Bringing communities back: Security communities and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ plural turn

Abstract

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is building a people-oriented community in Southeast Asia and it has all the hallmarks of a Deutschian security community, with its emphasis on people-to-people contact and the involvement of civil society organisations in the community’s creation. In this article the argument is made that it is precisely the involvement of the masses that creates the peace inertia associated with security communities, and thus ASEAN’s plural turn is an essential first step in making ASEAN’s community a security community. Whether ASEAN can actually do this, and indeed whether the membership are united in this objective, is not the focus for this article. Instead, and contrary to the security community literature, which identifies ASEAN as a non-liberal security community and has emphasised the practice of self-restraint, this article argues that past ASEAN practice has prevented a security community forming in Southeast Asia, and using self-restraint as an explanation for why security communities create dependable expectations of peaceful change for members has resulted in the agency of ‘community’ being neglected. Hence, this article argues for the need to bring ‘community’ back.

Keywords

Association of Southeast Asian Nations people-to-people pluralism security community self-restraint

Introduction

In 1998 two events coincided that have implications for the argument for non-liberal security communities. One was the publication of a book and the other was the unfolding of a financial crisis that would not only put pay to the ‘Asian miracle’ but, significantly for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), remove the authoritarian regime in its primus inter pares; Suharto’s New Order regime in Indonesia.

The book is Emmanuel Adler and Michael Barnett’s much-admired edited collection simply called Security Communities (1998). After a hiatus of activity following Karl Deutsch et al.’s seminal work on Security Communities (1957), Adler and Barnett’s edited volume was the first rekindling in an academic field that has subsequently blossomed. This literature has sought to explain why, within such communities, there can exist a dependable expectation that any change which occurs is peaceful (Adler, 2008; Adler and Greve, 2009; Pouliot, 2008; Sending, 2002; Williams, 2001).¹ This has at times prioritised norms guiding and directing state behaviour, and more recently, deeply held habits that entail no conscious thought or even appreciation on behalf of the actors. This has led to the prioritising of certain practices, such as self-restraint, as explanations for why security communities are peaceful and why they can form in the absence of liberal values.

As Security Communities instigated a move in the literature towards non-liberal security communities, the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis was to be the catalyst for Asian international relations to embrace the language of community. Driving this language is the community building project embarked upon by ASEAN, which conceives of itself as being in the centre of concentric circles of community building in East Asia. Since ASEAN is the favoured example in the literature of a non-liberal security community, these two events might appear to dovetail. However, this article will argue that while the security literature has explored the underpinnings of non-liberal security communities, its favoured example has embarked upon changes that more closely reflect the traditional, Deutschian, variant. Whether ASEAN can actually build a Deutschian security community is a debatable point, but it is not the subject that I address here. It is too soon to know for certain, and also the topic requires a greater examination than is possible in this article (see Collins, 2013). Instead, this article is concerned with noting that while the security community literature has embarked upon exploring the underpinnings of non-liberal security communities, ASEAN has embarked upon changes that reflect a more traditional understanding of what constitutes a security community, and arguably, one that is more accurate.

ASEAN is chosen as the case study because it is often presented as representing a security community that is not liberal – sometimes called illiberal (Kuhonta, 2006) or developmentalist (Adler and Barnett, 1998: 41) – and thus an empirical case that supports the notion of non-liberal security communities. This article argues that ASEAN has not created a security community, liberal or illiberal, because it has not developed the linkages (material and ideational) among its member states, and peoples, that create a sense of community. However, since its rhetorical adoption to create a people-oriented community ASEAN, so the argument proceeds, has begun to travel down the path to creating a Deutschian security community. It certainly has not got there yet, and indeed it may not, given the tensions among its membership, but nevertheless it has made a significant break from past practice. This significance is captured in the emergence of pluralism, which while uneven in Southeast Asia, has its strongest manifestation in Indonesia and since this is the Association’s primus inter pares this has significance for ASEAN. Pluralism matters because it is plurality that enables both a shared identity to grow among a wide variety of stakeholders and it signifies that power is dispersed amongst these stakeholders. This helps empower a number of actors in creating the community, thus strengthening the sense of community amongst the people, and this matters, because it was people, rather than states, which were the focus for Deutsch et al.

