By Phar Kim Beng

The likelihood of a country's chairmanship of ASEAN being criticised widely is par for the course. In other words, it is fair and certainly expected from all sides. Thus no one should be intimidated by the criticism, oftentimes, non-constructive, against both ASEAN and the Chairman of ASEAN.

Why is it non-constructive on most occasions?

To begin with, ASEAN began as a "deviant community”, in the words of Chan Heng Chee, the former Head of the Department of Political Science in the National University of Singapore. She went on to serve in Washington DC as Singapore's Ambassador to the United States for more than 20 years, rivalling the record of Prince Bandar Al Turki of Saudi Arabia, who too had the advantage of a long tenure to understand American foreign policy and congressional politics, between 1980 and 2000. Much has since changed vastly in the United States.

At any rate, Chan, who is now retired and has stayed away from commenting on ASEAN, has explained in the massive ‘The ASEAN Reader’, published 40 years ago by the Yusuf Ishak Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) that whilst the Founding Fathers of ASEAN wrote of the "importance of social cultural and economic cooperation”, invariably ahead of "security and political" ones, the reality of Southeast Asia between 1967 and 1976 demanded nothing less than total attention to political and security cooperation.

The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)

In fact, by the end of the first Cold War in 1991, Tanaka Akio, the Vice Premier of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) in Japan, had advised the then Foreign Minister Nakayama Taro to counsel the Track 1 and Track 2 decision makers in ASEAN to convert the ASEAN Political Forum, a ministerial meeting involving all of the foreign ministers of Asia Pacific with ASEAN, to create the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).

To the advantage of the Japanese MOFA, which knew how to provide the idea to ASEAN, only to disclaim any official role in seeding the creation of ARF since leaders and intellectuals in Southeast Asia have traditionally been averse to anyone telling them what to do – a feature that remains ingrained in the post-colonial landscape of Southeast Asia – Tokyo planted the idea of ARF only to step away.

This was a move decisively different from the previous attempts of Australia and Canada to suggest the need for a multilateral security forum.

The Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) understood the importance of ARF and rolled up their sleeves to go to work. Each of the intellectual thought leaders of ASEAN persuaded, not just member states of ASEAN, but those straddling in Asia Pacific, especially the members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC, established in 1989), to embrace the security multilateralism that was being advocated by Japan. It was an idea that saw no opposition from China and the United States, let alone India. Why?

ARF would first focus on Confidence-Building Measures/Mechanisms (CBM) before venturing to Preventive Diplomacy (PD), then Regional Peacekeeping and Maritime Security Cooperation (MSO).

Regardless of who or which country inspired the creation of ARF in 1993, the fact remains that all member states pay heed to the importance of Chapter 8 of the United Nations Charter, which encourages the member states of any regional organisation (RO) to take the lead in handling any inter-regional or intra-regional issues.

Regional organisations and authority

Thus, even if the likes of Tan Sri Mohamed Jawhar Hassan, one of the most seasoned Track 2 thinkers in Malaysia, were to suggest the switch from CMB to Trust-Building Measures, his idea is not diametrically opposed to the UN. In fact, the secretary-general of each and every RO in the world, including the Secretary-General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), has to meet with the UN Secretary-General at least once a year and, invariably, with the secretaries-general of the various ROs in and across different regions that form the world.

When it comes to ASEAN, therefore, the links with the UN will never be broken and severed. In fact, the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs has a permanent representative stationed in Jakarta where the ASEAN Secretariat, now occasionally referred to by Indonesia as the ASEAN Headquarters, is located to ensure ease of communication between the UN and ASEAN.

However, Chapter 8 of the UN Charter encourages the likes of other ROs to conduct their own regional affairs with more authority too. The result of this aspiration of the UN resulted in ASEAN insisting that ASEAN must navigate all future affairs based on the ASEAN Charter adopted in 2007, which was also embraced by the Indonesian Parliament in 2009.

Since not all ASEAN foreign ministers do understand the "epistemology" or foundational basis of ASEAN and the importance of knowing the creation of ASEAN on August 8, 1967, let alone the challenging circumstances in 1975, where the United States, always a friendly partner of ASEAN, pulled out from the Vietnam War, the advice of the Foreign Ministers in ASEAN to their Heads of Government or State can and do go off tangent.

For example, it is not the place or the right of any foreign minister to speak of the need for an ASEAN Stock Exchange. The media in ASEAN does not know how to correct this misnomer too.

