Keywords

In the post-Cold War era, ASEAN aims to protect member states’ security interests and maintain regional autonomy from external intervention through the proliferation of ASEAN-led institutions. With the principle of ASEAN centrality—by which ASEAN holds chairpersonship and agenda-setting privileges—ASEAN included all regional great powers, particularly China and the United States, into its institutions. The variance in the membership of these institutions has given ASEAN a comparative advantage because it allows ASEAN to forum shop to determine which institutions can discuss particular security and economic issues and to shape the dynamics of great-power relations with ASEAN member states (see Chapter 2).

The South China Sea (SCS) disputes have become one of the most important security and strategic issues for ASEAN member states since the 1990s. This is because the power vacuum created by the end of the Cold War opened up a strategic space for China to extend its reach and control in the maritime sphere, which some ASEAN member states also claimed. Therefore, to fill that space, ASEAN member states sought to establish institutions capable of dealing with security issues and of preventing strategic instability in the region. The ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (AMM) then began to proliferate the institutions, ranging from the ASEAN Regional Fourm (ARF), the ASEAN Summit, ASEAN–China dialogues, the East Asia Summit (EAS), and the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting/ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM/ADMM-Plus).

At the same time, this proliferation of ASEAN-led institutions began to nurture a quasi-institutional division of labor in dealing with the SCS issue. Indeed, through these institutions, ASEAN could conduct either institutional balancing, institutional hedging, and/or institutional co-option to manage its relations with not only China but also the United States and other regional powers by maintaining various channels of communication. That said, as the theoretical model predicts, institutional bandwagoning is too risky because granting institutional privileges to great powers would weaken ASEAN’s capabilities to defend its interests, which may lead to ASEAN claimant states losing their control over territorial sovereignty.

From the beginning, ASEAN’s approach to the SCS disputes has not been to “resolve” the disputes multilaterally but to maintain stability. Specifically, ASEAN aims to create a peaceful environment in the SCS where claimant states can conduct negotiations instead of resorting to physical conflict. This is why ASEAN has been making efforts to establish regional rules and norms bilaterally and multilaterally since the 1990s, and both ASEAN and China engaged in negotiations for a code of conduct (COC). However, despite this fundamental, agreed objective among the claimant states, the situation on the ground has not been always conducive to peaceful negotiations, and thus ASEAN conducts different strategies through its institutions, depending on their institutional characteristics.

These institutional strategies may evolve over time, and among ASEAN-led institutions, there are some variances in strategy shifts. While the strategies of the AMM, the ARF, the ASEAN Summit, and ASEAN–China dialogues have been relatively consistent, there were shifts in those of the EAS and the ADMM/ADMM-Plus (Table 5.1). There are four general findings based on the analysis of the empirical cases.

Table 5.1 Evolution of institutional strategies in ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions
Full size table

First, expected and actual changes in the regional strategic environment propelled ASEAN member states to consider a shift in ASEAN-led institutions’ institutional strategies. The SCS situation on the ground has been consistently volatile since the early 1990s, but there was an ebb and flow—when the threat perception among ASEAN claimant states heightened because of the emerging maritime tension with China, they proposed a strategy shift. In 1995, for example, ASEAN member states found that China had erected facilities on Mischief Reef, which drove the Philippines to propose the enhancement of diplomatic cooperation with other ASEAN member states and to issue a collective condemnation against China’s behavior. As the situation was not satisfactorily alleviated in the late 1990s, ASEAN and China began to negotiate a COC, which resulted in the formulation of the Declaration of the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) in 2002 through the ASEAN–China Post Ministerial Conference (PMC). After the 2016 SCS Arbitral Tribunal's award was issued and rejected by China, both China and ASEAN began to expedite the conclusion of the COC. At the same time, the ADMM created rules and norms which were extended to the ADMM-Plus. Therefore, the strategic environment is critically important in understanding potential shifts in institutional strategies.

