With the end of the Cold War the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) world was freed from the tensions and risks arising from the confrontation of two military pacts, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact Organization, which had kept each other in check for nearly four decades mainly by means of nuclear deterrence. In Southeast Asia, the confrontation fed first by the bipolar and later the tripolar great power rivalry between the United States, the Soviet Union and China also receded.
Today, the likelihood of inter-state wars in Southeast Asia is greatly diminished, although – unlike in the OECD world – territorial disputes and conflicting claims in maritime areas still linger. Most of them have not been resolved, but rather bracketed or swept under the carpet. The still most contested issue is the demarcation of maritime borders in the South China Sea where at least six claimants – China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei – have occupied atolls and islets in the Spratly archipelago and erected military installations. The South China Sea is believed to be rich in natural gas, oil and fish, although there are conflicting estimates about the size of the deposits. As early as 1992, ASEAN’s Manila Declaration sought to oblige all claimants to abstain from actions which would heighten tensions in the area. However, ASEAN’s policy of restraint initially fell on deaf ears in China. As a latecomer among the claimants, China passed a law on the territorial sea and the contiguous zone in February 1992 on which it based its U-shaped claim covering almost the entire South China Sea. In 1995, China occupied Mischief Reef, which was claimed by the Philippines as part of their Kalayaan islands, and in 1998 it reinforced the structures set up there in 1995. While Beijing proposed joint development of the resources, it refused to enter into multilateral negotiations, insisting on bilateral talks which would have given it an edge over its neighbors. However, increased American military presence in the region after September 11, 2001, and the obvious commitment of the U.S. to support allies as displayed in the Taiwan crisis of 1996 have convinced the Chinese that an accommodation with ASEAN is a less costly option than unilateral pursuit of claims. In 2002 Beijing eventually signed a declaration on conduct in the South China Sea which was earlier discussed in various rounds of negotiations between China and the Philippines and in ASEAN-China dialogue meetings. Although the declaration fails to meet ASEAN’s expectations, it denounces the use of force. It is the first multilateral declaration on the South China Sea signed by China, giving some credence to its “new security concept” (Buszynski). In October 2003 China was the first non- ASEAN state to accede to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), thus once more explicitly recognizing ASEAN norms of peaceful conflict resolution.
Other Asian hot spots which may trigger inter-state wars such as Taiwan, the Korean peninsula and Kashmir are located outside the region. Even if they explode into armed conflicts, their effects on Southeast Asia will be more of an indirect nature. They may increase the presence of external powers and militarize the region, but it is unlikely that they will draw the region into hostilities.
Invasions such as that of Cambodia by Vietnam in 1979 are now increasingly remote. The same may be said about border wars like those between Thailand and Laos in 1984 and 1987. Yet, occasional border skirmishes persist. A flash point in this respect is the Thai- Burmese border where incursions of Burmese troops on Thai territory, usually in hot pursuit of ethnic rebels, have repeatedly provoked armed clashes. Fiery nationalistic demagoguery reviving or keeping alive primordial stereotypes has occasionally also caused tensions, for example at the height of the Asian financial crisis between Indonesia and Malaysia on the one hand and Singapore on the other or even lead to riots as in Phnom Penh where in early 2003 a mob attacked and ransacked Thai property. In the end, however, in all these instances reason and peaceful mechanisms of dispute settlement prevailed.
Also supporting the convergence argument is the fact that, like much of the OECD world (except for Japan and South Korea), Southeast Asia is mainly threatened by nuclear proliferation outside the region. In the region, the danger of horizontal proliferation is next to zero. All three constraints on nuclear proliferation named by Rod Lyon exist in Southeast Asia: no or only restricted access to fissile material, lack of technological skill to build nuclear devices and the non-existence of any compelling motivation to overcome the first two barriers. While ASEAN has convincingly shown its intention to comply with the non- proliferation norm by establishing a Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ) in 1995, risks persist due to the fact that nuclear powers including India, Pakistan and North Korea have so far not acceded to the convention.
Less clear is the convergence argument in the area of conventional armaments. While after the end of the Cold War, the OECD world experienced a process of arms reduction, Southeast Asia was widely perceived as engaging in a veritable spree of buying weapons. Some of the weapons no longer used in the West even found their way to Southeast Asia as the sale of the GDR navy by the German federal government to Indonesia shows. This led some observers to speak of an unfolding arms race, motivated partly by substantial increases in Chinese and Indian defense spendings and partly by the scramble for resource-rich maritime zones. Others were less alarmist and spoke of a process of arms modernization and an adjustment of defense capabilities to the increased economic potentials. Yet, as the increases in defense expenditures were substantial in absolute terms and as arms modernization pursued the objective of power projection, the concern of observers could not entirely be dismissed. For the outside observer it was particularly worrying that in most countries military modernization was widely accepted by the public as a symbol of national strength. Unlike in the West, there was, with the exception of some members of the local and transnational NGO community, no pacifist movement pushing for disarmament.
(Adapted from Ruland J 2004: The Nature of Southeast Asian Security Challenges)