The article begins by showing how liberalism has waned as an explanation for peaceful change and has ultimately become replaced by the practice of self-restraint. This section reveals that the developments within the literature have left security communities bereft of community. The article then moves to reinstate the significance of community, and in particular argues for the peace-inducing qualities of pluralism. This has the effect of broadening the meaning of peace within a security community from one focused exclusively on preventing war to addressing the myriad of threats to people that generate enormous insecurities. In essence, to recognise that because structural violence (Galtung, 1969) can exist in a community where war is inconceivable, it is not sufficient for the absence of war to equate to a security community. Finally, the article moves onto the ASEAN case study.

Peaceful change

Reflecting their Euro-centric origins, the initial explanation for the peacefulness of security communities can be found in their distinctively liberal overtones. Although Adler has subsequently rejected the need for liberalism to underpin security community formation, his earlier writings were explicit about its centrality. In 1992 he wrote,

Members of pluralistic security communities hold dependable expectations of peaceful change not merely because they share just any kind of values, but because they share liberal democratic values and allow their societies to become interdependent and linked by transnational economic and cultural relations. Democratic values, in turn, facilitate the creation of strong civil societies…which also promote community bonds and common identity and trust through the process of the free interpenetration of societies (emphasis in original). (Quoted from Acharya, 2009: 33)

The importance of civil society promoting community bonds through a process of societal interpenetration is, I argue below, the key in explaining how security communities promote peaceful interaction. Within Southeast Asia this is captured in the current interest in ‘participatory regionalism’ and ASEAN’s rhetoric of ‘people-oriented’. For now though, this early articulation of where the security communities’ peacefulness originates builds directly on Deutsch’s transactionalist approach (increased economic and cultural relations will establish material and ideational attachments that make war prohibitively costly and nonsensical) by adding liberal democratic values. When Security Communities is published Adler retreats from the necessity of liberal values. Here, Adler and Barnett are keen to stress that liberalism is not essential for security community formation but they do note a strong connection (1998: 40–41). This connection is that liberalism is well-suited to the type of intrusive interaction that the process of social learning envisages. Social learning is how states acquire shared understandings, and liberalism is well-suited for it because liberalism is based on a civic culture that emphasises tolerance, rule of law, duty of citizens, role of government, etc. Although liberalism is a broad church with different strands, at the heart of the ideology is the notion of freedom and equality. This reveals that underpinning liberalism is a respect for others (that they can enjoy freedom and equality), which in turn is based upon a respect for oneself (that one’s own behaviour is morally worthy). A shared notion of liberal values should therefore act as a constraint on violent behaviour and underpin the notion that one ought to settle differences peacefully. This in turn encourages interaction and ultimately encourages the type of intrusion and interpenetration of other societies necessary for a shared transnational identity and even transnational civic culture to emerge. This is manifest in the increased interaction between the states through multiple networks between and among societies by intergovernmental organisations, non-governmental organisations, epistemic communities and social movements, which deepen mutual trust and lead to an acceptance of a certain ‘way of life’ (Adler and Barnett, 1998: 53). The intellectual tradition that underpins this process is Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace, which has generated a considerable literature over the virtues of liberal democracies and peace (Doyle, 1986, 1997; Russett, 1993). It is this literature that Adler makes reference to when, at least at this time in his writings, his preference for liberalism as an explanatory factor is captured; he writes, ‘I believe that a socially constructed civic culture may help to explain, more than anything else, the findings…which have more or less conclusively shown that democracies do not fight each other and create among themselves a “separate peace”’ (1997: 260).

There are therefore two aspects to the peace-inducing quality of liberalism. The first is the intrinsic peace-inducing quality of liberal values of tolerance and respect. The second aspect concerns the infectious nature of liberal ideas and values, which by cutting across national boundaries establishes a sense of belonging together among separate entities, thus making them ideal for community building. Although Adler and Barnett suggest alternative ideologies could have a similar effect, and specifically note a developmentalist ideology in Southeast Asia as a possible example, as will be shown below this has not happened (Adler and Barnett, 1998: 41).

The move away from liberalism as an explanation for communities’ peacefulness is marked in the recent literature’s preference for the practice of self-restraint. The argument posited now is that where self-restraint is practised, states in a security community can enjoy a dependable expectation of peaceful change (Adler and Greve, 2009: 71).² For Bjola and Kornprobst the practice of self-restraint is based upon underlying anxieties and feelings of shame about the use of force (2007: 290). For Adler the exercise of self-restraint goes even deeper into the actors’ unconsciousness by asserting, ‘self-restraint is not (only) a political choice for the moment, nor is it just a habit – even though it might start out like that – it is a disposition’ (2008: 205). It is not entirely clear why this distinction between habit and disposition is made,³ but the point is that the practice of self-restraint entails no deliberative thinking.

