In it, I outline several steps to sustain Europe’s recent increasing attention to Southeast Asia in the economic, security and cultural realms. While much ink has been spilled on America’s pivot to Asia, I continue to believe it is important to pay equal attention to the EU’s shift to the East as well.

Here is an excerpt:

During his visit to Singapore recently German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle made a convincing case for deeper European Union engagement in Asia and more specifically with ASEAN. Germany is hardly alone in recognising this. Indeed, 2012 seemed to be the year of Europe’s pivot to Asia. Leading officials attended key Asian summits, and the EU made advances in its relationship with ASEAN by suspending sanctions on Myanmar, acceding to the ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and completing a successful ministerial meeting in April.

But while ASEAN-EU ties have certainly warmed recently due to Europe’s increasing interest in the region, “upgrading” the relationship between the world’s two major regional integration initiatives will require sustained and significant progress by both sides across several areas in the coming years…

You can read the full thing here.

A fierce debate occurred last month at the recent Mekong River Commission (MRC) meeting between Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand over Laos’ Xayaburi dam – a project Vientiane is choosing to move forward with despite the lack of regional consultation required.  The project and the controversy surrounding it has important implications not just for the Mekong River, but sustainable development in the Southeast Asia more generally.

I’ve penned an op-ed published in a Malaysian newspaper setting out a series of steps for riparian nations to take. The recommendations cover not only Laos, but China, which has already built several dams upstream and is still not part of the MRC, Thailand which is going to get most of the electricity from the Xayaburi project, as well as other donor countries and institutions.

I won’t re-publish the whole article here, but I wanted to highlight one of the recommendations I made.

Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand should recognise that while they have a sovereign right to develop their economies, they must also ensure that dam projects are backed up by adequate input and research and adhere to obligations they have previously signed to.

For instance, Laos, a landlocked and poor country, may view hydropower as a gateway to development. But since Vientiane already agreed in December 2011 to postpone a decision on the Xayaburi pending further study, starting it now will violate that commitment as well as the 1995 Mekong Agreement, which requires regional consultation for development projects.

Even if countries decide to go ahead with dams, the process by which decisions are made and they are eventually built needs to be fair and inclusive. Proper research and analysis should be conducted and diverse interest groups must be adequately consulted. Equally important, government officials should have the adequate capacity to conduct these assessments and the necessary impartiality to resist being captured by powerful commercial interests.

Obviously, all this is not new and is easier said than done.  But it is worth re-emphasizing what is at stake here and how countries can help overcome what might be a lingering crisis over the horizon. And that framing the issue in terms of the economy vs. the environment won’t help us get there.

You can read the full thing here.

Yesterday, The Financial Times’ blog on emerging markets reported that analysts seem increasingly confident that the country will continue posting strong growth in 2013 and into 2014 as well:

International lenders and investors expect the Philippines to sustain its growth momentum in the next few years on the back of a possible improvement in the country’s credit rating to investment grade later this year. The World Bank predicts the Philippine economy will expand by 6.2 per cent this year and 6.4 per cent next year.

If they are right, this would mark a significant departure from the Philippines’ past record of erratic growth. Just to give you an idea of how deeply entrenched this pattern has been over the past few decades:

 …Only nine times since the 1960s has annual GDP growth clocked in at more than six per cent. Except in one instance, growth has always slumped in the year following such strong performance, with the rate of growth dropping an average of three percentage points, according to government data.

So there’s no doubt that the Philippines growth story – if it materializes as analysts are saying it will –  is not only promising for the country’s future but also a welcome break from its past.  What remains to be seen is whether those expectations will become a reality.

The report covers several key countries including Japan, Korea, India, China and ASEAN. Some of the recommendations include supporting ASEAN ‘connectivity’ efforts and working towards a full US-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA), expanding cooperation with Japan and Korea in the G-20 and bringing them into the fold of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), establishing an ambitious 10-year “New Framework for U.S.-India Economic Cooperation”, and modifying the Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) with China.

There is also a list of lessons learned recommended for policymakers drawing partly on an earlier report released on the subject for Obama’s first term, which deals with issues like negotiation, public relations and bureaucratic politics.

One of the key challenges that the study highlights for the future of Asia economic policy is the resource constraints in Washington:

For the United States to have an effective strategy in Asia, and to be taken seriously by partners there, it must have sufficient talent and resources for the job. At present, U.S. government personnel and funding devoted to Asia policy, especially in the economic arena, are insufficient to the size, challenges, and opportunities of the region. In particular, the State Department and other agencies traditionally focused on political and security issues need more senior officials versed in Asian economics.

You can read the full thing here.

