ASEAN's Non-Interference Policy
Introduction
Scholars generally agree that ASEAN member states rarely intervene in each other's internal affairs or those of other states.
Many commentators attribute ASEAN's inaction on critical issues, such as the Asian financial crisis and the situation in Myanmar, to non-interference.
This article challenges this consensus, arguing that non-interference has been repeatedly violated.
Non-interference has been governed by the interests of the region's dominant social forces in maintaining particular social and political orders, not by 'normative' beliefs or 'national interests.'
Increasing pluralism and intensified conflicts within ASEAN societies, as well as challenges from geopolitical changes and economic globalization, have generated powerful challenges to the non-interference principle.
While the principle formally remains in place, it is now subject to competing demands and contestation.
Challenging the Consensus on ASEAN and Non-Interference
Analysts of ASEAN widely agree that non-interference is central to Southeast Asian regional politics.
Constructivists argue that ASEAN created regional order by cultivating the 'ASEAN way,' a web of norms or a 'regional identity,' with non-interference as the most important principle (Acharya 2001: 3–4, 16–21, 24–6, 57).
Realists concur on the centrality of non-interference, asserting it was broken only twice: in 1986 (Philippines) and 1997 (Cambodia) (Leifer 1999: 35–6).
ASEAN's international prominence was founded on its defense of ‘the sanctity of sovereignty’ following Vietnam’s 1978 invasion of Cambodia (Leifer 1989: 14).
International society scholars agree that member states have broken ASEAN principles, but only to defend their own sovereignty (Narine, 2006: 212–3).
Many scholars emphasize the ‘regime security’ benefits of non-interference (Ayoob 1995: 71).
Singapore’s prime minister stated: ‘we don’t set out to change the world and our neighbours. The culture of ASEAN is that we do not interfere’ (Economist 1992).
Non-interference is blamed for preventing ASEAN from confronting important problems (Huxley 2002: 83–4; Rahim 2008).
Scholars have warned that ‘either interference becomes legitimate, or the Association will become increasingly meaningless’ (Moller 1998: 1104).
A senior Singaporean diplomat admits that ASEAN has been 'interfering mercilessly in each other’s internal affairs for ages'.
ASEAN’s former secretary-general, Rodolfo Severino (2006: 94), insists that the application of non-interference is governed by ‘pragmatic considerations’ and accordingly ‘has not been absolute’.
Scholars acknowledge historic exceptions to the norm, but then reassert the norm’s dominance without explanation, generating inconsistencies.
Chin (2007: 397) identifies the adoption of ‘a “soft-interventionist approach . . . on seemingly domestic issues’ while claiming that ASEAN’s ‘security community’ rests on ‘the so-called ASEAN modus operandi of non-interference’.
Constructivists downplay interventions as merely ‘testing’ non-interference (Acharya 2001: 108–16).
Realists acknowledge Indonesia’s 1975 annexation of East Timor, but assert that ‘non-violation of national sovereignty is regarded by Jakarta as a central precept of any system of regional order’ (Leifer 1983: 167).
Prevailing theoretical approaches lack the capacity to explain ASEAN state intervention, resorting to downplaying or explaining away intervention in an ad hoc manner.
The formal rule of non-interference exists alongside decades of violations, and both can be explained with reference to the social conflicts animating ASEAN states.
Sovereignty norms coexist with intervention, consistent with Stephen Krasner’s (1999: 7, 9) argument that sovereignty is 'organised hypocrisy'.
Rulers make ‘calculations of material and ideational interests’ and violate non-intervention whenever this will ‘promote the security, prosperity and values of their constituents’.
Krasner provides no social or political theory for this purpose, betraying his prior judgement that states’ foreign policies are autonomous from their respective societies (Krasner 1978).
Liberal theory focuses on domestic political coalitions and institutions, neglecting the way that capitalist development influences social forces and struggles.
Southeast Asian states are not neutral instruments of competing ‘interest groups’ but expressions of power formed through social conflict within a context of capitalist development and geopolitical changes (Jessop 2008).
The character of state power revealed by political economists is directly relevant for understanding the international behaviour of ASEAN states, including (non)intervention.
The meaning and application of non-interference depends on the strategies adopted by state managers to further the interests of dominant social groups against their domestic and foreign opponents.
The overall coherence of non-interference at the regional level corresponds to the similarity of dominant forces’ interests and strategies.
The Cold War: Counter-Revolution and Containment
ASEAN's foundational normative documents affirm non-interference, but this emphasis is explained by the social conflicts of the time.
During the Cold War, ASEAN societies were intensely divided between defenders and opponents of the capitalist social, economic, and political order.
Ruling elites enunciated non-interference to maintain the status quo but violated the principle to thwart revolutionary movements.
In 1967, member states feared communist takeovers.
Malaysia: combating the Malayan Communist Party (MCP).
Thailand: Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) had initiated armed struggle.
Philippines: communist insurgents were also active.
Singapore: gripped by a red scare (Lee 2000).
Indonesia: Suharto regime had just come to power through an anti-communist pogrom (Van der Kroef 1970: 51).
ASEAN was founded to defend the social order. Singapore’s prime minister explained that the unspoken objective was to gain strength through solidarity ahead of the power vacuum (Lee 2000: 369–70).
Non-interference supported this agenda:
Internally: stabilized relationships via UN and NAM principles.
Externally: insulated ASEAN societies from subversive external influences.
ASEAN elites depicted domestic upheavals as flowing from external subversion by China and Indochinese states (Huxley 1983).
While member states ceased intervening against one another, extra-ASEAN interventions continued.
Thailand: sponsored Burmese rebel groups, deployed military forces in Laos, and sponsored right-wing guerrilla forces in Laos and Cambodia.
Philippines and Thailand: sent troops and engineers to the Vietnam War.
Malaysia: provided military training and civil assistance to South Vietnam.
Indonesia: volunteered to funnel US-made weapons covertly to Cambodia, offered peacekeepers, and hosted an aid conference for Lon Nol’s anti-communist regime (Lawler 2006: 617, 619, 634–5, 640–1, 663–9, 679; US State Department 1970a, 1970b).
100 million a year worth of arms shipped by Bangkok to the deposed regime.
Admitted Indochina’s non-communist regimes to ASEAN as official observers (Severino 2006: 48).
Intensified MCP activities climaxed in August 1975 with the bombing of Malaysia’s national monument.
Thailand: prompted thousands to join the CPT insurgency (Anderson 1998: 171 ff).
Hanoi proclaimed solidarity with forces struggling for independence, democracy, peace and social progress’.
Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor (Singh 1996: 23–102).
Jakarta feared that impoverished East Timor would seek aid from Moscow or Beijing.
Heightened elite paranoia by contemporaneous urban unrest and the emergence of Frente Revolucionaria de Timor–Leste Independente (FRETILIN), a radical independence movement (Anderson 1995: 138–41).
Jakarta forged an alliance of anti-FRETILIN groups (Dunn 1983: ch. 4–11).
Malaysia was particularly supportive, broadcasting its support and covertly supplying arms to Jakarta (Inbaraj 1995: ch. 2–4; Roff 1992: 54, 61–2, 66; Van Dijk 1976).
ASEAN’s counter-revolutionary panic subsided after 1975.
Khmer Rouge (KR) regime began launching brutal raids on Vietnam.
When the Pol Pot regime was overthrown, ASEAN condemned Vietnam and its new puppet regime’ in Cambodia.
ASEAN and China rebuilt the forces of the KR and the anti-communist guerrilla groups now based in Thailand.
ASEAN successfully defended the KR’s occupancy of Cambodia’s UN seat, later forcing the guerrilla groups into a new coalition government-in-exile.
With the US, ASEAN states armed and supplied the anti-communist factions.