The prioritising of deliberative thinking reflects the shift in the literature away from the peacefulness in the definition of a security community – ‘dependable expectation of peaceful change’ – to the dependable expectation part. Now the literature is concerned with predictable behaviour and the consciousness of the decision-making. How can a ‘dependable expectation’ that others will behave in a particular manner exist, so the argument goes, if the actors have to make a conscious decision as to whether to abide by existing norms? They may choose not to, and the fear that others will have that they may choose not to is sufficient to undercut the dependable expectation. This explains why both Ted Hopf and Vincent Pouliot replace norm abidance with a logic of either habit or practice because these do not entail a conscious decision on the part of the actor; hence Pouliot argues practice is ‘unreflexive’, ‘thoughtless and inarticulate’ (2008: 265, 270), while Hopf writes that, ‘Habits are unintentional, unconscious, involuntary, and effortless’ (2010: 541). Whether abidance with constitutive norms, the traditional explanation for actors’ predictability, creates the same degree of predictability as practice or habit is not under examination here; instead, I focus on whether the literature’s preference for self-restraint is compatible with notions of community.⁴

While self-restraint is indeed the practice exercised in a security community rather than viewing it as the cause of dependable expectations of peaceful change, it should be seen as the symptom. We need to understand why self-restraint has emerged as the practice/habit, not least because this concentration on self-restraint has left the literature losing sight of the ‘community’ part of a security community. Self-restraint is not in itself a sufficient condition for a security community to form; as Alexander Wendt notes, ‘without positive incentives to identify self-restraint may simply lead to indifference’ (1999: 359–360). This is a significant statement, since indifference is the antithesis of community and it is the need to bring back community to security communities that I propose here. Of particular importance is the appreciation that community membership entails a mutual understanding that rests upon an intimate knowledge of one another; it cannot form in the face of indifference.

Why ‘community’ in security community matters

At the heart of a community lies a positive identification among people that entails a sense of obligation and responsibility toward one another. This has been helpfully clarified by the literature on Social Identity Theory (SIT). SIT reveals that individuals identify with groups and that individuals privilege them. This means that individual identities and the group identity become connected so that the group ‘becomes represented in the individual’s self-concept – its concerns become the individual’s concerns’ (Gries, 2005: 240). John Turner, one of the original pioneers of SIT, even argued that group identification could take precedence over an individual’s pursuit of material self-interest (Turner, 1978). While there are a number of explanations for why individuals assimilate into groups, such as desires for inclusion and belonging, for SIT it is self-esteem that has gained prominence as a key motivation (see Gries, 2005: 241). That is, individuals gain or lose collective self-esteem and self-worth from the group’s accomplishments or failures. This identification with a group is complemented by SIT research that demonstrates individuals will favour others within a group at the expense of non-group individuals even when they have (a) nothing to gain and (b) group division is arbitrary (Theiler, 2003: 259). SIT informs us therefore that members of a group positively identify with one another and they gain self-esteem (confidence, feeling good, feeling secure) by reaffirming the value of the group; their sense of self-worth becomes inextricably linked to the success/failure of the group and thus they aid one another. The sense of obligation and responsibility towards other group members therefore may appear altruistic but it is actually bound-up with an individual’s sense of self-esteem.

Calling a security community a ‘community’ therefore matters. In Security Communities, Adler and Barnett identify three characteristics that make a community (1998: 31). Firstly, the members have shared identities, values and a common understanding of what is appropriate behaviour: what Charles Taylor calls common meanings. Secondly, the members of the community have many, direct interactions. For Deutsch et al. this was a significant means of identifying the existence of a community as one could measure international trade, mail flows, student exchanges and travel. Nowadays this would also include the various electronic discussion forums, blogs and social networking sites that enable interaction across the internet. Thirdly, the reciprocity exhibited expresses a long-term interest and even altruism, with the latter described as being a sense of obligation and responsibility. A community is thus about individuals sharing common conceptions of what is appropriate behaviour, they interact frequently, and feel obliged to help one another. This would imply that what creates peace in a security community is a sense of belonging; that the members conceive of their security and prosperity as inextricably tied to one another. Security is indivisible; it simply makes no sense to conceive of security at the expense of another, which confirms SIT’s findings on an individual’s self-esteem being inextricably tied to the group. This tying of member’s well-being to the well-being of other members ensures both a sense of common destiny and loyalty. The actions of the members towards one another may well appear altruistic.

