Boulder; London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2018. x, 308 pp. (Tables, maps.) US$79.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-62637-689-2.
Students of Southeast Asian diplomacy who are familiar with Shaun Narine’s works may have expected him to launch another full-scale attack on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in his latest monograph, The New ASEAN in Asia Pacific & Beyond. However, in this monograph, while critiquing some of the limitations of the Southeast Asian association, he frequently defends this association and supports its policies. Thus, he is neither pessimistic nor optimistic about the two key issues examined: the efforts of the ASEAN members to build an ASEAN community and to play a significant role in the Asia Pacific. Perhaps the best phrase to describe his position is qualified optimism.
With regard to community building in Southeast Asia, he states that the institutionalization of ASEAN is likely to be limited because of the insistence on the part of the members on the principle of non-interference in internal affairs. Yet he defends the members’ position, taking into consideration their political, economic, and societal diversity. For him, it would be “unfair” to judge the members by their unwillingness to depart from this principle, given the reality that, if they push things too hard, the Association will fall apart (79). Indeed, his view of intra-ASEAN cooperation is by no means pessimistic. In his view, albeit very slowly, community building will develop, and the informal style of cooperation is “more sensible” and “more pragmatic” in Southeast Asia than the institutionalized and legalized style adopted by the European Union (259).
With respect to ASEAN’s role in the Asia Pacific, he relentlessly underlines the limited material capabilities of its members. In particular, he repeatedly notes that ASEAN has assumed a central role in mega-regional institutions such as the ASEAN Plus Three (APT), the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and the East Asia Summit (EAS) only by default, against the background of competition for leadership and influence between the major powers. Nevertheless, he does not give a negative answer to the fundamental question of whether ASEAN can affect the conduct and interests of the major powers, including the US, China, Japan, India, and Russia. His answer to this question is a “qualified yes” (3). In the final chapter, he concludes the manuscript by arguing that, although ASEAN is unable to play a dominant role, it is able to play a “facilitating role.” By facilitating various kinds of interactions between the major powers within its own mega-regional institutions such as the APT, the ARF, and the EAS, it can contribute to the maintenance of peace and stability in the Asia Pacific. Here the limited material capabilities of the association’s members work to their advantage. The major powers are content with ASEAN’s role because none of its members are strong enough to pose a serious challenge to their interests.
Narine’s qualified optimism described above undoubtedly deserves serious attention; however, its validity period may be short. His view must be contingent on a certain level of stability in relations between the major powers. If their relations deteriorated, it would probably be difficult for an association of minor powers in Southeast Asia to build a community in its own region and to play any meaningful role in the Asia Pacific. Nevertheless, he does not say much about the future of their relations. In fact, his theoretical position is geared more toward understanding minor powers than major powers. His position can be considered minimalist. He challenges the views of realists, institutionalists, and constructivists, and maintains that self-interested states should cooperate, even under conditions of anarchy, and even in the absence of a strong institutional arrangement or a shared identity. Ultimately, cooperation is the “norm in the international system” (255). This may be true of minor powers, especially of those surrounded by major powers whose relations are relatively stable. In the case of ASEAN today, it is certainly in the interests of the members to cooperate, in order to address various common challenges in Southeast Asia and to collaborate on their common interests in their relations with external powers.
Yet the above set of theoretical statements may not always be true of major powers—a point that Narine seems to acknowledge implicitly. Currently relations between the major powers in the Asia Pacific are relatively stable, and these powers even cooperate on various occasions, against the background of a particular configuration of their power and interests: China is not strong enough to challenge the military dominance of the US, and Washington has an interest in engaging itself in the Asia-Pacific region. However, the current configuration of power and interests will change in the future. China may grow further, and its political interests may expand. The US, for its part, may lean toward unilateralism and become more intrusive. Alternatively, it may lean toward isolationism and become less cooperative. Any of these scenarios will have significant implications for relations between these major powers. This means that the future prospects of ASEAN community building and the Association’s role in the Asia Pacific are far from clear.
Unsurprisingly, Narine’s temporal scope is short. He makes it clear that his arguments only apply to ASEAN over the next ten to fifteen years, thereby effectively admitting that the validity period of his qualified optimism is not long (4). To be sure, this is not a fundamental problem that detracts from the overall value of the manuscript. The only thing Narine might have to do is to write another manuscript in fifteen years’ time, and the present reviewer looks forward to reading it.
Hiro Katsumata
Tohoku University, Sendai