The Gardener’s Tale of ASEAN Summits

The Philippines asks its fellow members of ASEAN to back up its territorial claims.

 China says, “Relax…There will be time for that.” 

 So, what’s the story, ASEAN?

PNoy’s Lament 

17th ASEAN Summit annual post of leaders
(from: http://leanporquia.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/after-vietnam-then-what/)

Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III appealed for regional cooperation to address territorial disputes in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) at the 21st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Cambodia. Earlier this year, Philippine forces engaged in a standoff with China over the disputed Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal in the West Philippine Sea. Both camps eventually pulled their ships out from the territory, but the Philippines lodged a diplomatic protest against China for the incident.

Aquino said that ASEAN member-states should establish a regional code of conduct on the disputed region, recognizing “the need for maritime security and cooperation in ensuring freedom of navigation, in combating piracy, and in maintaining peace and stability in our region.”

 The Philippines and China are both claiming the Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal and portions of the Spratly Islands, a string of atolls and islands straddling vital shipping lanes in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea).

China has been pushing for a bilateral approach to the territorial disputes, while the Philippines is standing pat, at last, on its position to involve ASEAN in coming up with a multilateral solution to the issue. The Philippines at first seemed just a bit too quick in confronting China with US support before it could consolidate ASEAN solidarity. As a result, for the first time in its long history, ASEAN did not seem united in an approach to a common problem.

The claimants Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia only agreed now to meet on this agenda item next month, 12^th December. China claims the entire South China Sea region, including the Spratly Islands, which are believed to sit atop rich oil and gas deposits and straddle one of the world’s busiest sea-lanes, carrying 14 or more trillion dollars worth of cargo, particularly energy cargo, yearly across the narrow straights and choke points, from Hormuz through Malacca, from the Indian Ocean connecting to the Asean waters and the Pacific.

China (not a member of ASEAN) prefers, understandably, to try to negotiate disputes with each of these far less powerful individual claimants and has criticized Washington’s attempts to get involved in the issue. The US Secretary of Defense, however, will not listen to this and has reiterated the intention of the U.S. military to shift its attention and resources back to Asia (which they never left in any case).

Unbelievable as it may sound, this is the fact: all maritime diplomacy is ultimately gunboat diplomacy.

Is this what emboldened America’s long-time ally the Philippines and former foe Vietnam to take a tougher stance against Beijing (Vietnam’s foe of a thousand years)? Aside from the very real US naval presence in the region is the fact that the US has practically turned Mindanao of the Philippines and the Philippines as a whole into a veritable modern American base with “Visiting Forces” never ever leaving a great host.

President Aquino is not bashful about welcoming America’s “rebalancing towards the Asian region” saying that it adds a “special dimension” to regional discussions on issues with wider political and economic implications. “It is especially vital to have the world’s largest national economy involved in the discussions considering the interconnectedness of our current milieu,” Aquino said in Cambodia.

A Movement Within

Within the Aquino administration itself, however, are powerful allies of the President who have crossed the line and filed a Joint Senate-House Resolution against the overstaying heavily armed visitors. Senator Miriam Santiago who can argue a case like a former judge can, and a constitutional scholar to boot, forms a team with Congressman Walden Bello, the radical author, who has made it a lifelong endeavor to rid the Philippines of all invasion forces, including those euphemistically named “visiting” ones.

The two argue that the “visiting” US Armed Forces have actually made permanent structures in Mindanao, making a mockery of the term “visiting.” They say that this kind of visit is actually a permanent visit. Their visit has lasted some thirteen years and they are actually misleading us about its nature and purpose.

The visitors, of course, if ever asked, have a ready explanation in that an “Executive Agreement”  – one crafted post-Cory Aquino, during General Ramos’ presidential term – invited them back in, and they merely took up the invitation after the post-Edsa Philippine Senate drove them out of Subic and Clark, the two biggest US military bases at the time outside mainland USA.

In sum, driven out by the Philippine Senate as undesirable residents, the US armed forces were invited back in by the Philippine Executive as permanent guests. And, boy, is the Philippines ever so hospitable to these guests? And which Philippine Chief Executive first invited them back in? Senator Santiago’s “best friend” Eddie (Fidel V. Ramos), whom she has constantly accused of stealing her presidential victory in 1992.

Santiago, in fact, may precisely look with glee at the possibility of investigating Ramos and pointing out that in this Republic such agreements are made through the Senate, the body that per the Philippine Constitution possesses policy-making powers in foreign relations.

So now, according to Santiago, once the Senate and the House approve separately the joint resolution that she and Bello are set to file, the joint resolution would immediately go to the President for approval without any need for a bicameral conference of the two legislative houses. If the President does not sign it in 30 days, it would become law and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs would then have to send the notice of termination to the US Embassy here.

But, of course, it wouldn’t be that easy: the President has the power to veto the joint resolution. And, before anything else, unless he agrees to convince enough legislators to support the joint resolution, the Bello-Santiago effort would have to be considered dead at start, a terrible joke. Putting it bluntly, neither a Bello nor a Santiago can ever be suspected of possessing such persuasive powers.

Cory Aquino could not stop the Senate from kicking the US out of Subic and Clark. In this regard, PNoy is more powerful than his Mom. He surely knows that the toys he’s been getting from the Americans to eventually patrol our sovereign shores are nothing compared to having the Americans themselves – aircraft carriers, warm bodies with all the paraphernalia of modern warfare “securing” the Spratlys and all ASEAN waters from any threats coming from anywhere. Don’t expect the guy, then, to whisper to even a single legislator to support the Bello-Santiago exercise in futility.

 SLOCS 

There was a time, within a generation’s memory, when there was as yet no ASEAN. Former colonies very much looked towards their former colonizers for trade and aid, not caring about their neighbors or each other’s history. There was a Pacific Institute (late 1960s through the seventies)[1]then with members around Asia-Pacific who understood rather clearly that ASEAN it was that sat on the strategic waterways, the Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCS), that all the big powers were most concerned with. These powers included not only Japan, the US and China but also Russia and India. It was for ASEAN to realize that its position was pivotal in any pattern of security cooperation. It could, in fact, be the major instrument helping to balance those powers off vis-à-vis each other – a role that should also help the ASEAN states maintain harmony among themselves.

While strategic in conception, ASEAN was always striving to be economic in tone – talking about economic cooperation and a common market among its 600 million people: “strategic” because ASEAN emerged in 1967 (after the fall of Sukarno) from the need for the non-communist nations of Southeast Asia to group together for protection against North Vietnam backed by China and Russia both of whom were seen to be expansionary communist states. Now, of course, all of Vietnam is part of ASEAN and so is all of old Indochina. Russia may still be a Pacific power – it will always be – but it is China that most others fear and court.

China claims the ASEAN waterways as hers. Members of the Pacific Institute more than   forty years ago understood that in the very long run (which is now?) China would be a major problem because until the modern European era it had always been at the center of the world while most of us were on the periphery, from their habitual viewpoint in any case.

But surely their tactics can temporarily change, particularly given a “new leadership” like it has now? Their outgoing leaders just may have miscalculated how ASEAN and the USA would respond to broader Chinese territorial claims, warily regard China’s higher international profile and more aggressive stance. The new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, provides China an occasion to project a new face literally and figuratively. Does it pay to always underscore the establishment of China as a naval power, and the declining commercial and military status of imperial USA – which very few in ASEAN believe

Truth be told, ASEAN has more say now than ever, but it must get into the habit of being that – an authentic association of Southeast Asian nations. FINIS.