Initiated in 2002 in response to the clear need for a forum where the Asia-Pacific’s defence ministers could engage in dialogue aimed at building confidence and fostering practical security cooperation, the IISS Asia Security Summit – or Shangri-La Dialogue as it has come to be known – has established itself as a key element of the emerging regional security architecture. It is the most important regular gathering of defence professionals in the region and has become a vital annual fixture in the diaries of Asia-Pacific defence ministers and their civilian and military chiefs of staff. By catering for their specific interests and needs, and by facilitating easy communication and fruitful contact among them, the Shangri-La Dialogue has helped to engender a sense of community among the most important policy-makers in the defence and security establishments of regional states and of major powers with significant stakes in Asia-Pacific security.
The Dialogue’s format, agenda, and cohort of delegates have evolved incrementally. The IISS soon modified the Dialogue’s structure – originally based simply on plenary sessions – to permit several simultaneous break-out groups during one half-day of the summit, allowing in-depth discussion of a greater variety of critical regional security topics. After several years, we established the principle that all speaking slots in plenary sessions and break-out groups would be allocated to ministers, other senior official delegates or distinguished legislators with strong defence credentials.
Because the states of the Asia-Pacific, an extraordinarily large and diverse region encompassing the majority of the world’s population, face an extremely wide range of defence and security challenges, and their responses to these challenges have also been varied, the IISS has intentionally formulated a wide-ranging agenda for the Shangri-La Dialogue each year. But we have also ensured that each year the Dialogue’s agenda has recognised emerging as well as established regional security concerns.
At an early stage, the IISS strengthened official participation in the Shangri-La Dialogue by inviting chiefs of defence staff and permanent heads of defence ministries as well as ministers. Additional states within the region and, in one case, from outside the region were invited to participate. After the 2006 summit, the IISS set itself the target of ensuring participation at the highest level from the very few regional states that had not hitherto sent ministerial-level delegates. The IISS, together with participant states, particularly felt China’s under-representation needed to be rectified. In 2007, long-standing IISS efforts to encourage appropriate Chinese participation bore fruit when Lieutenant-General Zhang Qinsheng, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army (with vice-ministerial status) led Beijing’s delegation.
Debate at the Dialogue has become increasingly open and fruitful, and there is tangible evidence that it has advanced substantive cooperation on vital security issues. In the maritime security sphere, for example, discussions at the Dialogue led to a consensus on common principles relating to the roles of littoral states and concerned non-Southeast Asian powers in relation to the Malacca Strait. Over time, official delegations have made increasingly intensive and effective use of the Dialogue as a venue for bilateral and multilateral meetings with security partners. While the precise content of these private meetings has usually remained confidential, they have sometimes resulted in publicised understandings on defence and security cooperation.
Although the Shangri-La Dialogue is, above all, a ‘Track One’ inter-governmental meeting, the participation of ‘non-official’ delegates has from the beginning served to animate and enrich the summit’s proceedings. By replenishing each year the cohort of legislators, academic experts, distinguished journalists and business delegates invited to the Dialogue, the IISS has continually expanded awareness of the institution in the wider public community concerned with defence and security matters.
The 2008 Dialogue
The seventh Shangri-La Dialogue, held in May–June 2008, brought together more defence ministers from more countries than ever before: in all 22 ministers or their deputies attended. The fact that many national delegations were stronger than ever provided an opportunity for some of the most significant discussions of regional security concerns conducted under the summit’s auspices.
China consolidated its high-level presence, with Lieutenant-General Ma Xiaotian, Deputy Chief of the General Staff leading a delegation from the People’s Liberation Army. Canada’s Minister for National Defence participated for the first time. Vietnam elevated its level of representation, with its Deputy Minister of National Defence, Colonel-General Phan Trung Kien, leading its delegation. For the first time, Myanmar’s delegation was led by a high-ranking officer from the Ministry of Defence, Deputy Minister Major-General Aye Myint.
The Vietnamese and Myanmar deputy ministers both agreed to speak from the platform in plenary sessions.
