Strained

Never before has our regional association been as strained as it is today — and much of the blame might be put on the Philippine side.

For the first time in its 45-year history, the annual ministerial meeting of the ASEAN failed to arrive at a joint communique. None was issued at the close of the meeting held in Phnom Penh. That says much about the deep undercurrent of dissonance that developed in the regional community.

The big powers worked feverishly behind the scenes in the run-up to this meeting. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a strong pitch for a code of conduct governing the South China Sea territorial issues subscribed to by all countries involved in the dispute. Beijing, for its part, tried its best to keep those issues at a strictly bilateral basis.

In the ASEAN summit meeting held earlier, host country Cambodia succeeded in keeping discussions of the Scarborough Shoal dispute off the agenda. In the recently concluded ministerial meeting, Cambodia resisted a communique that might suggest the elevation of the bilateral dispute into a multilateral issue.

As I suggested in my previous discussion of the matter, the Philippines ruffled some feathers among its ASEAN partners by unilaterally escalating the rhetoric on the matter of the contested islets and shoals — and then invoking the entire ASEAN community as a party to the confrontation. The very public statements emanating from Manila did not benefit from careful, quiet consultations with our regional partners. Some of our regional partners resented the gung-ho, unilateral conduct of the Philippine side.

It is as if Manila expected its regional partners to simply play along, sacrificing their respective views of their national interests and passively becoming Manila’s shield in an uneven confrontation with China. Consensus is the heart and soul of the ASEAN. In the view of some of our neighbors, Manila failed to do the patient work of consensus-building necessary for the association to take an explicit and common position on a complex territorial issue.

The ASEAN is not the Philippine Congress where it was so easy to get half-baked impeachment resolutions through the House and a conviction on an unimpeachable offense at the Senate on the say-so of the political bosses. A consensus at the regional level required from the Philippine side a demonstration of sufficient empathy for the positions of our partners and a lot more sophistication in the framing of the issues.

Yet, to some of our partners, Manila behaved like it was afflicted with Asperger syndrome. We paid little attention to their concerns and appeared narrowly focused on our view of things. We acted insensitively and spoke callously. We did not blend well with the others and failed to tune in. We wanted the ASEAN to be our chorus even as we exerted no effort to blend in.

At the start of the meeting, our Foreign Secretary accused China of “duplicity.” The tone of his remarks could not possibly be the basis of a sustainable regional consensus.

When the ministerial meeting failed to issue a communique, the Philippine side bitterly accused Cambodia of, well, doing Beijing’s bidding. The insinuation of bad faith ruffled feathers even more.

In the face of Philippine prattling, Phnom Penh found it necessary to issue a statement underscoring its view that the South China Sea issues are bilateral matters that ought not to be elevated to multilateral status. That signals a hardening of the Cambodian position — a development thoroughly unhealthy for the Philippine side.

Some of the most unsophisticated and irresponsible voices in Manila began making noises about reviewing our diplomatic relations with Cambodia. As I write this, Palace mouths were frantically trying to suppress these damaging noises. I can only wish them the best of luck: it is our side conducting diplomacy by way of hostile public statements.

Phnom Penh’s strong position against allowing the Philippines to use the ASEAN as a tool of its narrow foreign policy interest is very likely shared by Laos and Burma. It is probably quietly shared by Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. Indonesia, our closest ally in the region has so far shown little enthusiasm for supporting the strident position Manila has taken.

Vietnam, probably more hostile to Beijing than we are, maintains profound diplomatic silence. They are not given to using public prattle as an instrument of diplomacy. Hanoi speaks only when Vietnamese commandoes are already on the ground.

By taking an inordinately shrill position in a highly consensual forum, we undermined our own diplomatic strategy.

Our only sustainable strategy at this point is to build a strong ASEAN chorus weighing in on the South China Sea issues. This will allow us to leverage our position vis-à-vis Beijing.

However, that requires us to adhere more closely to the common sensibilities of our partners in the region. That is a challenge in itself: our neighbors sometimes see us as dislocated Latinos masquerading as Asians.

We have to try harder to tuck ourselves well within the regional association, painstakingly complying with the discreet procedures of consultation. We have to behave like Asians.

Meanwhile, our strategy is in disarray. After the embarrassing outcome of the Phnom Penh meetings, we definitely have no ASEAN card to play in the confrontational path we chose to take against China.

We cannot continue to play the role of regional spoiled brat, expecting our neighbors to mindlessly dance to the music we unilaterally dictate. Otherwise, we will find ourselves alone in a neighborhood where collaboration, not confrontation, is the rule.

The Phnom Penh meeting indicates that.