HANOI, Vietnam -- In 31 years of wars, coups, booms and busts, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has always managed to adapt, evolving into the key arena for Asian diplomacy. But with the conclusion of a sometimes-contentious leaders' summit here, the group faces the challenge of reinventing itself once again.
Once a cozy club of consensus builders, Asean is being transformed into a more fractious organization by pressures from Asia's economic crisis, political change and expanded membership. In recent years, Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos have joined Asean, alongside existing members Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. This week, debate raged over when to admit Cambodia.
Asean faces "increasingly substantive cleavages, such as controlled vs. open politics and interventionist versus relatively market-oriented economic policies," says Andrew MacIntyre, an Asia specialist at the University of California at San Diego.
The question now is: Will coping with all that diversity ultimately strengthen Asean or weaken the organization, eroding its clout with its powerful allies such as the U.S., the European Union, Japan and China?
Signs of discord at this week's summit bode ill, argues Donald Weatherbee, an Asian specialist at the University of South Carolina, who dismisses investment and trade measures launched at the summit as window-dressing. "The bottom line for the Asean summit is that Asean's credibility was further degraded," he says. "It showed again that Asean remains politically incapable of formulating common strategies."
Balancing Differences
But proponents tout members' new willingness to air disagreements as a virtue that can avert misunderstandings and solve problems. Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan is a leading advocate of what is variously called "flexible engagement" or "enhanced interaction" -- code phrases that mean Asean members ought to be permitted to react individually to external events and to comment on one another's actions, where appropriate. "In this crisis we need to consult each other on issues that in the past were considered internal," he says. "Diversity has to be respected."
He admits, however, that maintaining Asean's credibility while managing that diversity won't be easy. The "challenge before Asean leaders is how to manage that diversity so it will not have an impact on confidence" in Asean, he says.
The dilemma increasingly worries some Asean leaders. Urging Asean countries to regroup, Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong warned that some of the group's main economic partners are questioning its future. "Some of them are taking us less seriously than before," he said in a speech at the summit. "They believe Asean has been exposed as ineffective. Key Asean members are now weaker while Asean cohesiveness has been loosened by bilateral strains."
Dividing Lines
Issues that divide Asean members were clear in Hanoi, even as its leaders ended their summit with a fresh commitment to long-term plans for regional economic liberalization and integration and a pledge to adopt what they termed "bold measures" to attract fresh trade and investment.
For example, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad -- in power for 17 years -- again blamed foreign-currency speculators for ruining regional economies and defended Kuala Lumpur's decision to impose capital controls and to reinflate its economy. "We liberalized because we believed in the free market," he told the summit. "But our liberalism was abused, resulting in economic and financial depression. We have no choice but to reimpose controls."
In contrast, Thai Premier Chuan Leekpai, elected to power last year, prescribed a tough dose of domestic political and economic reforms and accelerated market opening. "Although we have all been made poorer by the crisis, it doesn't mean our spirit should be made weaker and that we should all turn inward," he said.
Those sentiments were echoed by Singapore's Mr. Goh, who warned that only "free trade and competition between Asean members within a loosely integrated Asean economic area" will prepare the group to deal with the "inevitable trend" toward a globalized market.
Meanwhile, Asean's recently admitted, centrally controlled economies of Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar appeared locked in inward-looking economic and political policies. That could leave the newcomers ever further adrift of their neighbors and make it harder for Asean to forge and carry out credible collective measures.
Butting Heads on Cambodia
Differences weren't limited to economic policies. Vietnam -- still a tightly controlled Communist state -- butt heads with Singapore and others over Hanoi's hardball tactics to win Cambodia immediate admittance as Asean's 10th member. The confrontation irritated some Asean members. And it raised questions about whether Asean's older members will exert much influence over strong-willed newcomers like Vietnam and Myanmar, which have distinctly different political ideologies. Despite its admission into Asean, military-ruled Myanmar, for example, is still widely viewed with disdain internationally for its shoddy human-rights record and reputation as a major narcotics producer.
Even among longtime Asean members, strains are showing from changes in political attitudes and style, as a younger generation of Asean leaders and senior officials rubs up against their veteran counterparts, some of whom have been in power for years. In particular, Thailand's Chuan government, populist Philippine President Joseph Estrada and Singapore's Mr. Goh have been increasingly outspoken with views that sometimes impinge -- directly or indirectly -- on policies or actions of other Asean members.
Such actions broach Asean's longstanding taboo against interfering in one another's internal affairs. Dr. Mahathir, for example, reacted sharply when Indonesian President B.J. Habibie and Mr. Estrada expressed concern earlier this year over the treatment of former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim following his arrest on charges of sexual misconduct and corruption.
