Chapter 9
Modes of security cooperation: confidence-building, partnerships, alliances
Plenary session no 6
Sunday 1 June 2008, 12.00 noon
SPEAKERS
Teo Chee Hean
Minister for Defence, Singapore
Colonel General Phan Trung Kien
Deputy Minister of National Defence, Vietnam
Des Browne
Secretary of State for Defence,
United Kingdom
The first address in the final plenary session was delivered by Teo Chee Hean, Minister for Defence, Singapore, who began by discussing cooperative security mechanisms in the Asia-Pacific. While defence and security relationships were evolving to meet the geopolitical context and the region’s security needs, and vestiges of old Cold War security structures still existed, the security architecture in Asia was not as sharply divided as it was in Europe. Bilateral ties and defence pacts were the order of the day.
However, regional countries were now adjusting to new strategic challenges and were looking to find new ways to cooperate; building on current relationships but also looking beyond traditional partners to configure partnerships that best address future security needs. Today’s security challenges came ‘from 360 degrees’. Many were transnational and required multilateral cooperation. ‘Issues such as energy security and food and water security affect us all.’ Other examples included maritime security, pandemics, non-proliferation, terrorism, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
The Asia-Pacific security architecture was still evolving, in the face of these challenges, with ‘a matrix of overlapping structures, comprising multilateral security fora and groupings’ emerging as a result of the changing security environment. Three layers – broad multilateral groupings, focused regional or task oriented groupings, and bilateral relations – were important components of the emerging regional security architecture. Besides pan-regional groupings such as the ASEAN Regional Forum or the Shangri-La Dialogue, there were other organisations such as ASEAN itself, the East Asia Summit, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation.
ASEAN had taken steps to enhance practical security cooperation through the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM), Teo said. It had also established the ADMM-Plus to engage ASEAN’s friends and dialogue partners in the security arena. Functional groups with a more focused and niche membership could address specific challenges and form another layer of the architecture – these included the Malacca Strait Patrols, the Six-Party Talks and the Five Power Defence Arrangements. Complementing the multilateral forums was a web of bilateral defence ties between the Asia-Pacific countries. With a changing regional security environment, and in the face of new and diverse challenges, countries should work towards an open and inclusive security architecture that could accommodate different modes of security cooperation to devise innovative strategies and implement practical cooperation.
Colonel General Phan Trung Kien, Deputy Minister of National Defence, Vietnam – the highest-ranking representative from Vietnam to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue – addressed delegates next. The world was going through complicated changes, he said, which brought challenges as well as opportunities. While peace, cooperation and development were the overriding trends, challenges existed from territorial and resource disputes, natural disasters as well as the threat from terrorism. Meanwhile, ‘the instability on the financial market and the increase in price of food products and oil at a record level have directly affected millions of people’.
Notwithstanding the dialogue and cooperation ongoing throughout the region, evidenced by ASEAN’s activities, security, stability and regional cooperation were still under threat. Vietnam’s view was that countries should increase cooperation and assistance. Vietnam was ready, the general continued, ‘to become a trusted partner of other countries ... [and was] willing to learn from and exchange experiences, cooperate and share information in order to repel challenges and dangers to security’. Vietnam believed that security and prosperity played an important role in building trust and partnership and that in order to deal effectively with challenges to security, countries should create new opportunities for cooperation.
However, confidence building and mutual trust were necessary to improve effective cooperation between countries. One issue to which this applied was the territorial dispute in the South China Sea. Vietnam was of the opinion that the countries concerned should continue to comply with the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, ‘and have a clear attitude aimed at the realisation of the Code of Conduct on the South China Sea’.
Vietnam had made important contributions to activities designed to build confidence and partnership in the ASEAN community. It had ratified the ASEAN charter, had been a member of ARF since its inception and participated actively in cooperative activities in the ASEAN defence and security realm. Furthermore, Vietnam supported ASEAN efforts in relation to participating in, and broadening, cooperative defence and security relationships with outside partners through official and unofficial channels, seeing these as contributing to peace and security in the region and the world.
In the final address, Des Browne, Secretary of State for Defence, United Kingdom, said that, in a globalising world, Asia was the new centre of gravity, containing the world’s fastest-growing economies. The region was also characterised by the diversity of its politics, ethnicity and religion, as well as the speed of change in economic growth and development. Security challenges in the region included territorial issues, concerns about nuclear management, the risk of fragile states and issues of maritime security. Given that the region’s geopolitical landscape was changing, an important question was how emerging powers could be folded into regional security architecture – and what was the best way to design and change this. There had been a clear consensus at the Dialogue, he said, that new architecture should be based on multilateral engagement throughout the region.