Second, ASEAN had more strategic options due to the proliferation of ASEAN-led institutions. In the early 1990s, the AMM was the only ASEAN institution that regularly held ministerial meetings to discuss political and security issues. In 1992, the AMM produced the first ASEAN statement regarding the SCS situation—the 1992 ASEAN Declaration on the SCS. It was also the AMM that responded to the Mischief Reef incident in 1995 by issuing a statement, conducting institutional balancing. However, as other institutions were established from the 1990s, ASEAN started to have various responses to manage the SCS situation. After the ARF was established in 1994, ASEAN member states reiterated the importance of peaceful resolution and respect for international law to China, the United States, and other regional powers, conducting institutional hedging. Additionally, the EAS and the ADMM-Plus functioned as another tool for institutional hedging by including regional powers. On the other hand, ASEAN–China dialogues were actively utilized to discuss the creation of a COC after ASEAN failed to impose on China its 1992 declaration. As such, the proliferation of institutions provided ASEAN with more strategic options to deal with great powers and nurtured an implicit division of labor among the institutions.

Third, the membership of ASEAN-led institutions largely determines the stickiness of institutional strategy. The theoretical model of institutional strategy shows that while there is a possibility of strategy shift in any regional security institution, some strategy shifts are more difficult than others. Despite a change in the strategic environment which would trigger strategy shifts, the membership of institutions becomes a crucial factor to determine how flexibly the institutional strategy can shift. In fact, the AMM, the ASEAN Summit, and the ADMM were able to maintain institutional balancing in a different strategic environment from 1990 to 2020 because their membership was strictly limited to the Southeast Asian states, excluding China. For their parts, ASEAN–China dialogues and the ADMM-Plus continually conduct institutional co-option or hedging because ASEAN decided to create new rules and norms or impose existing ones on China to constrain its behavior in the SCS. Since membership change is unusual, the membership structure generally defines the range of institutional strategies.

When an institution changes its membership, therefore, its institutional strategy would also likely change. The most notable case is the EAS, an ASEAN-led institution that admitted Russia and the United States in 2011. Prior to this, the EAS did not touch on the SCS issue. From 2011, however, the United States began raising the issue to emphasize the importance of international law including UNCLOS; since then, the SCS disputes have regularly been on the agenda, which transformed the EAS into a tool for institutional hedging. Of course, the AMM and the ASEAN Summit also added new members—Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam—in the 1990s. However, this membership change was essentially different because they were small Southeast Asian states that sought institutional means to prevent external intervention. They were more aligned with ASEAN’s principles and strategic posture than with external great powers.

Fourth, the effectiveness of each ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions’ strategies is ultimately difficult to assess without examining the overall configuration of its strategy. This is because the strategies have generally become persistent and resilient to environmental change over time. To be sure, as with any state strategy—either balancing, bandwagoning, or hedging—they do not easily generate an intended consequence because the effectiveness largely depends on the development of the strategic situation, which is often hard to predict. In this context, states attempt to respond to the rapidly evolving strategic situation by adjusting their strategies. However, as discussed above, ASEAN’s institutional strategies are considered to be stickier than state strategies unless there is a change in membership. Primarily because ASEAN adopts consensus decision-making, it is difficult to immediately reach consensus on a strategy shift and effectively respond to the evolving strategic situation in the SCS. This has become more so when ASEAN expanded its membership by including Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam in the 1990s. The more members, the more divergent their preferred responses, given the different interests and perspectives among them. As a result, despite the quickly evolving situation, there was no swift shift in strategy for the AMM, the ARF, the ASEAN Summit, ASEAN–China dialogues, the EAS, and the ADMM/ADMM-Plus from 1990 to 2020 except when they changed their membership. This shows that no ASEAN institution is consistently effective in managing the SCS situation and great-power relations, and it is necessary to assess which institution is the central player of the day.

With these four general findings, what can we say about the strategic role of ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions on the SCS issue? As ASEAN now has a wide range of strategic repertoire through ASEAN-led institutions, there is no immediate need for each institution to change its strategic orientation whenever there is an environmental change. ASEAN can select the institutions suitable for managing the SCS situation and its relations with great powers at any given period of time. While ASEAN needs to alter its institutional strategies quickly if there is no suitable institution, the institutional diversification helps ASEAN overcome the weakness of institutional stickiness through forum shopping as well as the difficulty in creating consensus among ASEAN member states. In fact, ASEAN faced difficulty in pursuing institutional hedging vis-à-vis China in the late 1990s when it attempted to create its own COC to impose it on China. Consequently, ASEAN enhanced ASEAN–China dialogues through the PMC and the summit, so that it could conduct institutional co-option in creating a COC together. When the COC negotiation process through ASEAN–China dialogues slowed down and the SCS situation deteriorated from the late 2000s, ASEAN altered the EAS institutional format by including the United States to monitor and check China’s assertive behavior in the SCS.

