Australia invites ASEAN for a reset as a big (China-shaped) question lurks

Nine heads of government of ASEAN member states will be in Melbourne for an Australia-ASEAN Special Summit from March 4-6, marking 50 years of the dialogue partnership. The missing member is Myanmar, whose military rulers since their 2021 coup are represented at ASEAN meetings by "non-political" officials. They don't work for the National Unity Government, and they aren't civilians.

ASEAN is skilled in such compromises, and in taking decisions by consensus. This can create long lead-times for ASEAN programs. For example, ASEAN has been working with China on a Code of Conduct for 20 years. Myanmar's shortcomings in governance and human rights have concerned ASEAN for as long, and no results are apparent from its 2021 "Five Point Consensus". Aiming for a single integrated market, ASEAN adopted a blueprint for an Economic Community in 2015, which is supposed to be realised in 2025 but has faced "uncertainties and challenges".

At last September's ASEAN Summit, then president Widodo of Indonesia and Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar warned fellow Southeast Asian leaders against becoming proxies for rival great powers. Deterring rivalry between the United States and Russia or China was one of the original aims of ASEAN in 1967, so it's been on the agenda for 57 years.

Australia has been working with ASEAN for 50 years, long enough to understand the process. Australia's enthusiasm for ASEAN has waxed and waned, and so has ASEAN's for Australia. As the first dialogue partner of ASEAN in 1974, when the organisation had only five member states, Australia joined them in joint development projects and education exchanges with interest and enthusiasm. Canberra signed ASEAN's 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, and Australian foreign, defence, and economic ministers met regularly. Studies of Asian languages and cultures flourished in Australia. Australia was claimed by some to be "part of Asia".

The enthusiasm of the "Jakarta lobby" was too much for some in Australia who objected to president Suharto's 1965-66 coup, and his crackdown on Chinese Indonesians. Pauline Hanson's anti-Asia campaign in the 1990s sent Australia-ASEAN relations off the rails, and enabled Malaysia's prime minister Mahathir to make political capital out of settling old political scores with Australia. ASEAN countries campaigned for "Asian values" as superior to those of Western interlopers.

Friction erupted with Indonesia over the independence of East Timor, and with Timor Leste over disputed undersea oil. A year after Australia committed armed forces to Afghanistan in response to the attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001, 88 Australians were among 202 who died in Islamist terrorist bombings in Bali.

In an effort to calm things, and always needing to produce an initiative from its meetings, ASEAN in 2005 devised the East Asia Summit, bringing ASEAN together with leaders of Australia, China, India, Japan, and New Zealand and South Korea. The East Asia Summit was useful for Australia as its only high-level regional forum that had no American presence. While ASEAN members were nominally non-aligned, and were opposed to foreign military bases, they tolerated Australia, Japan, and South Korea despite their US bases, in the interests of a shared regional agenda of security, economic development and political cooperation.

After Kevin Rudd tried and failed in 2010 to transform the East Asia Summit into an "Asia Pacific Community", ASEAN's compromise was to include Russia and the United States. With 18 nations at the summit, Australia, Japan and South Korea had once again to defer to their US ally, whose rivalry with a rising China was intensifying. US president Obama's 2011 pivot to Asia lopped off such faltering feelers as Australia had put out to foreign policy independence.

Meanwhile, ASEAN membership grew to 10 with the inclusion of the Indochina states, while Timor Leste waits to be admitted. ASEAN's economy is now double the size of Australia's, reversing the past position. Asian studies and languages have withered in Australia a decline of 50 per cent in one generation. The recommendations of Ken Henry's Australia in the Asian Century report in 2016 were unfunded and forgotten.

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All nations that attend the East Asia Summit have signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, which commits all of them, the US and China included, to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, as does the UN Charter. Since 1994, ASEAN has dealt with "security issues" in the ASEAN Regional Forum, which adds Canada and the European Union to the East Asia Summit quorum, plus Bangladesh, Mongolia, Pakistan, Papua New Guina, North Korea, Timor Leste, and Sri Lanka.

The agenda of the Melbourne meeting, organised by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, does not appear to include defence or security. Australia wants the March discussions to focus on trade and investment, and on tripling trade with the region to reach more than $534 billion annually. Australian investors have been slower than Japan and South Korea to take up opportunities in ASEAN, despite its market of $2.3 trillion and its population of 600 million. The government is offering $95 million as a "new deal" to encourage Australian investment in Southeast Asia. The Summit has before it an economic strategy to 2040, including climate remediation, renewable energy, digital transformation, and maritime cooperation.

All the boxes are ticked, except the big one: China. Whether ASEAN leaders take it up on their retreat, or in corridors, they might share with the Australian counterparts how they achieve reasonably peaceful coexistence with China without arming themselves to the teeth, and using armed force. The PM&C draft statement says Australia wants this too. Perhaps ASEAN leaders will ask about AUKUS.