It is perhaps worthwhile clarifying that members of a community are not, as Piki Ish-Shalom notes, ‘a group united by a complete belief system; who share, that is, a complete set of norms, values, stands, a priori assumptions, and expectations’ (2010: 995). Members within a security community have disputes; it is just that they do not consider violence as a means of resolving it. What unites the members are core beliefs, such as the non-use of force. This though, as I will argue below, can fruitfully be expounded to a broader notion that one member’s security and prosperity cannot be accomplished at the expense of other community members. They may very well disagree about how to achieve this, but what makes a security community a secure environment for its members is the knowledge that their security is indivisible. This is Adler and Barnett’s ‘we-feeling’.

The reason they have this sense of belonging together – the ‘we-feeling’ – is based on their common identity. However, does any common identity create peace? Organised criminal gangs, such as the mafia, have a common identity and the gang’s fortunes (their security and prosperity) are dependent upon the durability of their cooperation. Of course a community such as the mafia is a violent one, whereas a security community is the antithesis of this, but if the violence is only directed towards those outside of the community then they may have more in common than first thought. After all, the peacefulness of a security community is only felt by its members; states in a security community are not pacifist – they prepare for, and wage, war against non-community members. The answer to the question, does any sense of belonging create peace lies in whether gang members turn their guns on each other.

The willingness to resort to violence as a means of achieving goals means that violence becomes the constitutive norm of the gang. It is a criminal gang not simply because it is engaged in criminal activity (drug-trafficking, money laundering, etc.) but its modus operandi (threatening violence) is a criminal act. Since violence is the nature of the gang’s collective identity then it is not the nature of their identity that keeps peace between them; it is contingent on another variable. This variable is self-aggrandisement. So long as the individual members gain wealth, then operating within the community makes sense. However, if their aggrandisement is less, either in relative or absolute terms compared to others, then changes within the community may be needed. Such change could be manifest in a leadership challenge. Since violence is the gang’s modus operandi, it would be natural for such a challenge to be violent in nature, although given the gang’s sense of ‘we-feeling’ it is likely to be explained in terms of treachery.⁵

The three characteristics of a community do not therefore explicitly explain why communities should be peaceful, but they do clarify that a community is an intrusive governance mechanism. Communities are not a reflection of disinterest in others but a shared appreciation of common prosperity and security; ‘within communities we help others, apparently selflessly, because we perceive their needs and goals as those of our social category and hence as our very own’ (Adler, 1997: 264). This sense of common destiny, duty and obligation to other community members, underpinning the predictable nature of their behaviour, has got lost with the recent literatures’ focus on ‘deliberative thinking’ and the practice, or habit, of ‘self-restraint’. By bringing community back what is revealed is the significance of pluralism.

Pluralism

Pluralism, as with liberalism, is a broad church covering a range of meanings. In this article I am using pluralism to recognise that within a community a variety of different groups exist with diverging interests and positions, and, as they engage with one another non-violent conflicts can arise over how to respond to collective problems. A security community is not a harmonious environment in which no disagreements occur, but there exists recognition that these conflicts are resolved through dialogue and compromise, which leads to mutual understanding. There is therefore a minimal consensus regarding shared values, which tie the different groups to the community. The importance of respect and tolerance to pluralism’s shared values explains its close connection with liberalism. In addition, pluralism stresses that while decision-making powers reside with the government, influence can be exerted by non-governmental actors. Non-state elite have a role, and a potentially significant one, in determining policy outcomes because power to influence policy is distributed, albeit unevenly, throughout society.