Through institutional diversification and the institutional division of labor, ASEAN has created a “strategic institutional web” where each institution has its own institutional strategy and tends to play a central role in responding to the SCS situation whenever it serves member states’ national interests. Also, as the division of labor becomes more consolidated, it is likely that the institutional strategies of ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions will become more persistent. Because they cover institutional balancing, hedging, and co-option, and there is no urgent need to alter their strategies, they only need to finetune their own strategy when the need arises.

What institutional division of labor, then, would likely be consolidated? As the trend of institutional development within ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions shows, there are three types of institutions dealing with the SCS issue. The first is institutions that conduct institutional balancing: AMM, ASEAN Summit, and ADMM. These are the core institutions that have been the very source of ASEAN’s rules and norms, including the “ASEAN Way” and ASEAN centrality, which determine their institutional posture toward the SCS disputes. Without them, it is difficult to sustain ASEAN unity and autonomy. These institutions are thus least likely to change their institutional strategy, characteristics, and membership.

Admittedly, as the AMM, ASEAN Summit, and ADMM sections show, institutional balancing is not always activated or effective in responding to the rapidly changing situation. Indeed, consensus decision-making often hinders the consolidation of ASEAN unity. At the same time, the 2012 Scarborough Shoal incident clearly showed that ASEAN unity is the imperative foundation for enacting the institutional strategies of ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions. This is why ASEAN issued “ASEAN’s Six-Point Principles on the South China Sea” to amend intra-member relations. But this presents an inherent diplomatic dilemma for member states that want a more effective means to maintain the status quo in the SCS. One of these means is to closely align with regional powers to counter China, but such a move will further divide ASEAN and risk losing regional autonomy.

However, ASEAN member states are fundamentally unwilling to be too dependent on a single great power given its risk of political, diplomatic, and economic domination. Therefore, they constantly seek alternative sources to diversify the risk, such as international institutions or regional middle powers, and the AMM and the ASEAN Summit are the main alternatives for ensuring regional autonomy. Interestingly, the ADMM has been less contentious than the AMM when members discuss whether they would touch on the SCS issue. This is partly because the ADMM initially focused more on functional cooperation than on political discussions, and even if it discussed political and security issues in the region, there would be less strategic implications on the SCS.

Also, the AMM and the ADMM play an important role in signaling ASEAN’s basic diplomatic posture on the SCS matter. They function as a tool for ASEAN to gauge great-powers’ reaction by taking a tentative diplomatic position and some action, such as the issuance of joint statements and declarations. In doing so, ASEAN as a whole can formulate a more concrete diplomatic posture and action to shape its relations with great powers. The ASEAN Summit then plays a role in consolidating ASEAN’s posture and action by endorsement, altering them by correction, or simply downplaying or ignoring them.

The second type is institutions that conduct institutional co-option, particularly ASEAN–China dialogues. They operate on various levels, ranging from senior officials’ meetings to ministerial meetings to the summit. At the beginning of the 1990s, China expressed deep reluctance to conduct multilateral negotiations on the SCS issue with non-claimant states and insisted on bilateral negotiations. Thus, it refused to discuss the SCS matter at the ARF because of the presence of non-claimant states. Nevertheless, China began to take a softer stance when ASEAN started discussions on a COC and assured that multilateral dialogues would not attempt to resolve the territorial disputes. After the late 1990s, when China and ASEAN strengthened their political and economic ties by holding the ASEAN–China Summit in 1997, both started to discuss the SCS issue through ASEAN–China dialogues. Although ASEAN also has non-claimant states, this has become an institutional path dependence, and the international community has taken this aberration for granted.

Admittedly, China’s preference to discuss the SCS issue, including the COC, without extra-regional actors, particularly regional major powers, and disallowing ASEAN members to discuss their own COC ideas have impeded the COC negotiations. Further, while a relatively stable SCS situation created positive prospects for the early conclusion of a COC in the early 2000s, the negotiation process was prolonged, and the SCS situation deteriorated in the 2010s. Breaking through the stalemate therefore required external events, such as the 2016 arbitral award. Even under such a circumstance, ASEAN unity was less likely to be maintained, and ASEAN would have quickly become a victim of China's “divide and conquer” strategy. However, it is also true that without ASEAN–China dialogues, ASEAN would not have had the means to conduct institutional co-option in negotiating a COC when an opportunity arose.