The presence for the first time of a delegation from Laos, led by Brigadier-General Sisouphonh Bangonesengdeth, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of National Defence, brought to 27 the total number of countries that have been represented officially since 2002. The IISS was delighted that all 27 were present at the 2008 Dialogue, and was pleased that the governments of China and Myanmar sent high-level delegations despite the recent natural disasters in their countries. Apart from the national delegations, distinguished delegates attending the Dialogue for the first time included US Senator Joseph Lieberman and Dr Jakob Kellenberger, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the inter-state organisation entrusted – primarily through the Geneva Conventions – with protecting the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict.
In 2008 the IISS expanded the range of topics under discussion by adding a sixth plenary. At the same time, delegates were given the choice of six break-out groups rather than the three options of previous years. On the Dialogue’s first day, three plenary sessions allowed the US Secretary of Defense, Japan’s Minister of Defense, and China’s Deputy Chief of the General Staff to outline their countries’ major global and regional security concerns, and for a discussion led by the South Korean and Australian defence ministers and India’s minister of state of the complications involved in making defence policy in uncertain times. On the following day, the fourth plenary provided opportunities to examine energy security issues in the Asia-Pacific with views from the French defence minister, a high-ranking Indonesian state oil company executive and the chairman of Russia’s Federation Council. In the final two plenaries, Malaysia’s deputy prime minister (who is also defence minister), Myanmar’s deputy defence minister and the ICRC president discussed the dilemmas involved in providing humanitarian relief and restoring peace in complex and humanitarian emergencies, while the Singapore and British defence ministers and Vietnamese deputy minister addressed the topic of regional security cooperation. In each plenary session, probing interventions from the floor following the formal presentations provoked lively and enlightening exchanges between speakers and other delegates.
On the Dialogue’s Saturday afternoon, under the chairmanship of IISS directing and senior staff, diverse and distinguished speakers including ministers, chiefs of defence staff, civilian heads of defence ministries and senior legislators led discussions in break-out groups on the topics ‘Climate change and Asia-Pacific security’, ‘An arms race in the Asia-Pacific?’, ‘How successful is counter-terrorism in the Asia-Pacific?’, ‘Strategies for resolving proliferation challenges’, ‘The emerging regional security architecture’, and ‘Maritime disputes in the Asia-Pacific’.
Presentations and discussions at the 2008 Dialogue underlined the enduring significance for Asia-Pacific defence and security policy-makers of key issues discussed at previous meetings in the series such as the evolving roles of the major powers, particularly with respect to China’s emerging role and how it will be integrated into the regional and global orders. And as was clear from the debate following Lieutenant-General Ma Xiaotian’s presentation focusing on China’s role in the future of East Asian security, issues relating to military spending and modernisation continued to concern Dialogue delegates. French Minister of Defence Hervé Morin’s call for confidence-building measures in relation to the regional proliferation of submarines pointed to the potential for developing stabilising arms control measures in the Asia-Pacific.
A wider defence and security agenda
The 2008 Dialogue took place against the background of the humanitarian emergencies following the impact of Cyclone Nargis on Myanmar and the Sichuan earthquake in China, as well as rapid increases in fuel and food prices which had affected political stability in some Asia-Pacific states, and mounting global concern over the ramifications of climate change. If one theme stood out pre-eminently from the Dialogue it concerned the broadening agenda for defence and security policymakers. Two of the Dialogue’s plenary sessions, ‘Securing energy in the Asia-Pacific’ and ‘Restoring peace in complex emergencies’, as well as the break-out group on climate change, were specifically concerned with emerging challenges, but a sense of the new importance for defence and security establishments of so-called ‘non-traditional’ concerns permated the Dialogue’s overall proceedings.
In his keynote address at the opening dinner at the very start of the 2008 Dialogue, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong focused on the importance of ‘common security challenges’, notably the trend towards tighter supplies and higher prices of food, and the issue of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (or ‘HADR’, as it has become known). Subsequent speakers took up these issues. Teo Chee Hean, Singapore’s defence minister, spoke of ‘360-degree’ security challenges including energy, food and water security, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and disease pandemics, as well as longer-established concerns over proliferation, terrorism and maritime security. Indian Minister of State for Defence Pallam Raju reflected on the way that potential competition for energy, water and food injected substantial uncertainty into the future of global security. Indonesia’s Widhyawan Prawiraatmadja highlighted Asia’s rapidly growing demand for oil and the fact that even his country, a major oil producer, had become a net importer. As in many Asian countries, reducing fuel subsidies was necessary for economic reasons, but was making a major impact on political stability.