Bringing ‘community’ back to the literature not only reinforces members’ shared identities, obligations and responsibilities towards each other, but also that the many interactions amongst community members distributes power throughout the community. Thus, what makes a community peaceful is not just the values that underpin the community – and while liberalism may not have a monopoly on this it is certainly well positioned – but critically the breadth of the interaction and interpenetration of member’s societies. It is the multiplicity of interactions by a variety of elites representing different aspects of society, from commercial enterprises that provide a material connection to welfare organisations that indicate mutual sympathies, which establishes the collective sense of ‘us’. Pluralism, with its emphasis on shared values of respect and tolerance leading to mutual understandings arising from dialogue, and that such dialogue occurs amongst multiple actors, is well positioned to explain that the ‘we-feeling’ is felt throughout society. The significance of establishing a sense of community among the masses has its strongest articulation in Hans Mouritzen’s claim that the ‘genesis and maintenance of a security community are due to the fact that top decisionmakers find themselves deprived of the option of mutual war. They are simply locked by the opinions of their publics and by the transnational affiliations between them’ (2003: 331). Pluralism therefore matters because it enables a formal/informal governance structure to evolve that encourages both ideational convergence among member states’ societies and policies that strengthen community bonds by pursuing community, rather than national, solutions to problems.

The refocus on community also means re-establishing the importance of the people, or at least non-state elite. It is a return to the importance of people because this is Deutsch’s focus. Hence Laurie Nathan’s assertion that in ‘Deutsch’s much-cited summary formulation, a security community comprises a group of people that has become integrated, and the subject of dependable expectations of peaceful change are not states but rather the population of the territory covered by the community’ (emphasis in original) (2006: 279). A refocus on people has two significant effects for studying security communities. Firstly, it raises the importance of non-state elite in their formation and maintenance, and secondly, it enables a broadening of what constitutes security.

While Adler and Barnett make frequent reference to individuals, people and societies in the formation process, they prefer to concentrate on the state elite. They write:

While social learning can occur at the mass level, and such changes are critical when discussing collective identities, our bias is to look to policy-makers and other political, economic, and intellectual elites that are most critical for the development of new forms of social and political organization that are tied to the development of a security community (emphasis added). (1998: 44)

Although other elites are noted as ‘most critical’, Adler and Barnett’s emphasis lies with the political elite because it is from such ‘creative and farsighted’ individuals that the community’s social and political institutions are created (1998: 43). This makes sense in so far as they have the capacity to do this. The state elite are necessary, but I argue not sufficient, for building a security community. It is the sense of belonging together at the mass level that ensures the ‘we-feeling’ is held by more than a select group of state elite. Mouritzen again captures this very well when he states, ‘some form of pluralism is necessary in order for peace inertia to be established independently of the rulers’ (2003: 331). It is therefore the extent and depth of the transnational ties that, through a process of social learning, establishes the collective identity that is the glue in a security community. This reveals that vibrant civil societies are necessary to enable the creation of a community-based civic culture.

Conceiving of mature security communities as exhibiting multiple levels of societal interaction across a variety of topics reveals that Deutsch and his associates’ focus on war is unnecessarily narrow. It made sense when Deutsch et al. were writing in the 1950s, given the heightened fear of nuclear war, but security has come to mean much more than the absence of war. Indeed, the equating of security as the absence of war has encouraged the security community literature to concentrate on the state elite. This narrow conception of security, though, undercuts the peace inertia that is developed through the interpenetration of member’s societies by non-state elite. Once we conceive of security in a broader, holistic fashion, the breadth of the topics that appear – health, human rights and environmental disasters, for example – creates the space for other elites to become significant, and indeed I contend, essential players in forming a community.

The pros and cons of broadening the remit of security are extensively covered elsewhere in the security/strategic studies literature (Baldwin, 1997; Booth, 2007; Nye and Lynn-Jones, 1988; Ullman, 1983; Walt, 1991). Here I argue that when a security community is conceived as a grouping of states that are ‘other-regarding’ – security and prosperity is inextricable tied – then insecurity in one member inevitably creates insecurity in another. A mature security community should thus not solely be marked, or identified, on the basis of dependable expectations of peaceful change with regard to the use of force, but also a pattern of cooperative endeavours that aim to mitigate the worst effects from the plethora of threats that are classified as non-traditional; what Johan Galtung (1969) designated as structural violence. That is, the condition of peace requires not just the absence of overt violence, but also the absence of structural violence such as economic and social exploitation. The range of non-traditional security threats also opens the space for non-state actors to become part of the community-building process, thus enabling the interpenetration of member’s societies to be much more comprehensive than just among the state elite.