Other institutions, such as the ARF, the EAS, and the ADMM-Plus, can also be tools for institutional co-option as their membership includes ASEAN member states and China. Particularly, the ADMM-Plus, as discussed below, nurtures consensus and agreement on informal rules and norms in the maritime domain. However, as China strongly prefers ASEAN–China dialogues for the COC negotiations and minimizing external interference as much as possible, it is highly unlikely that these institutions would become another avenue for negotiations, that ASEAN–China dialogues would expand its membership, or that China would use other avenues for the COC negotiations.

The third type is institutions that mainly conduct institutional hedging: ARF, EAS, and ADMM-Plus. Theoretically speaking, institutional hedging can be converted into institutional co-option, but institutional co-option is difficult when member states do not have the diplomatic will to nurture rules and norms with other member states. The ARF and the EAS have become such institutions because rival great powers, particularly the United States and China, are members, and China has been consistently unwilling to discuss rules and norms for the SCS through these institutions.

In response, states that are concerned about the SCS situation in terms of the stability of sea lines of communication (SLOCs) and freedom of navigation and overflight—such as Australia, Japan, and the United States—reiterate the importance of international law, particularly UNCLOS, in these forums. Given that most ARF and EAS member states have already signed or ratified UNCLOS, it is reasonable to ensure member states’ adherence to international law. As ASEAN member states regularly express their support and respect for the law, with the support of external major powers, the ARF and the EAS become convenient avenues for ASEAN to conduct institutional hedging. The strategy aims to constrain China’s behavior in the SCS using international law while allowing other great powers, including Australia, Japan, and the United States, to monitor the SCS situation, and at the same time continually internationalize the issue.

This institutional division of labor among ASEAN-led institutions has provided ASEAN with a range of strategic options to manage its relations with great powers and the SCS situation. It is also noted that among these institutions, the ADMM and the ADMM-Plus are institutionally more coordinated than others. This is mainly because their core participants are defense ministers of ASEAN member states, which makes it easier to reflect ADMM decisions at the ADMM-Plus while making the ADMM a focal point for defending ASEAN’s strong institutional norms, rules, and principles such as ASEAN centrality, consensus decision-making, and non-interference. In this institutional structure, institutional knowledge is more effectively accumulated, which helps the ADMM to facilitate organizational learning.

Furthermore, unlike the ARF, ADMM-Plus membership is limited to regional states in East Asia that share similar security concerns, and therefore it is more manageable for the ADMM to find areas for cooperation. In fact, the ADMM currently functions as a norm-generating institution, as shown in its creation of the Direct Communications Link and Guidelines for Air Military Encounters, as well as in its attempts to extend the norms to ADMM-Plus. Although these norms are not directly linked to the SCS, they can be applied to the maritime domain and be part of the COC’s early harvest measures.

With these strategies of ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions, what are the prospects of ASEAN’s role in managing the SCS situation in the context of intensified US–China rivalry amid the turbulence caused by the pandemic in the 2020s? Because of the diplomatic disruption caused by COVID-19, the ASEAN–China COC negotiation process has significantly slowed down as face-to-face dialogue became difficult. Negotiations eventually resumed in 2021, and both ASEAN and China showed willingness to expedite the process. However, it remains uncertain whether the pandemic would continue to impede diplomatic interactions while diverging opinions still exist among claimant states (ASEAN Secretariat, 2021a, 2021b). Furthermore, the US–China rivalry has yet to be mitigated despite the change in US administration from Trump to Biden in 2021. The Biden administration succeeded Trump’s firm stance vis-à-vis China, despite its declared strategic posture to keep the channels of communication open and seek areas of cooperation with China (The White House, 2021a). US allies in Asia, such as Australia and Japan, are more closely aligned with the United States, and the strategic environment in East Asia is more severe than before.