Despite the fissures, however, some observers predict that, again, Asean will prove resilient. "Despite the discord there is clearly a majority sentiment in favor of accelerated [market] opening, which is going on a country-by-country basis anyway," says Linda Y. Lim, director of the University of Michigan Business School's Southeast Asian program. Given Asean leaders' concerns about economic crises at home, she adds, the summit's outcome is "not bad -- at least they didn't do nothing."
Mr. McIntyre agrees. "Asean has been important to the region, and will again," he argues. "While there is nothing impressive here [at the summit], there is enough to keep it alive until next time when they can all try again."
--Samantha Marshall contributed to this article.
Regional Crises Leave ASEAN in Disarray
Summit Declaration Masks Divisions
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 17, 1998; Page A54
HANOI, Dec. 16—As Southeast Asia's leaders ended their annual summit here, the traditional talk of unity and solidarity was overshadowed by deep divisions over questions of democratization and strategies for responding to an 18-month financial crisis that has upended the region's political and economic stability.
A final accord pledged the nine Southeast Asian countries to liberalize regional trade, reduce tariffs and intensify cooperation on infrastructure projects and in attracting foreign investment.
But the declaration masked the leaders' underlying divisions, with some members seeing economic globalization as a potential evil that must be controlled, and others calling it an inevitable trend to be embraced.
The unusually public discord among the leaders -- and the turmoil wrought by the economic crisis -- were reflected in the participants' lineup. The longest-serving leader of the group is Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, a sharp-tongued critic of globalization who is facing unprecedented turmoil at home from protesters demanding his ouster.
Among the newest leaders here is Philippine President Joseph Estrada, a populist elected in the region's most firmly entrenched democracy, who urged his colleagues to embrace human rights and more-open economies.
The group includes an absolute monarch, the billionaire sultan of Brunei, as well as the leader of a military junta, Gen. Than Shwe of Burma.
Missing this year for the first time is former president Suharto of Indonesia, who was forced from office last May by violent street protests against his 30-year authoritarian rule. His successor, B.J. Habibie, brought the armed forces commander, Gen. Wiranto, with him as an apparent means of making sure there would be no coup during his absence.
When the group, formally known as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), was formed in 1967, it was seen as a way of managing disputes among the normally quarrelsome neighbors and providing a pro-Western counterweight to the perceived expansionist tendencies of the communist regimes in Indochina.
But since the end of the Cold War, and the withdrawal of Vietnamese occupation troops from Cambodia, the group has lost its unifying focus, which was opposing communist aggression in the region.
Since then, it has been trying to embrace a new economic agenda of free trade and regional integration -- a daunting task for a group that encompasses countries from prosperous Singapore to poverty-stricken Vietnam.
Also, the divisions have grown as the group has expanded from the original five members -- Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia -- to embrace not only Vietnam but communist-run Laos, military-run Burma, and, soon, Cambodia, which is still trying to shake off more than three decades of civil war.
In the view of some, that diversity has sapped the group of its cohesion, and made decision-making more difficult. "I think in the beginning, we very much emphasized our diversity as the strong point of ASEAN," said Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan. "That diversity has lately become somewhat of a burden."
The turmoil of the last 18 months has created a new regional dynamic. New democratically elected leaders in the Philippines and Thailand are more interested in promoting issues such as open government, free elections and human rights. And there is a greater tendency now for Southeast Asia's leaders to openly criticize each other, as Mahathir discovered when he fired and jailed his popular deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, provoking a chorus of regional outrage.
As the region tries to forge ahead with a common economic policy, it is finding unity thwarted by the leaders' divergent views.
One of the main fault lines has been globalization, and the question of whether it represents an opportunity or a threat.
Taking the pessimistic view was Mahathir, who once again accused the West of pushing globalization at the expense of smaller countries. "Instead of reining in the currency manipulators, they allowed them to destroy the economic tigers," he said in an opening speech.
Mahathir was joined by Indonesia's Habibie, and Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai in warning of the dangers of unchecked liberalization.
But taking the opposite view was Thai Premier Chuan Leekpai, who said, "We cannot stop the process of globalization, but we can better prepare ourselves to meet its challenges."
The group has also splintered on the question of when to admit Cambodia as the 10th and final member of the club. Vietnam particularly, a long ally of newly reelected Prime Minister Hun Sen, wanted Cambodia formally installed at this summit. But Singapore, backed by Thailand and the Philippines, objected, saying Hun Sen must prove his commitment to a new power-sharing deal with his erstwhile rival, Prince Norodom Ranariddh.
The session ended with a pledge by Japan to provide $5 billion in new low-interest loans for Southeast Asian infrastructure projects.