Lessons from ASEAN for creating a security community

The significance of bringing community back to the literature can be seen in the case study, often noted as an example of a security community, or an example of a region/organisation in the process of forming one, that is non-Western and non-liberal: ASEAN. ASEAN is Adler’s favourite non-liberal example of a nascent (incipient) security community (2008: 206), and this description has its proponents amongst regional specialists, with Amitav Acharya the most prominent (2009). Despite occasional lapses where ASEAN is treated as a security community (Kupchan, 2010), there is widespread acknowledgement that it is not a mature security community, and indeed with the Thai-Cambodian tensions over ownership of the Preah Vihear temple resulting in the use of limited force, talk of a security community appears optimistic (Cheang, 2011).

The case for ASEAN proceeding along the path to forming a non-liberal security community is that members have a common understanding of what constitutes security (a resilient region built on strong states and not a strong regional organisation) and a common approach to help achieve this (do not interfere in each other’s affairs). This shared understanding of how to interact with one another is based upon complying with certain norms, which have over time become embedded: non-interference and consensus decision-making being two such norms. This produces predictable and thus secure interstate relations, and although the use of force remains possible and therefore Southeast Asia is not yet a security community, nevertheless, so the argument goes, it is proceeding in a manner that will, in time, accomplish this outcome.

The problem with this argument is that the norms that underpin an ASEAN identity undercut the type of interaction that can establish an intrusive governance mechanism. ASEAN’s principles of non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs and the need for consensus-based decision-making reflect the desire among the membership to build a strong region that could deflect external intervention on the basis, not of a strong regional organisation, but strong states. The prioritising of strong states has led some analysts to interpret non-interference as indifference to other ASEAN members, thus undermining any notion of establishing a real community (Jones and Smith, 2002: 108). This is not the case, the membership are not indifferent to their neighbours and indeed have intervened on regular occurrences (Jones, 2010). The reason for their interference does reveal that they share common perceptions about what constitutes a threat. These are, traditionally, interference from external states and internal challenges to the regime from communist and separatist guerrillas. However, the norms that manifest their identity as ASEAN members have undercut a concomitant belief that the solution to their problems requires joint or multilateral action. The preference has been for national solutions, which require no loss of autonomy, or if external assistance is required, then assistance is sought from outside the region. It is this disparity between acknowledging common problems but not implementing intra-ASEAN cooperative solutions, which helps to explain the gap between ASEAN’s rhetorical call for action and what its members actually do.

The limited nature of the ASEAN members’ interactions is most strongly captured in their traditional desire to restrict the degree of interaction among their people, fearful that this would act as a conduit for the spread of anti-government sentiment. The limited nature of the interaction – essentially only the state elite – and the preference for national solutions, has meant that rather than transcending historical rivalries through a process of social learning, intra-ASEAN relations remain hostage to their members’ historical baggage. The spat over the Preah Vihear temple has its roots in the historical animosity of the Siamese and Khmer kingdoms, while the prickly relationship between Singapore and Malaysia cannot be understood without appreciating their rancorous fall-out that ultimately led to Singapore’s independence in 1965. It is the historical animosity between Singapore and Malaysia that Adler and Greve identify when they write, ‘minority issues and economic crises…exposed a background of hostile relations…inconsistent with security community practices’ (2009: 76). The preference for a strong region built on strong states has thus led to the prioritising of national solutions and despite challenges to this thinking, most notably the call for flexible engagement in the 1990s, the ASEAN Charter that came into force in December 2008 codified consensus-based decision-making and non-interference. The interaction among the membership has thus not led to the type of ‘we-feeling’, that sense of belonging together, which creates the sense of common destiny. This was dramatically exposed at the 45th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in July 2012 where the failure to reach a consensus over the inclusion of the South China Sea dispute in the official joint communiqué resulted, for the first time ASEAN’s history, in no joint communiqué being agreed. Cambodia’s refusal to seek a compromise with the other members, especially Vietnam and the Philippines, clearly indicated that Phnom Penh does not share a sense of common destiny with Hanoi and Manila over such an important security matter. Indeed, Cambodia’s stance was more in tune with China: the source of Vietnamese and Filipino concern (Ganjanakhundee, 2012; Mogato and Grudgings, 2012). Nevertheless, there are changes afoot in Southeast Asia that do have the potential to put ASEAN on the path to building a security community.