This emphasis on common security challenges inevitably stimulated considerable discussion over the necessity for common responses, particularly in relation to HADR. Having emphasised the growing salience for defence planners of non-traditional threats, South Korean Minister of National Defence Lee Sang-Hee called for ‘a crisis management system of global reach’ for coordinating the international response to natural disasters. Taking a regional perspective on this matter, Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak revisited his proposal, made at the 2006 Shangri-La Dialogue, for establishing a regionally based humanitarian-relief coordination centre, pointing to recent moves to establish an interim ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management to facilitate cooperation among regional states and international organisations. Najib argued that the the disaster in Myanmar was a test case for ASEAN’s role in providing humanitarian assistance, and highlighted the encouraging establishment of an ASEAN-led coordinating mechanism for the provision of international assistance to that country.
Against the backdrop of recent international discussion over the relevance of the UN-sanctioned ‘responsibility to protect’ principle to Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis, IISS Director-General and Chief Executive Dr John Chipman pointed out that a private ministerial lunch of defence ministers attending the Dialogue had agreed that multilateral cooperation in humanitarian assistance in disaster relief could be guided by three principles: the responsibility of disaster-hit countries to bring humanitarian relief quickly and effectively to their people; where necessary, such countries should facilitate the entry of external assistance; and any external help should have the consent of the affected countries and fall under their control. Chipman asked if these principles amounted to a new international norm which might be summarised as the ‘responsibility to invite’.
A question particularly salient to the concerns of Dialogue delegates was the proper role of armed forces in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Both Malaysia’s Najib and Singapore’s Minister for Defence Teo Chee Hean argued that armed forces have important roles to play in this context. ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger agreed that military personnel and logistic capabilities may play ‘irreplaceable’ disaster relief roles, but also pointed out that the situation may be more complicated where humanitarian emergencies occur in areas of conflict or in sensitive political contexts.
The regional security architecture and the major powers
Against the background of diverse efforts in the Asia-Pacific to institutionalise and intensify regional security cooperation through relatively new structures such as the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting, the East Asian Summit and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the question of the evolving regional security architecture arose repeatedly throughout the Dialogue, and not simply in the final plenary session and break-out group specifically focused on this theme.
There was considerable consensus that a tightly organised regional security architecture would not reflect the complex realities of the Asia-Pacific. Singapore’s Teo Chee Hean identified an evolving three-level regional security architecture involving, at the top level, large multilateral, pan-regional security forums such as the Shangri-La Dialogue and ASEAN Regional Forum, bringing together all relevant contributors to regional security, sub-regional groupings such as ASEAN, the East Asian Summit, SAARC and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and finally functional groups with more focused memberships for addressing specific challenges. Teo also emphasised the ‘web of bilateral ties’ that existed between Asia-Pacific countries, notably the United States’ treaties and security partnerships, and the defence ties between certain combinations of ASEAN members. He argued that these layers of security cooperation all constituted important components of the regional security architecture. The Shangri-La Dialogue played ‘an important role’ in this architecture, he said. Central to this role, Teo explained, was the way that the Dialogue helped ‘to develop norms of behaviour ... to develop expectations’ by providing a platform for the exchange and subsequent modification of viewpoints.
One key question regarding the emerging regional security architecture concerns how inclusive it should be. Given the central role that the United States still plays in Asia-Pacific security – a role that US Defense Secretary Dr Robert M. Gates pledged would continue under whatever administration takes power in 2009 – there was widespread acceptance in the Dialogue of the notion that the regional security architecture must involve all major actors in the region whether their capital cities were located within or outside Asia. Teo Chee Hean’s view that the region should ‘continue to work towards an open and inclusive security architecture’ in the face of diversifying challenges accurately represented the spirit of the 2008 Shangri-La Dialogue.
