Table Of ContentASEAN’s Cooperative Security Enterprise
Critical Studies of the Asia Pacific Series
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Critical Studies of the Asia Pacific showcases new research and scholarship on
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Titles include:
Hiro Katsumata
ASEAN’S COOPERATIVE SECURITY ENTERPRISE
Norms and Interests in the ASEAN Regional Forum
Barry Wain
MALAYSIAN MAVERICK
Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times
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ASEAN’s Cooperative
Security Enterprise
Norms and Interests in the ASEAN
Regional Forum
Hiro Katsumata
Assistant Professor
Waseda University Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, Japan
© Hiro Katsumata 2009
Foreword © Amitav Acharya 2009
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Contents
List of Figures and Table vi
Foreword vii
Preface and Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xii
Part I Introduction and Main Propositions
1 Introduction 3
2 The Significance of the ASEAN Regional
Forum (ARF) 16
Part II ASEAN’s Initiative
3 The Conventional Explanation for the
Establishment of the ARF 37
4 An Idea-focused Explanation for the
Establishment of the ARF 49
5 ASEAN in the ARF 77
Part III External Powers in the ARF
6 China 101
7 The United States 119
8 Australia 138
Part IV Conclusion
9 East Asia and the Asia-Pacific 161
References 174
Index 199
v
List of Figures and Table
Figures
5.1 Cooperative security as a complement 82
5.2 Cooperative security as a substitution 82
6.1 ARF activities in non-ASEAN countries 108
Table
5.1 Characteristics of security mechanisms 80
vi
Foreword
The establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1994 was
widely seen as a turning point in multilateral security cooperation
in the Asia Pacific. Not only was the ARF Asia’s first multilateral
security institution, but it was also led by ASEAN, a group of weaker
states which had formed Asia’s first viable multilateral grouping in
1967. Moreover, although a regional forum, the ARF’s membership
included practically all the major powers of the contemporary inter-
national system.
This would produce an inevitable scepticism about the ARF. Can
such a structural imbalance where the weak lead the strong produce a
viable regional institution? Added to this question were others. Why
was the ARF formed? Was it to simply to keep the US engaged in the
region so that it can continue to balance the rising power of China
or to create a genuine mechanism of cooperative security in which
all great powers commit themselves to mutual restraint? Who were
the real progenitors of the ARF? Was it ASEAN or outside powers like
Australia, Canada and Japan? But most importantly, what if any has
been its contribution to Asian regional order? Is it merely a talk shop,
or a agent of normative suasion with the potential to significantly
affect the security dilemma in Asia?
This book offers a thorough investigation and valuable insights
into these questions, which are critical to any understanding of
contemporary Asian security order. While Michael Leifer’s 1996
monograph on the ARF has for long remained the standard work
on the subject, Katsumata offers an alternative perspective, one that
focuses the role of the ARF as an agent of norms, or what he calls a
‘norm brewery’. He traces the evolution of the cooperative security
norm in Asia. Unlike Leifer who argued that the ARF’s evolution and
role will be shaped by the balance of power among the region’s great
powers, Katsumata argues that the ARF itself can moderate and influ-
ence great power interactions by engaging them multilaterally and
embedding them into a set of norms that will constrain the security
dilemma in the Asia Pacific.
vii
viii Foreword
No matter which perspective one sides with, there is little question
that Katsumata’s book is an important counterpoint to the conven-
tional realist view of international and regional institutions as mere
adjuncts of balance of power dynamics. His rejection of the view of
the ARF as a mere ‘talking shop’ will both provoke and persuade.
Combining valuable empirical research and tight argumentation,
Katsumata systematically demonstrates the effects of the ARF on the
US, China, and Australia. His book offers several interesting insights
into how the region’s two major players, the US and China, came to
accept the ARF from an initial posture of scepticism and even rejec-
tion. The book also points to the conditions that are likely to pro-
mote ARF-like security cooperation in other parts of the world. Here
he argues that material power resources or liberal domestic politics
and values may be less important than environmental uncertainty
and compatibility between existing and new norms.
The book benefits from Dr Katsumata’s long-time work experience
in the region. Having been based in Singapore from 2003 to 2007,
he was able to interact with a variety of officials dealing with the
ARF and participate in numerous seminars and conferences on Asian
security multilateralism. He has emerged as the best Japanese scholar
on the ARF, and his work is sure to be regarded as one of the most
important contributions to Asia Pacific security multilateralism.
Amitav Acharya
Washington, DC, 30 October 2009
Preface and Acknowledgements
Does the cooperative security enterprise of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) matter? If so, in what sense? Can
ASEAN’s cooperative security enterprise be regarded as one of the
pathways to regional security in Asia? In this study, I explore these
questions by focusing on the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which
constitutes the core of ASEAN’s initiative for cooperative security in
Asia. Most students of Asian security regard the ARF as a useless ‘talk-
ing shop’ in which no significant measure to achieve security has
been instituted. This is because ASEAN’s approach appears naïve, in
that it is based on dialogue and consultation aimed at enhancing a
sense of mutual understanding and trust.
However, what I argue in this book is that ASEAN’s cooperative
security enterprise does matter, and that the ARF is an important
pathway to regional security. Cooperative security is important to
the ASEAN countries because it is in line with what they perceive as
an appropriate approach to security; moreover, it is important as its
promotion has been increasingly beneficial to their strategic interests
defined in egoistic terms. Here three elements of their self-interest
are relevant– that is, the achievement of their ‘national interests’ or
‘national security’ through the enhancement of the following three
factors: ASEAN’s relations with China, its autonomy vis-à-vis the
United States, and its centrality to Asia-Pacific regionalism in the
security field. Ultimately, the key to encapsulating the significance
of ASEAN’s cooperative security enterprise is the positive interaction
between the pursuit of normative appropriateness and the calcula-
tion of self-interest.
This study is premised on the belief that, today, the need to explore
the significance of ASEAN’s cooperative security enterprise is grow-
ing, in parallel with the pursuit of an East Asian community by the
countries of East Asia. Within the frameworks of the ASEAN Plus
Three and the East Asia Summit, these countries have been seeking
such a community. However, where East Asian security is concerned,
the notion of community remains ambiguous. It is difficult to say
that these countries have a shared understanding of an appropriate
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