ASEAN-China Regional Code of Conduct in the South China Sea: Challenges on the path ahead (original) (raw)
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Institutionalization as weapons of the weak: ASEAN and the South China Sea disputes
International Relations and Diplomacy
“Institutionalization” can be understood as a process of norm and law setting to regulate and control individual attitudes. An institutionalized area could be more stable and ordered, then the relationships between the factors can be identified by the predicted signals. Institutions can help to provide a key form of such frameworks, through which all states, but especially the stronger states, can use rules and other normative expectations of conduct in the international relation. Weaker states, in return, gain limits on the action of the leading states and access to the political process, in which they can press their interests. This article analyzes the disputes in the South China Sea, particularly between China and ASEAN countries to prove the argument. It is argued that ASEAN, in the situation of power asymmetry between dominant (power-holders) and dominated groups, has used “institution” and “institutionalization” as a countermeasure to constrain the powerful China in the two ways: (i) trying to lock-in China in a rule-based order, in order to restrict its power, and (ii) by institutionalizing the way in which the disputes in the South China Sea should be resolved, ASEAN countries want to create a frameworks for setting rules of games, which are shaped by principles and norms instead of balance-of-power.
2015
The territorial disputes in the South China Sea have become the major flashpoints of both potential and existing conflicts in Asia. With claimant states from both China and member states of ASEAN, the aggressive military gestures of the claimant states have led to a myriad number of confrontations throughout the years. The inevitability of ASEAN being in the center of the disputes, have led many critics towards the regional organization on its capacity to establish any significant changes towards the dynamics of the South China Sea disputes. This research argues the opposite of the existing academic literatures, which views ASEAN as not an ideal actor in facing the fast paced dynamics of the South China Sea conflicts. It argues of ASEAN’s ability and capacity to persuade China into some forms of compromises into its policy, reflected through its defined position of a conflict management institution throughout the South China Sea crisis. The research thus argues how there is an existing misperception of ASEAN’s conflict management endeavors with the occurrence of China’s recent assertive gestures, ASEAN’s ability in instilling cooperative values and confidence building measures among conflicted states, and relevance of ASEAN’s multilateralism measures despite of China’s historical stance of bilateral means of conflict resolution in regards to the South China Sea conflict.
Despite the ASEAN-China Declaration on the Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the South China Sea (2002) and China´s increasingly assertive behavior in this region since 2009, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was in the last decade reluctant to actively promote multilateral dispute management in the South China Sea. Utilizing the constructivist Copenhagen School´s securitization and discourse analysis (“speech act”) approach, this contribution demonstrates that the failure of the ASEAN Foreign Minister´s Meeting (AMM) in July 2012 proved as a watershed, yet with a small time lag: Since 2014 ASEAN is in the process of stronger securitizing the South China Sea dispute, even without labeling it an “existential threat”. Having addressed the dispute ever since 1992, the AMM plays the key role in this process, though the ASEAN Summit´s discourse has also become more robust. Even though the security organization ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) includes 17 other members, its South China Sea-related speech act resembles strongly the AMM`s. The main exception is that the ARF has not yet securitized the dispute according to the strict Copenhagen School´s criteria. The analysis of the speech acts of ASEAN (since 1992) demonstrate that ASEAN´s discourse and policies on the South China Sea are in line with each other. However, while a speech act alone is not sufficient to explain ASEAN´s dispute management, it reveals the narrative behind the Association´s policies and sheds light on its future policies.
This paper examines the limitations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN’) approach in managing the South China Sea dispute. It observes that since the mid- 1990s, the ASEAN member states have tried to manage this territorial row by attempting to embed China into its system of diplomatic consultations and confidence-building measures. This system is aimed at building mutual trust among small and medium size powers on a multilateral basis with the eventual goals of mitigating existing disputes, and finding means of resolving them. Unfortunately, China has prevented the ASEAN member states from pulling it into this system. Ironically, China has succeeded in dividing these small powers, and in effect, weakening ASEAN as a regional organization. This development, however, led the United States and Japan to balance China from achieving its long-term objective in the disputed waters—“Prevailing in its struggle to defend the South China Sea and construct a Great Wall at Sea.” In the long run, the current strategic impasse between China on the one side, and the U.S. and Japan on the other side can lead into a major armed confrontation in the region that can divide ASEAN and cause its irrelevance in the regional power equation.
Perspectives on the South China Sea
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