ASEAN Way - The Permanent Way

ASEAN has often been accused of several things.

Such as - ignoring each other's problems, paying lip service to tariff reductions, and doing a half-hearted job in promoting its own tariffs to businesses. The regional grouping is also accused of having members who do “sneaky” things like forging their own bilateral trade agreements that undermine collective negotiations, and of not even doing something as simple as beefing up its secretariat.

But despite the litany of shortcomings, ASEAN has occasionally been credited for streamlining customs procedures, pressing ahead with priority sectors such as fisheries and aviation, as well as establishing a monitoring group and a dispute-settlement procedure.

Not the best that many can hope for. But given the group’s vast disparity in economic development, is there a better way?

The “ASEAN Way” may often be derided, and sometimes deservedly so, for being sluggish and for placing a higher emphasis on harmony than on concrete results. But it is precisely this consensus seeking and non-interference approach that has strengthened ASEAN over the years, and given it its unique regional identity.

Apart from recently raising its disapproval of Myanmar by a few decibels, it is unlikely that the “ASEAN Way” will be significantly modified any time soon. As a Myanmar foreign ministry official once pointed out, given that everyone is in the same boat, doing anything drastic would be tantamount to rocking the boat, and causing the boat to capsize.

But having said that, there is little doubt that ASEAN needs to get out of its sluggish mode. The regional grouping needs an impetus, and this came in the form of China and the deafening “sucking sound” of investment emanating from the Asian power. But with Beijing’s proposal for a China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement, perhaps that impetus has been momentarily lost?

And with other FTAs in the pipeline, most notably, the Japan-proposed East Asian Free Trade Bloc (or Pan Asian Free Trade Area – if there is a consensus, talks will begin in 2008), would the same problems that plague ASEAN continue to plague these proposed FTAs? But perhaps that might be a premature question to ask for now, due to doubts about whether the Japan proposal will be realized, given Tokyo’s uneasy relations with its neighbors.