It is pertinent to recall that it is not whether ASEAN will form a security community that is under examination, but rather are ASEAN members engaging in rhetoric and issuing declarations of intent that have this potential, and if so, does it have this potential because they encourage pluralism. It is in this respect that the most significant rhetorical change is captured in ASEAN’s commitment to create a regional community that is people-oriented. While it remains unclear as to what people-oriented actually means, this rhetorical call could mark a change in image for an association that has largely been regarded as a gentleman’s club for the state elite; one that had little to no relevance for the common people. Adler and Barnett, although as noted previously preferring to concentrate on the state elite, do acknowledge the importance of non-state elite in the latter stages of security community formation. They write:

One of the interesting characteristics of the development of a security community is that as states moved from one phase to the next they were more willing to become mutually accountable to one another in a host of areas, including how they treat their citizens. There are many reasons why states might become more willing to submit themselves to oversight and reduce their autonomy in once highly sensitive spheres, but one possibility is that the growth of transnational identification and linkages encourages citizens and groups to become mutually accountable on particular issues. (1998: 432)

This speaks directly to Mouritzen’s separate peace inertia claim, where citizens have become mutually accountable to one another and this acts as a check (oversight) on state behaviour, thus denying the elite the option of war (loss of autonomy). It is precisely the prospect that transnational linkages and a consequent emergence of shared identification among non-state elite could emerge in a ‘people-oriented’ ASEAN that indicates ASEAN could form a security community.

There are two interrelated matters here that are worth recognising. The first is the extent to which ASEAN is encouraging interaction amongst the people and the extent to which the people, in the guise of civil society organisations (CSOs), are encouraged to be part of the community building project. The second is the comprehensive nature of the security problems the community is designed to resolve.

ASEAN has certainly embraced the notion of encouraging people-to-people contacts. It is prominent in the blueprint of the ASEAN Socio-Cultural (ASCC) pillar of its community building project, where the ASEAN Foundation is tasked with promoting an ‘ASEAN identity and awareness and people-to-people interactions’ (ASEAN Secretariat, 2009b: para 43.viii). People-to-people contacts are a significant feature of ASEAN’s Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity adopted at the ASEAN Summit in October 2010, while at the 18th ASEAN Summit held in May 2011, the ASEAN Education Ministers, very much in keeping with Deutsch et al.’s criterion, were tasked with establishing a framework to transfer credits among university students in ASEAN Member States in order to strengthen people-to-people contact (ASEAN Secretariat, 2011: 3). The goal is explicitly to establish for the people of Southeast Asia a shared ASEAN identity.

The significance of CSOs is reflected in numerous documents that recognise their importance as stakeholders in building the community. It has clear expression, for example, in the ASCC Plan of Action:

Active participation of various stakeholders in ASCC activities will also be encouraged to draw from their wealth of expertise and experience and to promote a strong sense of commitment and ownership of projects and activities. Building region-wide networks of NGOs, training centres, academic institutions and other ASEAN organisations will gradually weave into the fabric of the ASEAN Community and help to strengthen social cohesion. (ASEAN Secretariat, 2004: para 18)

Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Abdul Razak, captured the transition within, at least some, of the ASEAN members in embracing civil society inputs when at the 18th ASEAN Summit he said, ‘Right now, the era of government knows best and the government knows all is over. CSOs need to provide feedback for policy makers and become frontliners in a race to find solutions for the community’ (Borneo Post, 2011). While it would be misleading to state that CSOs and other non-state actors have been warmly welcomed by all the membership, there is nevertheless a change in attitude and non-state elite are engaged, to a lesser and greater extent, in a range of matters, such as the deliberations over the Terms of Reference for the ASEAN Inter-governmental committee on human rights (AICHR) and its Human Rights Declaration, the drafting of ASEAN work programmes on HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases, and the drafting and implementing of the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Responses. The breadth of these examples also reveals the comprehensive nature of the security problems ASEAN’s community project is expected to help overcome.