He went on to discuss the evolution of post-war security architecture in Europe and potential lessons from this. The EU had developed with its roots in links through trade agreements, while NATO emerged as a formal defence structure designed to bind US and Canadian support to protect Europe in the Cold War. With the EU’s development came an aspiration to attain greater independent collective security. ‘This saw Europe post Cold-War with two overlapping but independent bodies – both had an interest in European security but were not particularly coherent.’ Bosnia in the 1990s exposed this incoherence. By the end of the 1990s, both NATO and the EU had evolved and had different ideas of their roles compared to the start of the decade. Furthermore, the bodies to which the UK belonged, including both NATO and the EU, had experienced significant expansion. A pan-Asian security forum would face a challenge given the large number of nations involved, but there were examples globally which showed successful cooperation among large groups of nations, and in this regard Browne mentioned operations in southern Afghanistan.
The security architecture in Asia was still maturing. Confidence building through multilateral dialogue had firm roots in the region and ASEAN had been successful in preventing conflict among its members. ASEAN had been the core around which new structures had developed. The challenge ahead was in building these forums to forge rules-based organisations with effective decision-making processes that include the players with the willingness to act when necessary. While there were, of course, obstacles to progress in this area, there were some positive examples of how the region was already tackling its own issues, through what Singapore’s Defence Minister Teo had described as functional groups to meet bespoke challenges (such as the Malacca Strait Patrols). ‘Holistic dialogue in the Asia-Pacific region can only be the right path and the evolving security architecture will only grow and strengthen through openness and inclusivity.’
Questions and answers
Zhuang Jianzhong, Deputy Director of the National Strategic Center at Shanghai Jiaotong University, addressed his question to Teo. Bilateral cooperation and partnership should be welcomed, even in the military field, but he did not think that it was good to stress military alliances – these were a historic product of the Cold War. He believed the US–Japan alliance was counterproductive to Asian security, and wondered whether Teo agreed.
Dr Tim Huxley, Executive Director, IISS-Asia, asked how ADMM-Plus might develop in coming years, and which of ASEAN’s dialogue partners might become involved. General Winai Phattiyakul, Permanent Secretary for Defence, Thailand responded that Thailand was working on this with the current chair, Singapore. Thailand was due to take over the chairmanship later in 2008. A working group would develop criteria that could be presented to the December meeting in Bangkok. ASEAN defence ministers intend to firm up the architecture of the group.
Mufleh R. Osmany, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies, asked if Teo could elaborate on Singapore’s experience of building security cooperation in a situation of strategic asymmetry. Dr Jonathan D. Pollack, Professor of Asian and Pacific Studies at the US Naval War College, referred to a comment by Dr Robert M. Gates, the US defence secretary, on the concept of an Asia-wide security architecture. Would the panel remark on the relevance or consequences of this approach, as opposed to building blocks sub-region by sub-region, even when there were links from one sub-region to the next?
Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, Honourable Adviser for Foreign Affairs (Foreign Minister), Bangladesh, asked Teo whether he saw a future in cooperation between the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), ASEAN, China and Japan.
Teo responded that if the US–Japan alliance was seen in the context of a wider security architecture, providing assurances to Japan and allowing both nations to coordinate their activities in a constructive way, he thought it played a useful role in helping to assure regional stability. An insecure Japan would look to other ways to assure its security, and this would not be conducive to better stability and security in North East Asia or the region as a whole. ADMM-Plus, Teo said, was trying to develop ideas about potential partners. They ought already to have substantial security and defence relationships with ASEAN countries. Regarding SAARC, he noted that any potential ‘flying geese’ formation of SAARC, ASEAN, China and Japan would lack a trans-Pacific dimension. Without that component ‘we would not be able to find the kind of stability and the structure we need in the Asia-Pacific region’.
Responding to Dr Pollack, Teo said that while ‘we can look at building blocks from bilateral defence and security relationships ... we still need an overall pan-regional kind of forum’. The ARF was one formal example, and the Shangri-La Dialogue was another example, helping to develop norms of behaviour and giving countries a forum for discussion. ‘If we have this three-tier structure with a pan-regional grouping ... 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.’
