Book Reviews : ASEAN and the Security of South-East Asia, by Michael Leifer. London: Routledge, 1989. 208pp. £30.00
| Published date | 01 May 1989 |
| DOI | 10.1177/004711788900900518 |
| Date | 01 May 1989 |
| Author | Anthony Short |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
469
ASEAN
and
the
Security
of
South-East
Asia,
by
Michael
Leifer.
London:
Routledge,
1989.
208pp.
£30.00.
In
1988,
ASEAN -
the
Association
of
South-East
Asian
Nations -
celebrated
its
twenty-first
birthday.
Not
a
lot
of
people
know
that;
nor
could
many
of
them
tell
you
what
it
does.
Indeed,
popular
investigative
journalists
may
one
day
approach
the
mystery
of
ASEAN.
Does
it
have
a
sex
life?
Is
it
an
oriental
eunuch?
Or,
should
one
say,
is
it
biologically
relevant
to
the
facts
of life
in
Sout-East
Asia?
Michael
Leifer
of
the
London
School
of
Economics,
and
the
moist
experienced
and
perhaps
the
most
knowledgeable
British
observer
and
analyst
of
South-East
Asian
affairs,
provides
here
the
natural
history
of
ASEAN
and,
like
a
good
ecologist, sets
it
in
the
context
of
South-East
Asian
security.
As
he
points
out,
whenever
governments
get
together
with
security
in
mind
it
is
usual
for
their
collective
enterprise
to
assume
some
military
form.
ASEAN,
paradoxically,
and
in
spite
of
what
he
calls
its
abiding
preoccu-
pation
with
problems
of
regional
security,
has
been
a
notable
exception
to
this
rule.
Why?
The
immediate
answer
would
seem
to
be
that
no
one
quite
knows
what
it
is
that
it
is
supposed
to
do.
Is
it
’collective
political
defence’?
It
is
’collective
internal
security’?
Or
was
it
the
detumescent
phase
of
neutralism
in
which
its
members
provided
each
other
with
a
certain
degree
of
emotional
security?
In
its
origins,
says
Leifer,
it
was
’an
institutional
product
of
regional
conflict
resolu-
tion’
in
which
a
convergence
of
political
outlook
replaced
the
spasmodic
violence of
confrontation
between
those
Malay
cousins,
Malaysia
and
Indonesia.
To
begin
with,
then,
one
obvious
purpose
was
to
harness
what
he
calls
’the
restless
political
energy
of
Indonesia’
although
that
almost
immediately
raised
the
question
of whether,
within
the
diplomatic
alignment
which
ASEAN
provided,
Indonesia
was
to
be
accorded
what
she
regarded,
not
least
because
of
her
size,
as
her
rightful
position
as
leader
of
South-East
Asia.
This
almost
immediately,
too,
raised
a
second
question
which
Leifer
is
quick
to
identify.
Is
the
balance
of
power
something
to
be
maintained
by
South-East
Asian
states
alone?
Or
does
it,
inevitably,
have
to
involve
connections
with
the
great
powers
and
their
relations
with
each
other?
For
a
state
like
Malaysia,
even
more
for
Singapore
which,
had
it
been
left
to
itself,
would
almost
certainly
have
been
overlain
by
Indonesia
in
its
Confrontation
mood,
Indonesia’s
change
of
heart
was
obviously
welcome.
But
was
it
enough?
Or,
as
Singapore’s
first
Head
of
State
put
it,
in
a
well
chosen
quotation,
’So
many
of
our
neighbours
and
we
ourselves
would
not
have
a
separate
existence
if
purely
Asian
forces
were
to
settle
the
shape
of decolonised
Asia’.
Even
if
it
should
no
longer
be
assumed
that
one
member
of
ASEAN
might
gobble
up
another,
each
of
them
had
its
own
preoccupations
and
predilections
out
of
which
some
semblance
of
common
purpose
had
to
be
wrought.
Thus,
the
Philippine
claim
to
Sabah
rumbled
on,
Malaysia
retaliated,
and
there
were
other
episodes
of
what
Leifer
calls
’intramural
tension’.
Indonesia
proclaimed
its
doctrine
of
national
resilience.
Malaysia,
tentatively,
proposed
some
sort
of
neutralisation
of
South-East
Asia
but
this
was
almost
immediately
smothered
by
the
less
than
magic
acronym
ZOPFAN:
South-
East
Asia
as
a
Zone
of
Peace
Freedom
and
Neutrality.
After
the
Northern
victory
in
the
second
Vietnamese
war
it
looked
as
if Indo-China,
at
any
rate,
was
going
to
be
anything
but
a
Zone
Of
Peace
Freedom
And
Neutrality,
and
for
a
while
the
challenge
of
triumphal
communism
seemed
to
provide
enough
cement
to
hold
the
ASEAN
states
together.
In
the
event,
however,
it
was
the
unexpected
after-
math
of
the
Vietnam
War -
the
Vietnamese
invasion
of
Kampuchea -
which
in
effect
drove
a
coach
and
horses
through
ASEAN’s
pretensions
to
solidarity.
Even
though
the
Vietnamese
were
mistaken
in
believing
that
in
two
weeks
the
world
would
have
for-
gotten
the
Kampuchean
problem,
one
has
still
to
be
persuaded
that
ASEAN
has
played
an
honourable
part,
at
least
collectively,
in
its
proposed
solution
to
the
problem
so
far.
The
extinction
of
Kampuchea’s
national
sovereignty
is
one
thing.
The
overthrow
of
that
monstrous
Pol
Pot
regime
was,
perhaps,
something
else.
As
Leifer
points
out,
ASEAN
was
very
quickly
drawn
primarily
into
the
service
of
Thai
interests.
Understandably,
as
To continue reading
Request your trial