Address by Professor Dr Juwono Sudarsono
Minister of Defence, Indonesia
To the 5th IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore
4 June 2006
(transcript)
Thank you, Dr Chipman, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
I have been asked to talk about the idea of a security community in Asia. Drawing on the meeting that we had in Kuala Lumpur of the nine ASEAN Defence Ministers, we agreed on the basic principles of establishing a community based on three pillars: one is political stability; the second is economic development; and the third is social cultural harmony.
I think the last few sessions have identified some of the big problems in defining the role of security in the broader sense, not just in the military sense, but the importance of nonmilitary defence, the ability of a country to cope with the complexities of the modern economy, the global economy, and the competitiveness of science and technology.
But we have come to the conclusion that indeed security is not everything, but without security nothing can develop. Security is the basic principle of political stability. It is the basic underpinning for sustainable economic recovery, as we face now in Indonesia, and security is also the lynchpin of social and economic harmony.
We believe in ASEAN that the ASEAN identity can only be established firmly and strongly if we achieve these three elements of the pillars, reinforcing each other in a virtual circle.
Stability, in political terms, can sustain economic development, economic development can provide more basic human services, health care, education, adequate housing, clean water, for those who need aspects of social harmony to take place.
We are seeing in this region the complexity of three diverse elements. One is of course the role of the great powers, not only in military terms, but, more importantly, in the presence of an economic presence.
The United States is a $12 trillion economy; Japan is a $4 trillion economy; Australia nears $1 trillion economy. The ASEAN region as a whole is barely $500 billion together.
Within this interplay of politics, economics and security, we have to understand that the United States plays an important role in providing the secure environment in which economic interaction can take place.
From its inception way back in 1945 up till now, almost 65 years, we have seen the United States providing the defence parameter from Japan, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, down to Australia and New Zealand.
This defence parameter provided for the economic recovery of Japan, which became the world's second largest economy.
Without this economic and security presence of both the United States and Japan, ASEAN would not have been able to take off in 1967. The economic support of Japan and the security support of the United States made possible the rise of ASEAN.
We also have to understand that with the $12 trillion economy and with its budget of $440 billion, the United States is inevitably in the prime role of providing that delivery of the security system, enabling the countries of the region to provide the economic transactions that makes trade, investments and financial transactions take place very efficiently.
Of course, that dominance is grudgingly, or sometimes silently, accepted by most of the countries in the region simply because of the full spectrum dominance of the United States in the political, economic and security sense.
We are understanding of this implication for the role of the ASEAN region, both through the ASEAN Regional Forum, as well as through the forum of all the ministerial meetings that we have in the ASEAN region.
But we are also seeing now the importance of the rise of Japan, China and India, particularly in terms of the Malacca Straits and of energy security in the future, because 85 per cent of the oil and gas that the
powerhouses of Japan, South Korea and China needs passes through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, and more than 38 per cent of seaborne trade passes through the Straits of Southeast Asia.
Since world trade consists of 80 per cent sea-borne, this is a very important responsibility for the ASEAN
countries to provide that degree of security in which economic interaction and security can be effectively put in place.
Again, without security there can be no political stability, there can be no economic recovery, and no social delivery of services available to the people in the region.
But the rise of Japan, China and India brings with it the need for the United States to look ahead to a possibility that the degree of dominance that it has enjoyed for the past 50 years may have to be redefined in terms of the rise of the economies of Japan, China, and India.
After all, the economic rise of Japan, China, and India does have implications for each of these countries and civilizations to define their terms of security in their particular immediate region.
I think it's an important call for us to ask of the United States to understand that in the next 10 to 15 years the redefining of the full spectrum dominance which has been enjoyed over the past 50 years may have to be deliberately transited to a new format, where India, China and Japan may have to play a more important role.
Defining the scope and speed of that transition will not be easy for the United States to accept, because it has enjoyed this dominance and taken for granted the need for it to play such a prominent role.
But for us in ASEAN, we realise that without the support of the United States and the great powers in the region, the continued concept of ASEAN regional community cannot be devised, cannot be put in place.
What we would like to see in place is providing that transition in which the role of Japan, China, India will be recognised by the ASEAN countries, and also by the United States.
The role of the United States has been to provide assurance that the security of the region can play an important part in providing economic enforcement in the field of trade, finance and investments, and this has been the most successful aspect of the role of the United States in the Western Pacific over the past 50 years.
Now that the regional powers are rising, that China is rising and Japan wishes to assert itself in a self-calibrated (sic) manner of its political and economic role in the region, we might have to see in the next 10 to 15 years a new balance of power emerging in which the new role of these three giants will have to be calculated into the regional picture.
At the same time, we also appeal to the United States that this emerging structure of a more ASEAN-centric security system will not overly challenge its role in the global role that it has played over the past 50 years.
We in ASEAN look forward to this interaction of the great powers in the ASEAN region, as devised more than 30 years ago by the late father of the Defence Minister of Malaysia, Tun Abdul Razak. He devised the Southeast Asian zone of peace, freedom and neutrality.
That is the political impulse of the ASEAN region facing the interaction of the great powers of Asia and of the United States. We would like to fulfill that framework on our terms with the support and cooperative endeavour of India, China, Japan and the United States.
Thank you very much.
