Transcript ASEAN – Great Powers

ASEAN – Great Powers
15 June 2010
Understanding Relations
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National interest
Great powers interest
Sub Regional
Regional
How does the relations been arranged
between SEA and Great Powers?
• Balancing?
• Badwagoning?
Understanding Balancing
• States facing an external threat will align with
others to oppose the states posing threat.
• Tendencies:
• - threatening state’s aggregate power
• - nearer powerful state greater state offensive
capabilities
• More aggressive states perceive intentions
Understanding Bandwagoning
• States facing an external threat will ally with
the most threatening power.
– The greater a state’s offensive capabilities
Historical background SEA relations
with great powers
• Bipolar system,
– containment policy
– Bilateral
– Alliances : SEATO, Thailand, Philippines.
– Balancing
Post Cold War
• System : Unipolar
General Perception
• US: a benign power
• China:
– distrust , for reasons of geographical proximity,
historical enmity and interference,
contemporary territorial disputes, and rising
economic competition
– No more China Threat but China challenge.
Type of Relations to Great Powers
• Balancing ?
– Soft balancing
• Badwagoning ?
• Hedging ?
• engagement
Strategic policies to other great
powers
• omni-enmeshment: political and economic
means, through bilateral efforts, and through
the use of multilateral regional institutions:
developing closer economic relations,
creating political/security dialogues,
exchanges, and cooperation, establishing
military exchanges and relationships.
Strategic policies to other great
powers
• Hedging : neither to pick sides nor to exclude
certain great powers, but rather to try to
include all the various major powers in the
region’s strategic affairs.
– Need great powers to intertwined
Divergences and Convergences among
SEA
• D: Indonesia and Malaysia were worried about
China, whereas Singapore was more
concerned about Japan
• C: feared the potentially destabilizing effects
of a fractious U.S.-Japan alliance and
deteriorating U.S.-China relations
Example of omni-enmeshment policies
• I.
• Vietnam – US and India – while maintaining close
traditional tie with China
• Indonesian defense tie with US, China and Australia,
• II
• Singapore – Thailand policymakers have tried to
• turn the geopolitical reality of great power penetration
to their benefit. elevated national goals of diversifying
bilateral relations with major powers by promoting
them as integral elements of policies to manage
• regional stability
The Positive for Omni-enmeshment
policies
• mediates against the possibility of violent
rivalry between major powers
• these powers will discover that they have
common interests that are not mutually
exclusive, such as the economic benefts of
free trade and secure trading routes in the
region
Balancing Strategic
• Not in realist terms : neither balance against the
preponderant power of the United States, nor do they
obviously balance against the potentially bigger perceived
threat of China
• indirect military balancing policies:
• (1) undertaken by individual states unilaterally or
bilaterally, aimed at deterring a range of potential threats;
and (2) regional “complex balancing” policies that
encompass multiple balancing media and targets, with
• the wider aim of forging a regional balance of influence
that goes beyond the military realm
Regional order
• Where SEA situated?
• (1) superpower overlay: United States;
• (2) regional great power: China; (3) major
regional powers: Japan and India;
• and (4) major regional players ASEAN,
Australia, and South Korea
Examination
• Criteria:
– Open Book
– No lap top
– No sharing material
Marking:
– Use the theoretical/references(write the name,
year)
– Your logical/chronological argument.
– Creativity.