Looking towards a third Bali summit

ASEAN has realized that to pursue countries’ national interests in a globalized world it should continue to build a foundation of compromises. This is reflected in the way ASEAN defines their interests and, in particular, the methods with which they pursue those interests.  

We agree that the best way of safeguarding our national interests is by cooperating with one another. Cooperation has contributed immensely to creating and identifying ASEAN’s interests. This has been ASEAN’s consistent focus, and helped expand its scope of cooperation from beyond the region to the wider world.  

To honor the compromises, national interests must now be integrated with the new values and norms as articulated in the ASEAN Communities Blueprints and the ASEAN Charter: “the principles of democracy, the rule of law and good governance, respect for and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms … to place the well-being, livelihood and welfare of the peoples at the center of the ASEAN community building process … to realize an ASEAN community that is politically cohesive, economically integrated and socially responsible in order to effectively respond to current and future challenges and opportunities”.  

The values and norms that we have sanctioned in our charter and its constitutive documents should thus broaden the fundamentals of our foreign policies.

They should become the core of our diplomacy and external actions and the expression of our new common identity.

They should be internalized and become Indonesia’s and ASEAN’s stance in relations with the world, toward developing an ASEAN community in a global community of nations.  

In an excellent article, “Challenges for Indonesia as ASEAN chair”, Bambang Hartadi Nugroho, of The Jakarta Post, reminded me of Hellen Wallace’s concepts of “deepening” and “widening” the European community to strengthen the existing cooperation of the founding nations and spread the geographical extent of the European community. Both deepening and widening have developed in tandem into a regional organization of 27 nations, the European Union.

ASEAN is proceeding in a similar way, albeit on entirely different widening premises.

ASEAN keeps deepening its cooperation by accomplishing the three-pillar ASEAN community that is “politically cohesive, economically integrated and socially responsible” to be able to effectively respond to “current and future challenges and opportunities”, while in the process widening itself into an East Asia and Pacific architecture on the TAC platform, first, within an ASEAN + 3, then ASEAN + 6 and then ASEAN + 8 structure of the East Asia Summit.  

This expansion has been sanctioned by East Asian and Pacific countries by becoming parties in the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) as the code of conduct for piecing together this architecture, recognizing the centrality of ASEAN in the edifice.

Twelve nations have, in succession, become members of the TAC, since 2003: The People’s Republic of China, India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Russia, New Zealand, Mongolia, Australia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, North Korea and, last, the United States in 2010.

Since the beginning, emphasis has been on developing an East Asian architecture of strategic considerations rather than geographic. That was why India was included in the East Asia Summit, initially as a counterbalance to China. Other South Asian countries then followed suit.

The ASEAN-centered East Asian architecture comprises South Asia and should hence be sustained.

ASEAN’s new values and norms of democracy, human rights, rule of law and good governance will have to become elements of the new code of conduct in extra-ASEAN cooperation — of an ASEAN community in a global community of nations — and should therefore be factored into the TAC.

The core principles of democracy as adopted at the Community of Democracies Ministerial Meeting, convened in Warsaw on June 26-27, 2000, which was also signed by Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, could enrich ASEAN’s shared values and norms in developing democracy, the rule of law and good governance, respect for and promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms as a platform for developing the envisioned regional architecture.

We should further round-off these democratic principles by embracing the concepts of the Bali Democracy Forum to widen the strategic agenda on which we could build our envisioned regional architecture.

The Bali Democracy Forum has given us a lead in developing de-mocracy in an East Asia and Pacific-wide geographic realm with the additional provision that “demo-cracy is a key element in the promotion of peace and stability in the region”.

It is the source of soft power on which President Yudhoyono believes the 21st century in the Asia-Pacific region will be constructed.

The “role of a professional military in a democratic society” should specifically be factored into the building of a democratic system in the region. And the fundamental relationship between democracy and human rights is tersely highlighted.  

“For democracy is nothing if it is not about the people’s exercise of one of their most basic human rights – the right to be their own sovereigns. Only through the exercise of that right can all the other human rights be promoted and protected,” Yudhoyono said in Bali.

In line with the new ASEAN tradition, a target date should be set with clear time-lines to realize the new architecture — for example, by 2020 — on the basis of factoring in these additional democratic principles into the TAC.

National sovereignty should comprehensively contain the rights of the people “to be their own sovereigns” and, hence, an adjustment of the principle of non-interference.

State security is yielding to human security, to security of the people, just as much as hard power is giving way to soft power in the Asia-Pacific region.

Compromises should remain ASEAN’s credo in developing cooperation in the Asia-Pacific edifice, to build peace, safety, stability and prosperity.

A Bali Summit III should thus be organized to rationalize these new principles into an upgraded TAC in Southeast Asia.

“Effective cooperation” should enrich respect for independence, sovereignty and equality with deference to democracy and human rights.

It should adjust non-interference and should continue to renounce “the threat or use of force”.  


The writer is a researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences’ Centre for Political Studies.