Thus, what is essentially a good idea that should come from the Economic Ministers meeting of ASEAN in February 2025 has now resulted in some confusion. Why is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Malaysia taking such a position? Is Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim not aware of the "deviation"?

This is where the cynics and naysayers of ASEAN, indeed those opposed to Anwar, will try to fuel the rumours of discontent, putatively, ignorance in the Coalition Government of Prime Minister Anwar.

Such criticism, no matter how lame, would have to be expected by the Coalition Government of Prime Minister Anwar all throughout 2025. Why?

Aside from systemic ignorance of how ASEAN works, especially how it works with its Dialogue Partners, of which the likes of Australia, India, China, Japan, South Korea and the United States all enjoy Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) which allows them to raise a wide berth of issues with ASEAN or each of the member states, especially the Chairman, not many academics and thinkers in and outside of the Asia Pacific would know how to comment – constructively – on ASEAN and global affairs in the most critical of manner.

Indeed, with the aim of improving the performance of ASEAN, ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat, ASEAN Economic Ministers Meeting, ASEAN Summit that is to come in May 2025, let alone the ASEAN-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit that will be in April 2025.

Coalition government

2025 is also the first time Malaysia is chairing the ASEAN Summit with a Coalition Government, vastly different from the previous chairmanships, all of which were led by a government not inter-mixed with any adversarial elements in its governing structure.

The Foreign Minister and the Defence Minister of Malaysia, for example, do not hail from the same party as Anwar's. They are from UMNO. Meanwhile, the Minister of Economy, the Minister of Natural Resources and the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, in turn, are from Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR). Even the Minister of Tourism of Malaysia hails from Sarawak, again from another party.

Templates of the UN Charter and the ASEAN Charter

Thus, whether the criticism of Prime Minister Anwar is from Bridget Jones or Bonnie and Clyde in the United States, Malaysia and ASEAN have to take such stray comments by understanding it is but confirming to the templates of the UN Charter and the ASEAN Charter.

For example, the Socio-Cultural Pillar of ASEAN does not involve inter-faith dialogue. There is a very technical area within ASEAN. Disaster prevention, or, development assistance to strengthen the resilience of the member states of ASEAN affected by man-made or natural disasters come under "social cultural cooperation”.

Technical experts of ASEAN would know immediately if a person knows ASEAN – or not – based on how a person is able to take in the factual and technical component of ASEAN Social Cultural cooperation as stated in the ASEAN Charter although 2025 is also the year where the Chairman and member states should see ASEAN as a single Community of 700 million people, not one that is managed and divided according to Political-Security, Economic, and Socio-Cultural pillars in the main.

Hence, it is one thing to see the administration of President Donald Trump lashing various international institutions. After all, President Trump has only four years to make his mark.

In fact, more objectively, President Trump has to perform according to what his American political base expects of him, without which he loses the slim majority of the House of Representatives by November 2026 when the biennial Congressional elections again have to be held.

“Sustainability and Connectivity” of ASEAN

If the ASEAN Chairmanship in 2025 is challenging, it is always good to remember the adage of Sun Tzu, regardless of how cliche it can be, "to win 100 battles is to know oneself”. Within this context, the Chairmanship of ASEAN is based on ensuring the "sustainability and connectivity" of ASEAN. Where did these two words gain their original vocabulary or ontology as Professor Emeritus Datuk Dr Osman Bakar, Rector of the International Islamic University of Malaysia likes to go to the root words? From the practices and history of the UN and ASEAN.

More specifically from the Master Action Plan of ASEAN (MAP 2010 and 2015) as agreed in Hanoi and Putrajaya then. Only by going back to the history and present can ASEAN chart a future to 2045, which again is a duty incumbent on the Chair of ASEAN this year.

This again is a fact oblivious to those who only know how to skirt the shallow surface of ASEAN without going deep in to understand what many member states have already agreed even before the inauguration of Donald Trump on Jan 20, 2025, as the 47th President of the United States.

Whatever pressures that come from Washington DC, the whole of the UN and ASEAN can handle them, which is why the foreign policy of the United States now showcases the feature of Trump saying one thing while his Secretary of State Marco Rubio trying to walk it back.

‘America First’ Policy may be at work but the reality of the world is such that even the Security Council of the UN cannot allow the United States to do everything as it pleases.

-- BERNAMA

Phar Kim Beng is Professor of ASEAN Studies at the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM).