The headline “Pakistan needs Indonesian
support for ASEAN membership” in yesterday’s Pakistan Daily
Times was jarring to see on the Google news widget on this blog yesterday. Only after reading the actual text of the
article could one determine that the interviewee, an Indonesian diplomat, was
actually talking about an ASEAN-Pakistan free trade agreement (FTAs), not
actual membership in ASEAN itself.
I write “jarring” but not
absurd in the above paragraph because South Asian countries such as Pakistan
have sought membership in ASEAN before.
Sri Lanka tried to join ASEAN at the time of its founding in 1967:
Suddenly the issue of Ceylon’s efforts to join ASEAN came
up. Tun Abdul Razak, who led the Malaysian delegation, announced that the
Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman “had made a promise” to the Prime
Minister of Ceylon “regarding Ceylon’s admission to the group”. An “undertaking
had been made and he, Razak, could not retract it”. The other delegates were
“stunned”. The geographical limits proposed for the organization did not extend
beyond Burma. Reluctantly every body “decided to wait for the
arrival of application from Ceylon. Nothing happened. The clock was ticking and
the Thais wanted the birth of the organization to take place within an
auspicious time. Before that deadline, the meeting was called to order”.
(Thanks to Dr. V. Suryanarayan for this discussion). As
Singaporean President S.R. Nathan recounts in his memoirs, the Sri Lankan
government later decided to drop the application:
Nathan has mentioned in his book that few years later
Gunasingham, Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Singapore, explained why Colombo
“failed to take its application forward”. Gunasingham had sent an analysis of
the emerging geo-political situation in Southeast Asia. In that note he had
explained how the Southeast Asian countries wanted to “shore up the strategic
environment …than the protective shield offered by the American presence and by
the umbrella of Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation”. Gunasingham was of the
view that the “dominoes will continue to fall” as things stood “at present”.
There will be no “stopping the process”, unless the Southeast Asian States
associate themselves in a regional organization, which will usher in “unity of
will and purpose and co-operative setting”. Gunasingham discussed the subject
with Thanat Khoman, the Thai Foreign Minister, who “seemed to welcome the idea”
of Ceylon’s membership. Gunasingham also felt that other member states were
sympathetic to the idea.
Gunasingham got no reply from Colombo. His analysis was that
the Government came under pressure from the left parties and also from India
“which feared that its sphere of influence might be eroded” China and Soviet
Union also opposed the move. Some non-aligned countries also felt that Sri
Lanka would be giving up its policy of non-alignment. Gunasingham concluded,
“Sri Lanka’s hope of breaking away from its moorings in South Asia and becoming
a trading nation with links to Southeast and East Asian nations as well as to
all of littoral Asia was lost”. The application was shelved, and as Nathan
concludes, in later years, Sri Lanka’s “internal security situation
deteriorated”.
Frankly, the nature of ASEAN
as a regional institution would have been irrevocably changed had Sri Lanka
been considered seriously as a member.
History would have been much different had the meeting started a little
later. In any event, any application by
Sri Lanka or Pakistan would now be barred by Article 6.2(a) of the ASEAN
Charter, which requires a prospective applicant to have a “location in the recognised
geographical region of Southeast Asia.”
Moving from the hypothetical
to the actual, the current ASEAN membership application of Timor Leste is being
considered by an ASEAN committee, which met this month. This article in the Jakarta
Post comments on Singapore’s supposed opposition to Timor Leste’s
application. The author posits that Singapore may oppose Timor Leste’s
membership because (1) it does not want Indonesia to have another ally in the
grouping, (2) taking in Timor Leste now would delay the ASEAN Economic
Community (AEC) implementation, and (3) Singapore is bargaining for economic
advantage, particularly with regard to energy resources in Timor Leste.
The article correctly notes
that (1) is not relevant because of the “ASEAN way of consensus,” such that
having another vote in ASEAN is not really so important. It also states that
ASEAN has demonstrated flexibility in the implementation of the AEC,
particularly for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV) countries, so why
not for Timor Leste? The author goes to
note that Article 21(2) of the ASEAN Charter allows for this differential treatment
pursuant to the “ASEAN – X” formula. Thus, the article posits that (2) is not a
justifiable reason to delay Timor Leste’s ASEAN membership, such that continued
reliance on these issues may lead to unwarranted speculation that (3) is the
real reason for Singapore’s opposition.
In my view, the Jakarta Post
article assumes that ASEAN’s institutions and structures for the AEC are
sufficiently developed to handle another developing country member, one that is
not a WTO member (Laos is not a WTO member but will join soon). As regular readers of this blog know, I don’t
think that the ASEAN institutions and structures are sufficiently developed, as
I discussed here.
In other words, it is not just that Timor
Leste is not ready for ASEAN, but that ASEAN is not ready for Timor Leste.
To put it in more stark
terms, if Timor Leste is accepted as an ASEAN member, by my estimate, Timor
Leste would become ASEAN Chair by 2020.
A lot can happen in eight years, as occurred in Cambodia after it
joined. But there would really need to be major leaps in development and
infrastructure assistance for the country, similar to what happened in
Cambodia. That effort would be highly
distracting from current efforts to complete the AEC.
Finally, I really don’t
think that Singapore is jockeying for economic advantage in Timor Leste. The country is not traditionally part of
Singapore’s trading patterns, and as the Jakarta Post article notes, the
Australians and Indonesians have already filled most of the major economic
roles there.
Again, I have no doubt that Timor Leste will eventually join ASEAN, given the high level of support from ASEAN member states and the need to promote regional stability by including the country in ASEAN. But ASEAN needs to complete the AEC by 2015 before taking on another member. Both Timor Leste and ASEAN will benefit from having a longer time horizon for ASEAN membership.