In it, I highlight some of the opportunities in ASEAN-Japan relations, which lie in various areas from economics to maritime security to people-to-people ties. But while there is plenty to celebrate, I also look at the challenges which tend to get less of an emphasis. Quoting from the article:

Yet Tokyo faces several challenges as it courts ASEAN. To some, Abe’s rhetoric on democracy and human rights rings hollow: he was silent on those issues in Vietnam despite a recent government crackdown there. And while Japan and Southeast Asian states both have territorial disputes with China, any sense that Tokyo is enlisting ASEAN in a broad effort to contain Beijing could produce a squabble between the organization’s hawks and doves.

Japan’s domestic priorities may also make advancing the relationship difficult. Japan’s seventh prime minister in just six years must secure his political legitimacy while reviving the country’s moribund economy.  Over the next few months, his administration will likely be consumed by its main short-term goal of securing victory in this summer’s Upper House elections.

You can read the full thing here.

At least part of that anxiety lies in the belief that the United States could once again become embroiled in the Middle East, something that is very much on the minds of seasoned Asia hands like Mike Green over at CSIS.

Those already worried about this will find little relief hearing what Vali Nasr, formerly a professor at the Fletcher School and a noted Middle East expert, had to say in his opening remarks at a Foreign Correspondents Club lunch in Hong Kong last week.

Two years after the Arab Spring, Nasr said, any hope by Asianists that the Arab Spring would somehow lead the Middle East to come to grips with its own issues and free up Washington to then focus more of its attention to Asia is all but extinguished. The region today, Nasr said:

…Is becoming a source of growing headaches and an impetus for a pivot back to the Middle East by the United States. Going forward, at least in the next year or two, the Middle East will be far more important in the making of U.S. foreign policy and how it deploys its resources going forward than any strategic statement that the administration has made and is making.

That’s a pretty bold statement, but it doesn’t seem that farfetched if you look at the ground realities in the Middle East. In the next one to two years, Iran’s nuclear program, the Syrian civil war, and escalating violence in Afghanistan as the U.S. departs all loom as potential tinderboxes.

And by the way, that doesn’t include anything proactive U.S. President Barack Obama might try to do in his second term in the region, like something on the Arab-Israeli conflict which some have urged him to. Or the other innumerable domestic policy priorities the administration will try to tick off within the first half of the second term before the president risks becoming a lame duck and losing political capital.

Are you worried yet?

Given that 2013 could be the year of reckoning on Iran’s nuclear program, not to mention the likely denouement for Syria, John Kerry will require real strategic discipline to keep a focus on Asia. The administration has also had some difficulty managing the inherent tension between engaging China and maintaining a favorable balance of power in the region.  Allies such as Japan and the Philippines worry that in the second term the administration may tilt back towards an emphasis on reassuring, rather than dissuading, Beijing.  That would be unfortunate, since lack of consistency on that front hurt the administration in the first term with both the allies and Beijing.

Engagement of ASEAN is a noted success for this administration, but the terrain could become tougher in the years ahead, given renewed ethnic conflict in Burma, leadership transitions in Indonesia, and domestic political problems in Vietnam, Malaysia and elsewhere. A strong U.S. Trade Representative empowered to move forward on the Trans-Pacific Partnership would certainly help the sustainability of the Pivot, particularly with ASEAN.  Finally, all eyes will be on the defense budget. A carefully managed cut to defense spending that allows reprogramming for naval and air force capabilities in the Pacific is necessary.  Sequestration that throws the defense establishment into chaos would damage the region’s image of American strategic competence.

I have highlighted similar concerns in several recent pieces, including here.

Some of the dilemmas highlighted include: why Obama’s campaign quest for bipartisanship ran into staunch Republican opposition when be began governing, how he tried to leave a positive legacy beyond simply solving the range of vexing problems he faced by dealing with healthcare, and how he waged ‘secret wars’ with drones, cyberwars and covert operations which some of his liberal supporters found appalling.

My one criticism of the film, which I expressed to one of the documentary’s producers Mike Wiser on Twitter, was that there was no mention of the U.S. pivot or rebalance to Asia, which many believe to be a major part of Obama’s foreign policy legacy. When David Sanger of New York Times – a noted foreign policy analyst who has written a book about Obama’s first term (and was interviewed in the film) – spoke at the Fletcher School last year, he mentioned that Asia was an important component of the administration’s global outlook.

Wiser said that while the shift was indeed important, they had space constraints and that perhaps it might be too early to evaluate its impact. Nonetheless, I hope Asia will make it to PBS’ documentary on Obama’s overall legacy in four years. My sense is regardless of how successful his Asia policy turns out to be, the great emphasis his administration has put on it in foreign policy means that it should and probably will be evaluated at least partly on that score.

