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Quiet ingenuity needed to move needle on COC talks: Experts
With China asserting its maritime presence and the United States bolstering defense ties in the wider Indo-Pacific, ASEAN is in need of a novel diplomatic approach, analysts say.
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President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo examines arms aboard the Imam Bonjol warship off the Natuna Islands on June 23, 2016. The President visited remote Indonesian islands on a warship after clashes occurred in the area with Chinese vessels. (AFP/Presidential Palace)
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s this year’s ASEAN chair, Jakarta must use its diplomatic capital to advance negotiations on the bloc’s unfinished Code of Conduct (COC) for the South China Sea, analysts have said, as the region’s geopolitical tensions seem set to intensify.
For more than a decade, ASEAN has been working with China to produce a set of guidelines, the COC, to prevent open conflict in the South China Sea, but progress has been slow as a result of conflicting interests and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.
But with China finally reopening its borders and bolstering its economic cooperation with ASEAN countries this year, COC negotiations are also expected to resume.
“Indonesia will continue negotiations for the second reading [of the COC]. It plans to coordinate with China and Myanmar for a meeting in 2023,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Teuku Faizasyah said recently.
Myanmar, which has been in crisis since a military coup in 2021, is the ASEAN-China partnership coordinator until 2024, Faizasyah noted. The junta has been barred from ASEAN meetings at the bloc’s insistence, putting chair Indonesia in charge of an awkward balancing act.
On Jan. 19, a senior diplomat said Indonesia would seek to “build trust in private” to reach a solution.
Considering ASEAN’s troubles, experts argued that going the quiet bilateral route could be Jakarta’s best bet to make progress.