Conceiving of security in broader terms is another hallmark of ASEAN’s community; thus in the ASEAN Political-Security (APSC) pillar it is noted that ASEAN ‘subscribes to a comprehensive approach to security, which acknowledges the interwoven relationships of political, economic, social-cultural and environmental dimensions of development’ (ASEAN Secretariat, 2009a: Article 9b). In the ASCC this is identified as enhancing the well-being and the livelihoods of the peoples of ASEAN through, among other things: poverty alleviation; ensuring social welfare and protection; and addressing health matters, including combating communicable diseases (ASEAN Secretariat, 2009b). Taken at face value, ASEAN’s people-oriented rhetoric is transforming ASEAN into a Deutschian security community, which places the multitude of security problems that threaten people at its heart. It is encouraging the sorts of people-to-people contacts that will develop a common identity and by involving CSOs in helping to build the community giving the ‘people’ a stake in how the community is created. Although it is not the purpose of this article to evaluate whether this is happening, the division of ASEAN into old and new CMLV (Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam) members within the literature reveals that ASEAN is not united in its approach and thus obstacles exist.

Why ASEAN is embracing such transformative rhetoric can be explained by the process of liberalisation within its primus inter pares: Indonesia. While there are realpolitik explanations for why Indonesia proposed the APSC pillar, the reason why the APSC blueprint contains such ambitions as promoting ‘adherence to the principles of democracy, the rule of law and good governance, respect for and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms’, to help ensure ‘the building of a peaceful, democratic, tolerant, participatory and transparent community in Southeast Asia’, reflects the process of liberalisation and pluralism occurring in Indonesia (ASEAN Secretariat, 2009a: Article 7 and 12). Hence Mely Caballero-Anthony’s assertion that despite ‘the prevailing reservations on the prospects of democratic transitions in the region, the new political actors who have emerged from these transitions and the new domestic agendas on political reforms and governance that have dominated the discourses in many ASEAN capitals are significant forces in moving ASEAN beyond the confines of its (restrictive) normative framework’ (2010: 139). This trend is also noted by Jörn Dosch, who writes that the political ‘liberalization that has taken place to various extents in all polities…has had an impact on political agendas at the regional level’ (2008: 530). Indeed, he argues that it is precisely this liberalisation that created the space for civil society actors to engage with the ASEAN political elite. The key point is that it is the process of political liberalisation and pluralism that has created this conducive environment so the seeds of a security community can grow. It is precisely because this process is not mirrored throughout the membership that questions are rightly being raised about ASEAN’s capacity to follow through its ambitious plans. However, contrary to assertions that ASEAN was on the path to forming a non-liberal security community, it was only when domestic liberalisation and the embrace of pluralism occurred in its most powerful member that ASEAN has begun to take the path not so much less-travelled than untravelled to forming a security community.

Conclusion

That ASEAN, at least in rhetoric, is on the path to forming a Deutschian security community is clearly evident in the use, within its declarations, of such language as, ‘shared values and norms’, ‘common identity’, ‘sense of belonging’ and even ‘we-feeling’; this reflects the influence that Western security community literature has had on Indonesian thinking (Katsumata, 2011). This embrace of security community rhetoric is new, and it is new because Indonesia, supported to both greater and lesser extent by the more liberal ASEAN members, such as Thailand and the Philippines, has undergone dramatic domestic change. Jakarta is seeking to replicate the process of liberalisation and pluralism that has occurred domestically, regionally. The resistance to this by the more conservative members explains why it is possible to discern both contradictory statements in ASEAN declarations and some disappointment with certain progressive initiatives, such as AICHR.

Significantly, the desire to engage with a variety of stakeholders, empower civil society organisations and make ASEAN ‘people-oriented’ indicates that a process of pluralism is emerging. It is at an early stage and it has met considerable resistance, but this simply reveals that to form a security community ASEAN has to transform itself. The recent literature on security communities, which prioritises self-restraint and non-deliberative thinking to explain habit and/or practice, by forsaking the agency of community fails to recognise the need for ASEAN to transform itself. Instead, this line of enquiry leads to the notion of non-liberal security communities, but the cost of this is that what Adler et al. describe is no different from a security regime because they have lost the liberal and plural undertone that gives ‘community’ agency in explaining the peacefulness of a security community (Collins, 2007). ASEAN’s history is not that of a non-liberal security community and the preference in the literature to abandon liberalism (and implicitly pluralism) and embrace such notions as self-restraint as causal factors, has not expanded the reach of security communities to areas of the world where such values are absent; it has simply left the peace-inducing feature of ‘community’ in its wake.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biography

Alan Collins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political & Cultural Studies at Swansea University, UK. He has written extensively on Southeast Asian security and is the author of Building a People-Oriented Security Community the ASEAN Way (Routledge, 2013).

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