Abstract
This chapter describes how ASEAN member states’ mechanisms of decision-making have developed since the regional grouping’s inception. It details how concepts of confidence-building measures (CBMs) have given rise to contradictions within negotiation mechanisms developed to address the South China Sea disputes. It also recounts the historical process behind the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional negotiation structure and shows the internal constraints and the nature of the problems the group faces as it seeks to progress from CBMs to preventive diplomacy (PD). Since its inception, the negotiating dynamic related to the South China Sea has experienced friction between states seeking a way to accommodate all interests and those motivated by individual gains. The first group includes the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and Track II negotiation forums like the Indonesia Workshop, while the second includes more assertive states such as China.
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Notes
- 1.
Within this conceptualization, even the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA), despite its essentially economic character, can be considered a positive element in the construction of mutual trust between China and ASEAN. It took almost 10 years to develop. It promotes an intense exchange of information and imposes a new sophisticated level of communications during the negotiation process. It was signed in 2002 and implemented in 2010, and was upgraded in 2014.
- 2.
The Declaration contains potential CBMs including: holding dialogues and exchange of views between military officials; ensuring just and humane treatment of all persons in danger or distress; and notifying, on a voluntary basis, other concerned parties of any impending joint/combined military exercises in the Spratly/SCS region (Song 2005, p. 273).
- 3.
For more information about the 1975 CSCE, and the organization that derived from it, please see: Organization for Security Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)—available at: http://www.osce.org/who/87 Access: September 16, 2016.
- 4.
The ASEAN PMC usually follows the Annual ASEAN Ministerial Meetings (AMM) among ASEAN foreign ministers. These meetings provide ASEAN foreign ministers with an opportunity to meet their counterparts from dialogue partners’ countries. During the early 1990s, the PMCs provided a venue for ASEAN states to discuss security concerns, until the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum in 1994 (Anthony-Caballero 2005, p. 56).
- 5.
It is interesting note that the acronym “ASEAN” was used rather than “Asian,” to reflect the leadership and prominence that ASEAN wanted to develop within the nascent forum, according to Caballero-Anthony (2005).
- 6.
It is composed of Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia , Canada , China, the European Union, India , Indonesia , Japan, the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea, Laos, Malaysia , Myanmar, Mongolia , New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea , the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand , East Timor, the United States, and Vietnam.
- 7.
From 2010 to 2016, information is not available (List of ARF Track I Activities 2016).
- 8.
Namely Australia, Canada , Indonesia , Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and the United States .
- 9.
The CSCAP currently has seven working groups: (1) Transnational Crimes Responsibility to Protect; (2) Study Group on Naval Enhancement in the Asia Pacific; (3) Study Group on Safety and Security of Offshore Oil and Gas Installations; (4) Study Group on the Establishment of Regional Transnational Organized Crime Hubs in the Asia Pacific; (5) Study Group on Countering the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Asia Pacific; (6) Export Controls Experts Group (XCXG), a sub group of the Study Group on WMD, and; (7) Study Group on Multilateral Security Governance in Northeast Asia/North Pacific.
- 10.
These workshops were held in different places, including Bali, Bandung, Manila , Hanoi, and Hainan. They were composed of several thematic working groups, such as the Technical Working Group (TWG), Group of Experts Meeting (GEM), Marine Scientific Research (MSR), Marine Environmental Protection (MEP), Legal Matters (LM), Education and Training of Mariners (ETM), Safety of Navigation, Shipping and Communications (SNSC), and others (See Song 2005, p. 273).
- 11.
A good example of this controversy was Michael Lund’s (1995) article Underrating Preventive Diplomacy, a response to Professor Stephen Stedman’s (1995) piece titled Alchemy for a New World Order: Overselling Preventive Diplomacy, both of which were published by the Council on Foreign Relations publication Foreign Affairs.
- 12.
Ralf Emmers argues that SCS claimants have been inflexible in their positions on sovereignty. Any compromise, such as retracting the territorial claims or eventual concessions on the question of sovereign jurisdiction “would be costly domestically and perceived regionally as a sign of weakness” (Emmers 2007, p. 49).
- 13.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is a regional economic forum established in 1989 aiming to respond to the increasingly interdependence of the Asia-Pacific economies. Currently APEC is composed by 21 members and has its headquarters located in Singapore.
- 14.
By the time of the ARF’s creation in 1994, Southeast Asia had already experienced a series of clashes and quarrels between claimants’ coast guard forces . However, it is important to highlight that the conflicts had existed since 1976, when China launched a war on Vietnam that resulted in the Chinese seizure of Paracel Islands from Hanoi. Later, in 1988, the two countries had another clash: Chinese and Vietnamese navies clashed at Johnson Reef in the Spratly Islands. Several Vietnamese boats were sunk and over 70 sailors killed. Therefore, the concept of the China Threat is real and concrete for all the states in the region. See the Global Security Organization website for a complete profile of these episodes: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/spratly-clash.htm.
- 15.
It was inside of the workshops that relations between China and Malaysia improved significantly, from a bilateral point of view. In 2010, despite a refusal by the Malaysian authorities, Beijing offered Malaysia certain financial rights and cooperation treaties concerning gas and oil exploration (Swanström 1999).
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Lopes de Souza, M. (2018). Beneath the Surface of Consensus: The Development of Confidence-Building Measures Between the PRC and ASEAN in the South China Sea Disputes. In: Spangler, J., Karalekas, D., Lopes de Souza, M. (eds) Enterprises, Localities, People, and Policy in the South China Sea . Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62828-8_8
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