At the end of this year, ASEAN’s dynamic Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan will officially leave his post after five eventful years. Over the last year or so, as he has been reflecting on his tenure in the position, he has been offering his advice on how the organization can confront the vast array of future challenges that lie before it.

One issue Surin has spoken about is Myanmar’s ongoing transformation. This has been one of the most significant developments during Surin’s tenure, and he has been outspoken about it both as a success story for ASEAN and also as a potential concern. Asked recently what the main highlight was during his time as Secretary-General, he pointed to ASEAN’s important role in the opening up of Myanmar by “bringing the world in and raising the level of comfort of the leadership” to engage with the international community, which began during the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in 2008. For Surin, Myanmar “validated” ASEAN’s approach of giving the country time and space rather than the Western path of slapping it with sanctions.

But the Secretary-General has also offered warnings about ethnic violence in Myanmar, particularly the persecution and discrimination against its minority Rohingya Muslims. In October, Surin proposed setting up tripartite talks between ASEAN, the United Nations and Myanmar despite repeated calls by Naypyidaw that it was an internal matter. “Myanmar believes it is their internal matter,” Surin said in Kuala Lumpur, “but your internal matter could be ours the next day if you are not careful”. His comments applied not only to Myanmar, but also to the broader debate about the applicability of ASEAN’s prized “non-interference” in member states’ affairs. He also warned in no uncertain terms that if sectarian violence in Myanmar was not curbed, the country’s persecuted minority Rohingya Muslims “could become radicalized and the entire region could become destabilized”. He repeatedly urged ASEAN members to extend humanitarian assistance to alleviate the situation.

The Secretary-General has also spoken extensively on the South China Sea (SCS) issue, which led to ASEAN’s failure to issue a joint communique in July for the first time in its history. Surin has said that the SCS has the risk of becoming “Asia’s Palestine” if ASEAN and China do not resolve it quickly. He advocated for a two-pronged approach — putting aside contested claims and minimizing the current potential for miscalculation, while also finding ways to jointly share the natural resources located in the waters. On the first count, he has encouraged ASEAN’s attempts to move forward on talks concerning a code of conduct with China and even publicly floated the idea of a SCS hotline with Beijing to contain miscalculation before a regional summit last month. But he has equally and subtly stressed the need for reciprocity from China. At ASEAN’s November meeting, he noted that while ASEAN was committed to finding a resolution to the SCS issue, “it takes two to tango.”

On sharing resources, in a recent interview he cited a potential “joint development area” emerging between ASEAN countries and China where all parties could tap the resource potential in the SCS. “Leave that [contested territorial disputes] for the future, but along the way let’s benefit from the resources,” Surin said, citing the Malaysia-Thailand Joint Development Area in the Gulf of Thailand as a model.

But most of Surin’s comments have arguably focused on ASEAN’s internal challenges. In an interview at Australian National University earlier this year, he said ASEAN’s greatest challenge during the next five years would be trying to integrate as a grouping despite the diversity among member states. If the organization did not get its act together on forging an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by the end of 2015 to narrow the vast economic divide between countries, Surin said it risked “being a two-tiered ASEAN” which would undermine its efforts to play a central role in Asia-Pacific integration. Asked in February what kept him awake at night, he again focused on ASEAN integration, saying he felt it should “go faster” and was worried that member states were seeking “to keep to themselves.”

Besides the issue of economic integration, the Secretary-General has also placed a lot of emphasis on strengthening the power of the ASEAN Secretariat. Indeed, that was the focus of his last major ASEAN briefing delivered last month. Referring partly to a report he had presented to ASEAN last year on the subject, Surin’s suggestions on strengthening ASEAN’s institutional capacity range from addressing how decisions might be made in the absence of consensus, to formalizing regulations and increasing resources in particular fields.

Stressing the importance of this, Surin claimed, “if the secretariat had been given a larger space, more engagement — the impasse in July could have been avoided — not that I did not try but it is the structure that would not allow me to be involved.” As I have pointed our several times before, having a strong Secretariat will be important as ASEAN is chaired by either smaller or less-developed states in the years ahead, such as Brunei in 2013, Myanmar in 2014 and Laos in 2016.

As Surin steps off the stage, his successor, Vietnam’s Deputy Foreign Minister Le Luong Minh, will have large shoes to fill at a critical time for ASEAN. The goal of Surin’s tenure, the outgoing Secretary-General says, was to make ASEAN a household name. On this front, he has largely been successful. But now that all eyes are on ASEAN, it will be up to the grouping’s future leaders to preserve its centrality in the region in the wake of daunting internal and external challenges.

