EDITORIAL - An Asean response

In unity there is strength. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has seen this in its trade negotiations with other regions of the world. A regional market of 600 million people has substantial bargaining power in the global economy.

Since five countries including the Philippines founded ASEAN in 1967 to push back communism, the grouping has also seen the advantages of a peaceful region. ASEAN has prospered in a zone of peace. As armed conflict ended in other countries in Southeast Asia, they were welcomed into the regional grouping. With peace, countries such as Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam could focus on economic recovery and poverty alleviation.

In the past four decades, ASEAN has found it occasionally necessary to soften its policy of non-intervention in its members’ internal affairs. ASEAN pressure contributed to democratic reforms in Myanmar, which is hosting the grouping’s summit this weekend.

Security has also become an increasing concern for ASEAN as borderless threats such as extremist terrorism called for coordinated responses. Now the grouping is facing a threat to regional stability from a non-member state.

China is laying claim to nearly the entire South China Sea, and is using its newfound prosperity to flex its military muscle in waters that lap at the shores of several ASEAN members. This not only challenges the sovereignty of China’s Southeast Asian neighbors but also threatens freedom of navigation in some of the busiest sea lanes in the world.

Last year, unable to secure a regional consensus on what must be done, the Philippines went to the United Nations and sought international arbitration to define its maritime entitlements. It’s a peaceful way of resolving a dispute, based on international rules.

China, which has been trying to reassure the world that there is nothing to fear about its “peaceful rise,” should welcome this rules-based approach, but it has not. Instead it has refused to participate in arbitration and is hurriedly enforcing its territorial claims, installing oil rigs in disputed waters and deploying patrol boats to harass fishermen far beyond its shores.

Beijing may brush aside the individual protests of its much smaller neighbors in Southeast Asia, but together these countries will have a stronger voice. ASEAN must rise to the occasion and unite to preserve regional peace.