In exchange for ASEAN’s support against Hanoi, China stopped supporting ASEAN’s communist insurgencies and supplied aid to the Thai government (Jones 2007: 523–34).
The stabilization of capitalist social order in Thailand, in turn stabilized the rest of ASEAN.
Far from clinging to a cherished principle’ or being socialised’ into a norm of non-interference’, ASEAN states were principally engaged in defending a particular social order.
From Cold War to Crisis: The Rise of Capital
In the late 1980s, a new capitalist oligarchy, nurtured by ASEAN’s anti-communist, developmental states, began displacing their military–bureaucratic allies.
Non-interference was reconfigured to protect these domestic power relations from the West’s liberalizing agenda, anti-communist interventions were wound down, and intra-elite conflict produced continued meddling.
By the early 1990s a new class of business oligarchs had directly captured state power across the region to secure direct access to governmental largesse.
Marcos dictatorship was overthrown in 1986, facilitating the restoration of elite democracy’ (Hutchison 2006: 53–8).
Thailand’s military regime was replaced in 1988 by a parliamentary system dominated by parties serving as vehicles for business factions (Hewison 1996).
In Malaysia, networks of state-nurtured tycoons’ arose to dominate the ruling party, the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) (Gomez 2002).
The Indonesian military’s economic and political domination was gradually displaced by a cronyist network of conglomerate owners centered on Suharto (Robison 1986).
Communism’s anti-communist rationale evaporated.
The new threat to ASEAN states’ illiberal political and socio-economic structures was a perceived alliance between reformist, middle-class forces and Western powers, which were engaged in promoting market democracy and human rights.
Non-interference was thus re-deployed to insulate ASEAN’s domestic governance structures from internal and external challenges (Robison 1996).
In 1994, the non-governmental Asia-Pacific Conference on East Timor was due to convene in Manila.
The Philippine government abandoned its initially liberal posture and tried to suppress the conference.
ASEAN states’ counter-revolutionary interventions now impeded the new capitalist elite, who needed to source raw materials (Innes-Brown and Valencia 1993).
By the mid-1990s, ASEAN investors were among the largest in Myanmar and Cambodia (Jones 2007: 535; Jones 2008: 273).
However, the normalisation of relations with Myanmar and Cambodia was undermined by Thai generals and state-linked businessmen.
The black market trade with Cambodia through one province alone was estimated at 15–20 million per month by 1989 (Van der Kroef 1990: 231).
The combined annual value of drugs, weapons and arms smuggled through Burmese rebel groups around this time was estimated at around 5 billion (Lintner 1999: 403; Maung Aung Myoe 2001: 58).
The KR relaunched Cambodia’s civil war in 1994 (Jones 2007: 535, n. 9; Rungswasdisab 2006: 103–11).
Thai army units could even be bribed to intervene in battles along the border (Maung Aung Myoe 2001: 50–2).
Individual tycoons used state apparatuses to further their interests, sometimes in an interventionist manner.
Thai oligarch Thaksin Shinawatra’s ShinCorp firm was implicated in a bungled coup attempt against Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in 1994 (Adams 2007).
These episodes worsened the instability of Cambodia’s ruling coalition.
The influx of state-linked ASEAN capital intensified intra-coalitional competition ahead of the 1998 elections (Peou 2000: 373; Widyono 2008: 201–3).
This precipitated a violent breakdown of the coalition in July 1997.
ASEAN intervened to resolve this crisis by postponing Cambodia’s pending admission and imposing conditions for its entry (Jones 2007: 535–41).
Hun Sen’s repeated protestations that ASEAN was interfering in Cambodia’s internal affairs were ignored.
Non-interference was maintained to fend off criticism of ASEAN states’ illiberal internal power structures.
ASEAN in Crisis: The Interdependence of Social Orders
The 1997 Asian financial crisis plunged Southeast Asia into economic chaos.
