THE 7th IISS ASIAN SECURITY SUMMIT
SHANGRI-LA DIALOGUE
Singapore
Sunday 1 June 2007
MODES OF SECURITY COOPERATION: CONFIDENCE-BUILDING, PARTNERSHIPS, ALLIANCES
Q&A
As delivered - provisional transcript
Zhuang Jianzhong
I have a question for the Singapore Defence Minister. Generally speaking, I think that we should welcome the bilateral cooperation and partnership, even in the military field, but in today’s world I do not think that any stress on military alliance is good because military alliances are a historic product of the Cold War. In today’s world, I think that we should put more stress on multilateral. I agree with General Ma’s view that the US-Japan alliance is counterproductive to Asian security. I do not know whether or not you agree with me.
Dr Tim Huxley
My question is for Singapore’s Minister Teo. Just now, he mentioned the ADMM-Plus process. Can he say something about how the ADMM-Plus might develop over the next several years, particularly in terms of which of ASEAN’s dialogue partners might become involved in this initiative?
Mufleh R Osmany
My question is to the Defence Minister of Singapore. Would he like to share Singapore’s experience of building security cooperation in a situation of strategic asymmetry?
Dr Jonathan D Pollack
In Secretary Gates’ remarks yesterday, he emphasised the concept of an Asia-wide approach to security. I would be interested in the comments of any of our speakers on, if you will, the relevance or consequences of that as opposed to building blocks sub-region by sub-region even as there are linkages from one sub-region to the next.
General Winai Phattiyakul
I would like to comment on what Minister Teo said briefly about ADMM because this year Thailand is going to take over the chairmanship from Singapore. The other gentleman talked about the future evolution of ADMM-Plus. We are working on that together with the Singapore chairmanship. We have a working group working together and hopefully we will come up with the criteria that we will bring to the consideration of the ADMM meeting, which will be held in Bangkok in November this year. I can assure you that it is the intention of our ASEAN ministers of defence to get together to find the best way to firm up the security architecture of ASEAN.
Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
My question is to anyone on the podium but perhaps to our host minister. There is talk generally of four principal actors in the region, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), ASEAN, China and Japan, and there has been talk of these four moving together in some kind of a flying-geese formation, not just in security aspects but comprehensively in economic and social issues as well. Does he see a future in the cooperation between these four actors and in the formation that I have spoken of?
Teo Chee Hean
Perhaps I will take the strategic asymmetry question first then I can be as vague as I like and try to sum up on a more concrete basis at the end. Basically, if I understand what you meant by strategic asymmetries, Singapore is a very small country and how do we try to assure our security when we have many bigger countries in the region as a whole and even in our own sub-region? The way that we do it is to try to make sure that we can look after our own defence and our own security to provide an assurance that we can protect our own sovereignty and territorial integrity, and then, based on that, we try to make friends with everybody who will be friends with us. We also try to create an environment which is conducive to peace and stability. I suppose that is one of the reasons why we work together to try to bring all our friends together because on that basis we hope that we can build greater understanding and, from that, norms of behaviour, norms that will promote the peaceful resolution of conflict, the anticipation of problems, and then the resolution of all of those. So I think that is the way that we hope to deal with what you call strategic asymmetry.
A number of the questions relate to how the security architecture will evolve and various aspects of it. Our colleague from Shanghai Jiaotong University asked whether the Japan-US alliance is still relevant today. The question is: what is the purpose of the alliance today? If the Japan-US alliance is seen in the context of a wider security architecture which provides for assurances to Japan and allows Japan and the US to coordinate their activities in a constructive way, I think that the Japan-US alliance will play a useful role in helping to assure stability in the region. I think that an insecure Japan would not be in China’s interest either. An insecure Japan would then look for other ways of trying to assure its security and I am not sure that would overall lead to better stability and security in North East Asia or in the region as a whole.
