Indonesia played host to many ASEAN political and military events in July and August of this year, including the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), a meeting of the defense ministers, a meeting of the Association’s defense and foreign ministers, and a maritime forum. The Western-led confrontation in the region required the leaders of the ASEAN states to declare a firm, consolidated position on the inadmissibility of military adventures threatening the peace and security of the region’s countries being launched by the West in the Association’s traditional responsibility zone. Unfortunately, no such statement took place.
The only recent statement was arguably Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi’s speech at the Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum (EAMF) on August 3 of this year, in which she stated that the Indo-Pacific region must remain a peaceful territory free of military alliances formed to dominate other countries. However, she urged Southeast Asian countries, rather than Western powers, to establish ways and means to regulate their behavior in the waterways of the Indo-Pacific region.
Overall, it appears that ASEAN is purposefully disregarding the significant changes in the military-strategic environment in its own region and is instead operating in the same manner as before, concentrating on financial-economic and trade policies.
At the same time, a new anti-Chinese military and political alliance between the United States, Japan, and South Korea is taking shape and is now fully in operation. Everything indicates that Washington has completed the most difficult stage: the dismantling of historical and political barriers to closer Tokyo-Seoul relations. Indeed, who would have predicted a year ago that the ROK leader would call Japan a partner and say that his country shares universal values and common interests in security and economic cooperation in a speech commemorating an anniversary of the National Liberation Day on August 15, 1945? The same nation that ruthlessly exploited the work of the local populace during Korea’s annexation, coerced people to take part in hostilities, and coerced women into prostitution.
It could hardly be assumed that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs would respond with no more than disappointment on behalf of the Foreign Ministry to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s ritual offering and a personal visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, regarded as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism, by Japan’s economy minister Yasutoshi Nishimura; Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Sanae Takaichi, as well as a group of 69 parliamentarians and the Liberal Democratic Party’s Policy Research Council Chairperson Koichi Hagiuda.
It didn’t take long for the USA to take the next step toward building a powerful trilateral alliance. The first-ever summit of the leaders of the United States, Japan, and the Republic of Korea (ROK), took place on August 18, 2023, in Camp David outside of Washington, D.C., rather than on the sidelines of international events. The summit’s known outcomes show that South Korea’s previous cautious positions on a number of issues deemed critical by the ROK are all gone.
The three nations agreed to hold annual joint exercises to improve military cooperation, according to the leaders’ joint statement. Seoul has never before taken part in joint training exercises between the United States and Japan. The ROK has also fully embraced the well-known Washington and Tokyo anti-China narrative by criticizing and opposing “the dangerous and aggressive behavior of the People’s Republic of China in the South China Sea, which is contrary to the rules-based international order and undermines regional peace and prosperity.” Obviously under pressure from the United States, the Yoon Suk-yeol administration appears to have “made up its mind” about how to handle the Russian-Ukrainian crisis. According to the joint statement, South Korea, one of the three nations, pledged to continue supporting Ukraine, execute coordinated, tough sanctions against Russia, and accelerate the process of reducing reliance on Russian energy.
This enables us to formally announce the formation of yet another military-political group with American roots that is dedicated to carrying out a Washington-imposed anti-Chinese strategy.
This development was not ignored in China, which noted in a statement from its national Foreign Ministry that no government should prioritize its own security at the expense of other nations or the preservation of regional peace and stability.
Only ASEAN, which depends on the stability and predictability of the situation in the Asia-Pacific area, remained silent in response to this news. The Association has hardly given any notice to the multilateral exercise comprising India, Australia, Japan, and the US, which was held off the coast of Sydney from August 11–21, the first one since the formation of another pro-American bloc, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), nor did it notice the US-Korea multinational joint exercise, which started on the Korean Peninsula on August 21. Furthermore, one should not expect ASEAN’s reaction to current US, Japan, Australia and the Philippines, an Association member, joint navy drills in the area of the South China Sea disputed by several states, including China.
Does it remain unclear to anyone in ASEAN that the aforementioned military drills, along with numerous others sponsored by the US and other Western nations, are putting the region at risk of disaster? As a result, the association’s future is very dim, and the same might apply to the individual member states.
A number of preparatory activities at the working group level and high ministerial level will take place prior to the ASEAN Summit, which will take place in Indonesia early in September. It is dreadful to even think that the obvious systematic actions of the West, which are pushing the situation in Asia-Pacific towards an uncontrollable confrontation with the possibility of it escalating into a hot conflict, will go unnoticed and without a proper response from the leaders of the ASEAN states, as they did during the Association’s ministerial meeting in July of this year. Isn’t it time the Association listened to the sensible signals from China and other responsible powers that the countries of the region should maintain increased vigilance against the West and not permit other countries to resolve their problems “using the hands of others” to avoid damaging their own interests in Southeast Asia?
Fernando Gaillardot, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”