Indonesia saw generations of development undone, with five million jobs disappearing and absolute poverty soaring to 70 per cent.
The crisis severely destabilized social forces in ASEAN.
Calls arose for non-interference to be revised explicitly to permit intra-ASEAN peer pressure’ (Surin 1998).
Anwar Ibrahim’s reformist faction was purged, spawning a middle-class reformasi movement.
Ruing oligarchs sought to retain the shield of non-interference’.
Suharto’s successor, President Habibie, decided to ease Western pressure by offering a referendum on independence in East Timor (O’Rourke 2002).
The Indonesian army also initiated a violent campaign to intimidate the Timorese (Tanter et al. 2006).
Malaysia’s prime minister and other ASEAN leaders stated that the referendum outcome must be respected (Associated Press 1999).
Malaysia and Thailand became the first countries to offer peacekeeping troops (AFP 1999d; BBC SWB 1999a; Bernama 1999; Kyodo 1999b).
Member states promoted and joined international intervention in East Timor in 1999.
Singapore stated it was shocked and outraged’ (Mahbubani 1999: 19–21).
Thailand was rallying ASEAN contributions for a prospective intervention force (Surin, 2002).
ASEAN personnel comprised a quarter of the International Force for East Timor (INTERFET) (Dupont 2000: 167).
Forces also comprised roughly one-fifth of the peacekeeping element of the subsequent UN Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET) (UNTAET 2000: 17).
It was those states with least experience of ASEAN socialisation’ that were least comfortable with violating non-interference.
Much to elite consternation, shortly after East Timor’s referendum, the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front declared its intention to seek a similar ballot in Mindanao.Manila explained its peacekeeping contributions were to pay back’ Jakarta for its previous assistance in Mindanao.
Efforts to formally dilute the norm failed.
ASEAN and Myanmar: The Long Shadow of Crisis
The financial crisis had long term impacts on the region.
Foreign investment in ASEAN halved from 1997–2002 (UNCTAD 2009).
Singapore’s foreign minister warned that perceptions of ASEAN as an ineffective sunset organisation’ (Jayakumar 2000).
Domestic changes have not automatically liberalized ASEAN states’ foreign policies (Walter 2008).
This is best demonstrated through the case of Myanmar, previously ‘battlefields-to-marketplaces’ in the early 1990s (Jones 2008: 273–5).
From 2000-2003, there were successes, however the junta reversed the actions by reincarcerating pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Malaysia’s prime minister suggested that ASEAN might otherwise expel Myanmar (Jones 2008: 279–82).
Domestically, liberal legislators formed the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus to push for a more forceful ASEAN policy (Jones 2009).
Myanmar was forced to relinquish its chairmanship.
The violent protests by buddhist monks in late 2007 led to the condemnation and working to compel Myanmar to accept foreign aid (Jones 2008: 282–7).
ASEAN condemned the violent crackdown on protests led by Buddhist monks in late 2007, and worked to compel Myanmar to accept foreign aid in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in 2008 (Jones 2008: 282–7).
Core member states also attempted to formally dilute the principle by developing an ASEAN Charter.
Commitments to liberal values sit awkwardly alongside the reaffirmation of non-interference and consensual decision-making in the final document.
That the newer member states’ are the historic targets of both ASEAN and superpower intervention merely reinforces their attachment to sovereignty.
Conclusion
A significant range of interventions by ASEAN states has been uncovered, from the containment of communism and social unrest to efforts to push Cambodia and Myanmar into internal political reforms.
The meaning and application of the norm has changed considerably over time, reflecting the changing pressures of social conflict, economic change, and the international political environment.
Constant behaviour from regime security concerns or powerful norms is not sustainable.
The increasingly conflicted and inconsistent persistence of the principle can be accounted for by the divergent interests of the dominant social forces and their opponents in ASEAN states.
We must look to conflict and contestation between the social forces that constitute states themselves.
QUESTIONS: What is the issue in 1986 of Philippines about violation of non-interference