not pushovers. These countries possess increasing bargaining leverage in dealing with the United States because they are the second front in the war on terrorism and they hold the China card. Based on an understanding of the regional imperative to diversify dependencies, the new administration will want to focus on developing policies that both support Southeast Asian autonomy and gain regional cooperation for U.S. strategic priorities. In this regard, the incoming administration will want to focus on two core challenges: China s regional influence and the war on terrorism. As regards the first challenge, U.S. strategic competition with China has special resonance in Asia. In considering how to deal with a rising China, the new administration will need to decide under what conditions it might accept China as an Asian great power. In judging Beijing s long-term 1 See, for instance, David Shambaugh, Power Shift: China and Asia s New Dynamics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Ellen Frost, Asia s New Regionalism (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2008); and Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China s Soft Power Is Transforming the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). One exception is Robert Sutter, China s Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), chap. 7.
Goh Southeast Asia 263 intentions, the administration will want to pay attention to how China treats the smaller Southeast Asian states in a neighborhood that contains critical sealines of communication but no strong indigenous balancer. Though Southeast Asia has experienced encouraging results by enmeshing China in multilateral institutions and engaging the country in conflict management since the mid-1990s, tougher challenges lie ahead in such areas as delivery on trade agreements and the growing negative socio-environmental impacts of China s development, especially in the weaker Southeast Asian states in Mekong region. 2 These concerns help explain why the Southeast Asian states remain wary of China and continue to place importance on the U.S. strategic role in the region. Second, Southeast Asia s importance to the United States in the war on terrorism will necessitate that the new administration pay more attention to managing the politics of alliances and strategic partnerships in the region. Intractable linkages exist between Washington s global strategic priorities and the balance of power politics within Southeast Asia. Linkages with domestic politics and ideologies may be, however, a more critical factor in determining the effectiveness of the new administration s approach to counterterrorism in the region. As demonstrated vividly over the last eight years in the issues of terrorism, religious politics, and human rights, the ideational and political agendas of strategic partners can constrain and even seriously undermine U.S. strategic imperatives in the region. The new administration will be well served by prioritizing clearly its strategic objectives in Southeast Asia and by developing more effective means especially through recognizing and supporting local strategic preoccupations to persuade critical countries in the region to support its agenda. This chapter suggests that the new administration prioritize the building of sustained and serious economic relationships with all Southeast Asian countries. Regarding military relations, Washington should continue to maintain a strong U.S. presence and indirect strategic support for partners in the region. The most sensitive policies, however, lie in the political dimension, where this chapter recommends that the new administration adopt more selective and indirect approaches to regional institutions and provide pragmatic ways to strengthen governance, education, and capacity-building throughout the region. It is difficult but not impossible to generalize regarding the ten countries that make up ASEAN. This chapter draws on broad areas of agreement among the 2 See Evelyn Goh, Developing the Mekong: Regionalism and Regional Security in China-Southeast Asian Relations, Adelphi Paper 387 (London: Routledge, 2006).