It’s a very touchy and sensitive question. So far, debate on the testy question on mutual security has been muted and official comments are invariably circumspect.
Opinions among member countries differ considerably as these tread delicately on the matter. Yet, the matter is being addressed with cold soberness.
But the fact that the issues are being discussed at all indicate that the winds of change are blowing in the thinking of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
As the matter is of pressing importance to individual ASEAN governments, it had caused for the first time in 2019 for its ten members to team up with the United States in a historic maritime exercise in the Indo-Pacific Region meant to develop cooperation among ASEAN’s security forces and which gives the message across the aisle that it is of strategic partnership.
It was hosted by Indonesia and was seen as a rare show of unity and also underpinned what was called “ASEAN centrality.”
And to what country does the ASEAN message is being beamed? It is none other than to China.
What does that multi-exercise connote? Unobtrusively yet steadily, the ASEAN governments are putting more muscle in their armed forces to project security cooperation within their territorial sea borders.
As an afterthought, they are the countries in Asia silently beefing up their armed forces for a possible armed confrontation they fervently hope to prevent at all cost. Asia and the Pacific are delicately navigating a new risk through the ghosts of old conflicts.
Faced with territorial threats and massive military build-up by China, countries within the region are upping their defense expenditure, cranking up weapons manufacture, joining joint country trainings and developing further combat-ready underpinnings.
Tension has forced these countries to re-examine whether they might find some security in mutual defense arrangements, the geometric deterrence through close defense cooperation and peaceful co-existence.
Look at non-ASEAN members of Japan. US and Japan top level authorities reiterated their commitment to champion a free and open Indo-Pacific Region as the cornerstone of regional peace, security and prosperity.
But with no guarantee that the security environment in the Indo-Pacific will chill out anytime soon, military spending by ASEAN and other Asian countries will continue to accelerate.
Take the government of Brunei which allocated 440.3 million US dollars for the country’s defense budget for 2022-23. Cambodia has set aside 8.2 billion US dollars or 25.8 percent of its total budget for defense.
Indonesia apportioned 9.3 billion US dollars for military purposes; Laos, 0.2 billion US dollars; Malaysia, 3.97 billion US dollars; Myanmar, 2.11 million US dollars; the Philippines, 4.9 billion US dollars; Singapore, 11.12 billion US dollars; Thailand, 6.60 billion US dollars and, Vietnam; 5.50 billion US dollars.
Mutual defense arrangements or not, many of the ASEAN nations have been forced to raise their defense expenditures as the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand including non-ASEAN nation Taiwan continue to beef up their military in the face of increasingly bold incursions in the region by China.
In the past, a military pact between members of ASEAN has hitherto been a taboo subject because it was felt any defense arrangement would inflame China and be considered provocative.
It can be remembered that years ago, ASEAN, founded in 1967 by original members Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, came under verbal attack by Vietnam – which was not yet an ASEAN member then- which accused the ASEAN was a military alliance rather than a cultural and economic grouping. The verbal lambasting was egged on by Moscow that time.
Later, Vietnam joined ASEAN in 1995. Countries composing ASEAN today are: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam.
In the Philippines, the government has given green light for the United States to use four places across the country to extend security options for the Philippines, such an agreement looked upon by China with trepidation, even as it continues to bully the Philippines.
Last Monday, ASEAN member Philippines hosted a multi-national naval drill with military personnel of the Philippines, Britain, Canada, Japan and the US joining forces amid the flaring regional tension. It will run until October 13.
It came on the heels of an incident wherein China placed barriers at Scarborough Shoal, a rocky outcrop within the territorial jurisdiction of the Philippines. In a “special operation,” Philippine authorities removed the barrier.
Regarding the incident, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., explained the Philippines does not want any confrontation with China but it will staunchly defend its waters.
In other realms outside of ASEAN, a new runway is being carved from the jungles of the tiny island of Tinian in Japan to accommodate warplanes for drills in the North Pacific.
ASEAN member Singapore, which draws people and capital from Beijing, still depends on the US for regional security. It had renewed a pact that grants US forces access to the Lion City’s naval and air bases.
Last September, US President Joe Biden successfully secured deals with ASEAN member Vietnam on semiconductors and minerals as the Southeast Asian nation lifted Washington to Hanoi’s highest diplomatic status.
Biden and Vietnam’s General Secretary agreed to “welcome further cooperation in defense industry and defense trade” between the two countries in accordance with the needs of Vietnam.
Nearly fifty-two years after the fall of Saigon in which the US lost in the Vietnam War, there is tacit acknowledgement that China poses a greater geopolitical threat today than the two countries do to each other.
However, such a Vietnam arrangement does not sit well with China which claimed in an official statement that China “attaches importance to party-to-party and state-to-state relationship between the two countries.”
Analyzing such a scenario, Zachary Abuza, professor of the National War College in Washington still believes that “China is more important to Vietnam than the US,” despite all the rhetoric.
Beyond military exercises, ASEAN and the US are closely linked economically which took root 40 years ago, hence the relationship is more than just military.
Core of the regional tension arises from China’s infamous 9-dash line, a U-shaped demarcation line supposedly covering the maritime territories affecting the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei.
The invalid 9-dash line was officially refuted in 2016 when an international tribunal in Hague, Netherlands declared it as “bogus and had no legal basis for maritime claims.”
For the Philippines, it won its case against China when the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled China’s 9-dash line is invalid “and there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights within the sea falling within its supposed 9-dash line.”
The ruling infuriated China and refused to accept the ruling. This year, it released a new map that features a 10-dash line, sparking anger and strong opposition among its Asian neighbors.
Conversely, in the face of China not backing down in its desire to grab territorial spaces from independent Asian nations, allies of these countries like the US, Australia, Japan, South Korea, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-grouped countries need to retool their response to the geostrategic challenges facing ASEAN and other non-ASEAN countries.
To be blunt, China has waged a “gunboat diplomacy” in the South China Sea, by bullying its maritime neighbors into accepting its territorial claims of “indisputable sovereignty” and control over 90 per cent of the sea. But the cost of China’s coercion continues to mount.
Hostile actions have cost China scuttling of regional partnerships while bolstering Asian nations to gravitate towards the US and other western powers. Hence the US and other allies need to confront the task of deterring Chinese coercion – as a multilateral task. And not merely from the military point of view.
Observers closely monitoring the Indo-Pacific scene offered some important matters these allies can take into consideration, like establishing new multilateral forums and linkages between European and Indo-pacific allies, refocusing US allies on domestic resilience and collective defense of their own regions.
On another front, observers speak of establishing deeper interoperability not only in the military domain, (this is already being done by Asian nations like the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Japan) but also in non-kinetic areas and pooling allied innovation advantages to counter the growing technological influence of China.
If these cannot be realized, observers say China will continue repeatedly to exploit these fissures within and between allies.