This piece was originally published for The Diplomat. You can read it here.

Just over four months ago, ASEAN failed to issue a joint statement at its foreign minister’s meeting for the first time because host nation, Cambodia, insisted that language on the SCS should not even be mentioned. Many suspected that China had used its economic leverage on Cambodia to ensure ASEAN remained divided on the issue, and a few reports even suggested Cambodian officials had shared drafts of the statement with Chinese interlocutors.

Those who were perturbed by those developments are unlikely find any relief from developments of the past week. This time, at the ASEAN Summit, Cambodia tried to force through the idea that ASEAN leaders had come to a consensus “that they will not internationalize the South China Sea issue from now on”, in the words of Foreign Ministry official Kao Kim Hourn. The trouble is that the language, which was strikingly similar to Chinese mantras, did not reflect what was agreed upon. At least five ASEAN countries objected and Cambodia was eventually forced to remove the controversial language from the final declaration. The Philippines was particularly vexed, with President Benigno Aquino openly rebuking Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario insisting that there was an attempt to translate statements “into a consensus without our consent”.

While Cambodia was attempting to dilute ASEAN’s consensus on the SCS, China was seeking to downplay the issue within the EAS’ multilateral setting. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao repeated the all-too-familiar Chinese assertion that territorial disputes should not be discussed at multilateral events but bilaterally between China and each of the ASEAN claimant states. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang and Chinese envoys also repeatedly attempted to sidestep the issue, saying that it should not be a “stumbling block” in ASEAN-China relations and that the main focus of the EAS should be greater economic cooperation amid the international financial crisis. ASEAN had in fact agreed to formally ask China to start talks on a code of conduct (CoC) on the SCS before the EAS had begun, according to outgoing ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan, but Premier Wen played down the need for urgent action on the issue. “On the ASEAN side, we are ready, willing and very much committed, but it takes two to tango”, Pitsuwan said.

Given that tensions over the SCS have dominated two rounds of meetings this year, how can ASEAN ensure that this will not happen again next year? The Philippines, twice bitten and thrice shy, announced after the EAS that it will host a meeting in Manila on December 12 with fellow claimants Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia. The four countries should use this as an opportunity to coordinate strategies on how to best advance their claims to China in a more unified way. One way to do so would be to make their claims explicit by codifying them in domestic legislation and multilateral frameworks in accordance with international law and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), followed by a process where stakeholders clarify convergences and divergences. Only by being clear about their own claims can ASEAN states prevent China from exploiting divisions and ambiguities that exist within the bloc in future summits or dealings. That will also help facilitate negotiations on the CoC between ASEAN states and China.

Furthermore, ASEAN countries should continue to engage with next year’s ASEAN chair (and SCS claimant) Brunei on how it plans on handling the SCS issue in multilateral forums as appropriate. Brunei has traditionally preferred a low-key approach in dealing with contentious issues like the SCS, exemplified during ASEAN deliberations in July this year when its delegation simply said it would be “guided by” the decision of the ASEAN chair, as opposed to other claimants who insisted on a reference to the dispute in the joint communique. In 2013, the government in Bandar Seri Begawan will no longer have the luxury of simply deferring to other countries or remaining neutral as ASEAN chair. If Brunei needs any advice or guidance on tackling divisive issues, the organization’s more experienced members should be prepared to provide it.

Lastly, ASEAN states should not give in to intimidation by China on the SCS. Beijing has used such tactics in the past with claimant states, with its China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) calling for foreign oil and gas companies to explore nine blocks in disputed waters in violation of Vietnam’s sovereignty and its quarantine of imported tropical fruit from the Philippines after saber-rattling in the Scarborough Shoal. A new wave of intimidation appears to be taking shape just a few days after China downplayed territorial disputes at the EAS, with Beijing releasing fresh passports containing a map of China which includes parts of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines and others as well as disputed territory on the Indian border. Asian countries have rightly expressed outrage at the move and have responded by refusing to stamp them or drawing up their own maps. It is important that these countries continue to register their official protests in this manner in case Beijing tries to assert later on that stamping the passports could be regarded as effectively endorsing its claims.

Cambodia’s chairmanship this year has shown ASEAN that it is only as strong as its weakest link. In order to prevent outside actors from exploiting divisions within the bloc, ASEAN states must redouble their efforts at unifying their positions where they should and taking a clear stand where they must. Only then can the bloc continue to effectively occupy the driver’s seat in pushing for greater regional integration in the Asia-Pacific.

This piece originally appeared in The Diplomat. You can read that version here.