BOOK REVIEW:
ASEAN Regional Forum a work in progress
by Sharon Siddique
For the Straits Times, 15 October 2009
Title: The ASEAN Regional Forum
Author: Rodolfo C. Severino
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009
AS THE Asia-Pacific regional architecture evolves, existing structures are being inventoried, and new blueprints proposed. This timely book assesses the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).
As the author reminds us, the ARF is unique because it is still the only regional forum that focuses specifically on security. It brings together the 10 ASEAN member states with 17 other states, including the United States, the European Union, China, India and Japan.
Mr Rodolfo Severino's account reflects a practitioner's perspective - as an ARF participant from the Philippines during most of the 1990s, as ASEAN secretary-general from 1998 to 2002, and then as a scholar at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. He views ARF as still very much a work in progress.
Mr Severino structures his book around the ARF Concept Paper, which was adopted in 1995, and which is usefully reproduced in the book. The paper outlines three stages in the forum's evolution: promotion of confidence-building measures; development of preventive diplomacy mechanisms; and development of conflict resolution mechanisms.
Much of the book is devoted to how the forum carries out stage one - confidence building - and whether it has been successful in this respect. Mr Severino argues the ARF 'has been stuck in confidence building for too long'.
Going to stage two - preventive diplomacy - has been hard. Applying preventive diplomacy to inter-state disputes has not been ARF's forte. The author sees more potential for it in non-traditional, non-military security threats.
There is one chapter on the lack of central institutions within the ARF. In fact, the ARF is embedded in the ASEAN process. This is clearly reflected in the ARF Concept Paper, which states: 'There shall be an annual ARF ministerial meeting, in an ASEAN capital, just after the ASEAN ministerial meeting.' And such has been the case since 1995.
The ARF certainly illustrates how power shifts in the Asia-Pacific have put pressure on existing structures to compete with proposed new structures. That said, it is a fact that ASEAN has played a leading role in many of these Asia-Pacific initiatives - including the ARF (1994), ASEAN+3 (1997) and the East Asia Summit (2005).
Will ASEAN's role in the new Asia-Pacific architecture be confined to Southeast Asia? Or - to borrow from Professor Tommy Koh - will it continue to be seen as 'the region's neutral chairman'?
The writer is a partner in a regional research consulting company based in Singapore.