Despite these precarious elements, the roles of ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions with regard to the SCS issue are likely to remain stable. As discussed above, their institutional strategies vis-à-vis the SCS disputes are largely locked in and path-dependency has ensued. This means that unless there is an abrupt change in the strategic balance in the SCS, the status quo would likely be maintained. The AMM and the ASEAN Summit conduct institutional balancing; the ARF and the EAS are tools for institutional hedging and they keep the SCS issue internationalized; ASEAN–China dialogues are a source of institutional co-option for the COC’s conclusion; and the ADMM and the ADMM-Plus conduct institutional balancing and institutional co-option, respectively, but together they function as institutional hedging. Currently, the ADMM and the ADMM-Plus are the key institutions for setting regional maritime norms in the SCS. While their processes are not necessarily efficient and their effectiveness depends on the diplomatic support they receive from regional major powers, they provide member states with the opportunity to maintain stability in the SCS.

To be sure, there is a growing concern regarding the emergence of a new geographic concept, the Indo-Pacific, which is the current trend of the strategic environment caused by US–China rivalry. In response to China’s growing influence over a broader Asia through its Belt and Road Initiative, the United States and its allies, particularly Japan, expanded their geostrategic scope from Asia–Pacific to Indo-Pacific (e.g., He & Li, 2020; Hughes et al., 2021; Katada, 2019; Koga, 2020; Medcalf, 2015; Satake & Sahashi, 2021; Tow, 2018). One of the primary purposes is to check and balance China’s behavior by strengthening ties with India and prevent China from dominating the region. These US-oriented visions were gradually incorporated into the strategic narrative of the region, and the Indo-Pacific has become a new geographic focal point that cannot be easily dismissed. In fact, ASEAN also responded by issuing its own vision, “ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific” (AOIP), in order to mitigate the great-power rivalry and emphasize the importance of ASEAN centrality (ASEAN Secretariat, 2019). Given the emergence of the Indo-Pacific as a new regional focus that ASEAN would not be able to cover because of its limited resources, there is a danger of ASEAN being diplomatically marginalized by regional powers (Koga, 2021, 2022).

However, this does not mean that the importance of ASEAN in the SCS would be marginalized. First, ASEAN still possesses institutional power to manage the SCS situation more than the initiatives and institutions by major powers. Because of this institutional power, all regional powers diplomatically support ASEAN centrality (The White House, 2021b). Second, ASEAN’s geographic scope has yet to clearly expand to the Indo-Pacific. Despite the AOIP, ASEAN has not been eager to deeply engage in political security issues in the Indian Ocean region. With this passive posture, it is unlikely that ASEAN would attempt to diffuse the principle of ASEAN centrality beyond East Asia in the future. Simply, doing so is not in ASEAN’s vital interests because expanding its strategic reach to the Indian Ocean region would not only overstretch ASEAN’s scarce resources but also heighten the possibility of being entrapped by great-power politics. As a result, unless ASEAN’s security interests and regional autonomy are significantly threatened, ASEAN would likely remain in East Asia and focus on the regional security issues, including the stabilization of the SCS situation.

In sum, ASEAN is the institutional focal point in East Asia because it has nurtured various institutions and created a regional institutional web to monitor the security situation, including the SCS. While each institution’s development path has been rather contingent, implicit and explicit coordination between ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions has afforded ASEAN a strategic device to manage great powers and the SCS situation. At the same time, ASEAN has attempted to create institutional frameworks, norms, and strategies to serve member states’ interests, which would ensure relative regional autonomy vis-à-vis the great powers.

This institutional development is significant given that traditional security issues such as territorial disputes are often considered to be in the realm of power struggle—the more material capabilities a state has, the more likely it can attain relative gain. Numerous diplomatic arrangements in the politico-military realm that ASEAN has created have empowered non-great powers to prevent great powers from resorting to pure power politics.

ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions are not always effective in constraining state behavior, let alone resolving territorial disputes in SCS, as international institutions are never the panacea for international conflicts or disputes. Further, ASEAN’s institutional proliferation is sometimes a source of criticism because of the institutions’ overlapping and inefficient functionalities. Nevertheless, from the perspective of institutional strategy, it is this strategic institutional web that has enabled ASEAN to diversity its strategies to confront, constrain, and co-opt regional great powers in the SCS. Utilizing the great powers’ material capabilities and its diplomatic legitimacy that stems from the core of regional multilateralism, ASEAN has played a significant role in maintaining strategic stability in the SCS.