For ADMM-Plus, I think that General Winai has summarised what we are trying to do. The ASEAN defence ministers met for the first time only in May 2006 and we had the second meeting in Singapore in 2007. The first meeting was held in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia handed over the chair to the Philippines and the Philippines took on that mantle and worked very hard to help develop certain principles for the ADMM, although we did not have a meeting in Manila. We have taken that responsibility and we will be passing it over to Thailand. What kind of shape will ADMM-Plus take in the future? We are now trying to develop some concepts and ideas about what kinds of partners we want to look for. We consider that our dialogue partners in ASEAN would be natural ADMM-Plus partners but I think we need to look a little more than that because those dialogue partners ought to have substantive security and defence relationships already with ASEAN countries. I think those dialogue partners and potential ADMM-Plus countries should also be able to bring something to the table and make some substantive contributions to building up capacities amongst the ASEAN countries. Those are the rough kinds of criteria that we might be looking for in partners in an ADMM-Plus process.
Do we see a flying-geese formation of SAARC, ASEAN, China and Japan? I think there is one component that is missing there, which is the component that links us across the Pacific. I would say that when we look at security in the Asia-Pacific region, the component that links us across the Pacific is a very important one because without that component we would not be able to find the kind of stability and the structure that we need in the Asia-Pacific region. It is very much like in Europe, where you have the North Atlantic bridge. Europe and European security would look very different if you did not have that North Atlantic linkage. In the same way, Asia-Pacific’s security would be missing something if we did not have that link with our friends from Canada and the US. I would say that that overall architecture would need that part of the link as well.
Dr Pollack asked about the relevance of building blocks. I would go back to my triple structure of the regional security architecture. We can look at building blocks from bilateral defence and security relationships but I think we still need an overall pan-regional kind of forum, and the ARF is one example that is a little bit more formal. The Shangri-La dialogue that we have here provides a useful function. We may not be able to sign an agreement and say, ‘Yes, we will all go out tomorrow and we will do this and that,’ but I think it helps to develop norms of behaviour, it helps to develop expectations, and it provides countries which may not be used to engaging in security discussions a platform in which they can come forward, put forward their views, listen to other people’s views, listen to the reactions to what they have just put forward, and if they go away and think about it over the next few months, perhaps they will come back next year and present their views again.
Over a period of time, we will be able to reach some convergence and stability and develop some norms for the region. If we have this three-tier structure with a pan-regional grouping where we can discuss these things, functional groupings and sub-region groups, and bilateral relationships which are strong and constructive, I think we will have the makings of a stable structure for the future.
Dr John Chipman
Minister Teo, thank you very much. I am delighted that the Shangri-La dialogue is a fully accepted and valued part of the regional security architecture, all the more so because of its trans-regional and informal quality. I want to thank all the ministers for the time they put into their presentations and for the effort they put into their private and multilateral meetings at this dialogue, the full results of which will be emerging over the next weeks and months as they meet each other in other formations. I want to thank the Government of Singapore and our sponsors for making this event possible. We have had the tremendous support of many government agencies in Singapore to help with the logistics of this conference. We have had tremendous support also from the ministries of the 27 countries that have formally participated in this meeting.
For my part, I would also like to especially thank the small group of eight people at the IISS who helped bring the 292 delegates and the nearly 700 people that fully comprised the delegations and supporters to this event here in Singapore. It is also important for us to note that as the IISS, an organisation with an international character, perspective and disposition, we also will be taking away from this meeting, as we have from previous ones, a more informed understanding of the different perspectives on regional security in this part of the world, which I hope will be reflected in the very many different types of research products that we produce, both thematic and specific, that touch on the security concerns of this region. We will continue to work with as many of the local opinion formers, analysts and governments that we can to ensure that the IISS work carries that international perspective, which gives it the authority that it enjoys.
We are delighted to be able to continue the Shangri-La dialogue process informally throughout the months intervening the actual holding of the Shangri-La dialogue and we will continue to consult directly with all the governments to ensure that their interests are advanced at further Shangri-La dialogues. I am delighted to announce that the eighth IISS Shangri-La dialogue is scheduled to take place between 5 June and 7 June 2009. I would like to again thank the ministers and government delegations and all the other delegates for their tremendous participation in this Shangri-La dialogue. I wish you good remaining deliberations and a safe trip home.
