Habits of peace: Long-term regional cooperation in Southeast Asia
| Author | Aarie Glas |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1354066116679878 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066116679878
European Journal of
International Relations
2017, Vol. 23(4) 833 –856
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066116679878
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E
JR
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Habits of peace: Long-term
regional cooperation in
Southeast Asia
Aarie Glas
University of Toronto, Canada
Abstract
The nation-states that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are widely
described to be peaceful in their relations with each other, so much so that scholars
have referred to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ “long peace.” While it
is true that war eludes the region, interstate militarized disputes remain a persistent
feature. How can we account for the absence of war between Association of Southeast
Asian Nations members in light of persistent militarized disputes? To address this
question, this article builds on the emerging International Relations literature on habits
and practice in interstate relations. I develop a framework centred on the habitual
dispositions of communities of practitioners that focuses on the unreflexive cognitive and
behavioural qualities of regional relations. These “habits of peace” circumscribe thinking
and behaviour among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ state practitioners.
Specifically, they have led to a toleration of limited violence among Association of
Southeast Asian Nations member states. After tracing the existence of these habitual
qualities of relations, I demonstrate their effects on regional crisis response, which
makes possible community building and maintenance alongside considerable levels of
interstate violence. I explore this through an in-depth analysis of the regional response
to the 2011 Preah Vihear crisis between Cambodia and Thailand.
Keywords
Association of Southeast Asian Nations, constructivism, crisis response, diplomacy,
habits, long peace, norms, practice
Corresponding author:
Aarie Glas, University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, Rm 3018, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON
Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada.
Email: aarie.glas@utoronto.ca
679878EJT0010.1177/1354066116679878European Journal of International RelationsGlas
research-article2016
Article
834 European Journal of International Relations 23(4)
Introduction
On 15 October 2008, the Charter of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
came into effect. The 10 member states — Cambodia, Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, the
Philippines, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — bound themselves
to shared principles and norms of pacific regional relations, and six months later devised
a blueprint for an ambitious regional community to further deepen their integration.
However, surrounding the progress of this regional project, militarized conflict remained.
In 2008 and 2011, violent clashes along the Thai–Cambodian border displaced as many
as 100,000 people and saw the use of tanks, heavy artillery and cluster munitions between
these ASEAN member states (International Crisis Group, 2011). Similarly, in 2005,
long-running tensions between Indonesia and Malaysia gave rise to a confrontation of
nine warships off the Sipadan and Ligitan islands, with Indonesian military officials
claiming their intent to “crush Malaysia” (Guerin, 2005). How can we account for the
absence of war between ASEAN members in light of persistent militarized disputes?
If peace is defined merely as the absence of war, and the region as defined through
formal membership to ASEAN, then Southeast Asia has been exceptionally peaceful
since ASEAN’s founding in 1967. There have been no wars among regional states when
these states have been ASEAN members, and thus some scholars view the region as dem-
onstrating a “long peace” (e.g. Kacowicz, 1998; Kivimaki, 2001). This may suggest that
the organizational form of ASEAN has played an important role in the establishment and
maintenance of peace in the region (Ba, 2009). This puzzle and the potential response are
in some ways misleading, however, as there remains a pervasive level of violent and mili-
tarized interstate disputes, even among ASEAN members. The region lacks the deeply
institutionalized organizational structures, democratic regimes and economic interde-
pendence that liberal-institutionalist theories associate with long peace. Similarly, there
appears no regional hegemon or hard balancing behaviours often associated with long
peace. Further, the “we-ness” inherent in ideational explanations of lasting peace is not
entirely apparent in the region either (Adler and Barnett, 1998). As a senior Malaysian
diplomat suggested, “maybe we don’t have the community identity and the ‘we-ness’ [as
in Europe], but we know that ASEAN is for us and we know that it moves us forward.”1
To address this puzzle, I build on Vincent Pouliot’s (2008: 259) suggestion that “peace
exists in and through practice when security officials’ practical sense makes diplomacy
the self-evident way to solving interstate disputes.” I argue that this is the case in Southeast
Asia. Here, regional relations are circumscribed by particular and practical habits of coop-
eration that generate a tolerance of limited violence between states. I argue that a focus on
habitual dispositions helps us understand community building alongside sustained levels
of interstate violence and long-term patterns of conflict and cooperation more broadly.
This article is structured over four parts. First, I survey recent social-constructivist
literature and outline the concept of habitual dispositions. Here, I pay particular attention
to the relationship between practice and norms. From this discussion, I briefly posit the
origins of habitual dispositions and the methodological challenges of recognizing them.
In the second section, I outline the conflictual long peace of the region. In the third, I
make use of interviews with 40 practitioners and scholars in the region, alongside docu-
mentary analysis, to describe the habits of Southeast Asian regional diplomacy and
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