This week Brunei is hosting a workshop on establishing a
direct communications link (commonly known as a “hotline”) for ASEAN and beyond.
The ASEAN hotline, first proposed by the Sultan of Brunei last year, would
create a dedicated communication link among the ASEAN governments to deal with
maritime and other security issues. This
is intended to reduce the chances of an unintended military confrontation in
the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea, but could also be used to deal with
other problems in the region.
The hotline is ostensibly under
the ASEAN Political-Security Community, so its details are beyond the usual
scope of this blog. However, as this
excellent piece from the Rajaratnam School of International Studies on Asian
“hotlines” explains, the value of such hotlines lies in (1) their utility
in crisis management and/or (2) the process of their creation, e.g., as a
confidence-building process. Hopefully
the ASEAN defense hotline can build ASEAN member states’ confidence in ASEAN
institutions, including the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC).
The AEC, of course, does not
involve the life-and-death issues related to potential military clashes and so does
not usually need a crisis-management system in real-time (exceptions could be
for product-recalls for safety or bans for health concerns, such as during a
pandemic). However, if the ASEAN member
states are willing to invest in a dedicated security hotline, surely they could
also invest in the communications infrastructure necessary to govern the AEC
effectively? As this blog has explained
previously, IT
issues related to authentication and reliability have adversely impacted
communications among ASEAN member states on AEC issues. The inability to bridge the IT gaps within
ASEAN also hold back full development of the ASEAN Single Window for goods and
the roll-out of an ASEAN common visa for foreign visitors. Hence
technical advances for the ASEAN security hotline can be applied to the other
aspects of intra-ASEAN communication.
The ASEAN security hotline
can also help mature ASEAN member states’ attitudes towards ASEAN itself. Hopefully the hotline will incorporate a role
for the ASEAN Secretary-General and the ASEAN Secretariat. The ASEAN hotline should be integral to
intra-ASEAN dispute resolution, and the ASEAN Secretary-General has an ex-officio role in dispute resolution
under the ASEAN Charter. Let us not
forget that in this decade alone we have had military action on the
Cambodia-Thailand and Malaysia-Philippines frontiers. Having the ASEAN hotline, with ready access
to the resources of the ASEAN Secretariat, could have helped address these
disputes more rapidly. Just as
importantly, ASEAN member states who develop more confidence in the ASEAN
institutions for political-security matters will also develop more confidence in
them for economic matters. As this blog
has repeatedly recommended, stronger ASEAN institutions are necessary for the effective
implementation of the single production base and single market of the AEC.
If the ASEAN security hotline
can be the pathfinder for other forms of ASEAN Community development, both in
technological and institutional terms, then it will be a positive development
for the entire ASEAN Community, not just the political-security community. And if it can link in other regional players,
namely, China, then so much the better for security in the region.
