As regional meetings kick
off, we need to keep the bigger picture of Vientiane’s chairmanship in mind.
This week, Laos, a
landlocked country of less than seven million, is presiding over the first of
two rounds of regional summitry as this year’s chair of the ten-member
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). While all eyes will be on how
Vientiane deals with the South China Sea issue just over a week after a
landmark ruling on the Philippines’ case against China, it will also be a
window into the broader opportunities and challenges that the ASEAN
chairmanship presents for the rest of 2016 (See: “ASEAN Can’t Stay Silent on the South China Sea Ruling“).
Background
Though
only a few meetings will actually get international attention, Laos is hosting
a whole series of them this week from July 21-26 at the National Convention Center
in Vientiane. These include the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (AMM), the
ASEAN Plus Three Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (APT FMM), the East Asia Summit
Foreign Ministers Meeting (EAS FMM) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). As is
usually the case in ASEAN chairmanships, a second round of meetings in
September will see heads of state attend.
As these
meetings occur, it is important to keep the bigger picture in mind. Laos – one
of the newer members of ASEAN – is holding its annually rotating chairmanship
in a critical transition year for the regional grouping. 2016 is an important
transition year for ASEAN, lying between the formation of an ASEAN Community in
2015, which we saw in Malaysia, and the commemoration of the organization’s
50th anniversary in 2017, which we will see in the Philippines. Furthermore,
this is an especially important year for ASEAN’s relationships with major
powers, with the organization hosting three special summits – with the United
States, Russia and China – along with having to contend with the
much-anticipated South China Sea ruling and its fallout (See: “What the South China Sea Ruling
Means“).
Laos is
also holding the position at an interesting time domestically. In January, the
Lao Communist Party, which has ruled the country since 1975, held its
quinquennial congress to elect its leaders (as did neighboring Vietnam).
Thongloun Sisoulith, who had served as the country’s foreign minister for a
decade and is known for his internationalist outlook seeking to diversify the country’s
relationships beyond neighboring China, was elected as the country’s new prime
minister. Though his ascension was somewhat simplistically read by some as
being a loss for China and a win for the United States (Lao foreign policy,
unsurprisingly, is much more complex as with its other ASEAN neighbors), it has
witnessed interesting shifts in how Vientiane has managed some aspects of its
economic relationship with Beijing.
Opportunities
Within
this broader context, the meetings this week will also highlight the
opportunities and challenges that the ASEAN chairmanship presents for Laos as
it does any other ASEAN chair each year. The opportunities appear much clearer.
Most obviously, Laos will have the ability to incorporate its own priorities
into the regional agenda. To be sure, part of any chairman’s role is to help
further the regional work already ongoing within the ASEAN agenda, and this is
especially the case in 2016 since it is the first year since the formation of
the ASEAN Community (See: “ASEAN Creates New Community
Under Malaysia’s Chairmanship“). That explains Laos’ appropriate
selection of the theme “Turning Vision Into Reality for a Dynamic ASEAN
Community.”
At the
same time, the priorities that Lao officials outlined this year also reflect
the country’s sense of what it would like to promote in the regional agenda,
which is also the prerogative – and, indeed, the privilege – of the
chair. To take just one example, the focus on narrowing the development gap and
a work plan for the Initiative for ASEAN Integration – an initiative that began
in 2000 aimed at accelerating the economic integration of the newer members of
ASEAN, namely Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, or the CLMV countries –
directly benefits Vientiane.
But the
chairmanship also offers Laos some additional benefits beyond the shaping of
the regional agenda. It is not often that a small country like Laos gets this
much time in the limelight as the chair of an organization which comprises more
than 600 million people and is collectively the world’s seventh largest
economy. The publicity of this round of meetings as well as the one in
September provides an opportunity for the country to enhance its reputation on
the world stage.
That is
not just symbolic. By convening these two rounds of regional meetings, Laos is
also afforded the opportunity of other interactions on the sidelines as well
that can help further its own interests. Though a whole host of bilateral
engagements will occur this week and in September, the one that will receive
the most press coverage is the expected visit of U.S. President Barack Obama in
September. Obama will be the first ever American president to visit Laos, and
White House officials have said that the administration views this as an
opportunity to boost ties with Vientiane as part of its increased focus on
Southeast Asia.
Challenges
Yet Laos’
assumption of the ASEAN chairmanship also poses its share of challenges. Ahead
of the official handover of the position from Malaysia to Laos late last year,
some argued that Laos’ key challenge in this round of meetings as well as the
one in September would be simply managing the logistics inherent in the task.
Though Vientiane has chaired ASEAN before, unlike Myanmar when it assumed this
responsibility back in 2014, the magnitude of the challenge this time is much
greater than it was in 2004. For instance, there are more than twice the number
of meetings than there were back then. But it is also true that Vientiane has
chaired other meetings more recently, including the 9th Asia-Europe Meeting
(ASEM) in 2012. Furthermore, seasoned ASEAN observers know that
capacity-building efforts have been underway by Southeast Asian states as well
as other actors to assist Laos with its chairmanship.
What
could be more troubling is Laos’ challenge of managing major powers within
ASEAN. To be clear, this problem is not unique to Laos. Though ASEAN’s rising
role in the shaping of the regional architecture in recent years – including
the rise of the East Asia Summit back in 2005 – has led to an intensifying
involvement of major powers, it has also made the liabilities of its
institutional features more visible and threatened the grouping’s much-prized
centrality. In recent years, that has manifested itself most clearly in the
grouping’s struggle to reach consensus on the South China Sea issue, which
infamously led to its unprecedented failure to issue a joint communique under
Cambodia’s chairmanship in 2012 (See: “ASEAN’s Soul Searching After
Phnom Penh“).
That
said, given tiny, landlocked Laos’ lack of interest in the South China Sea
issue and its significant investment in its relationship with neighboring
China, the fear among most of Vientiane’s Southeast Asian brethren as well as
other concerned actors about a repeat of Phnom Penh is understandable. Lao
officials, for their part, insist that in spite of its constraints, Laos has
tried its best to ensure that the South China Sea issue does get the attention
it deserves, as it did in its chairman’s statement following the ASEAN Foreign
Ministers’ Retreat in February. But it is also true that consensus has been
progressively harder to achieve in 2016, as evidenced by ASEAN’s failure to
adopt an uncharacteristically strong statement in Kunming last month following
last-minute reticence by Cambodia and Laos, as I wrote extensively for The
Diplomat and elsewhere (See: “What Really Happened at the
Special ASEAN-China Kunming Meeting“). The role that Chinese pressure
played in that episode, along with Beijing’s additional sensitivity to any
statement with reference to the South China Sea following the ruling, has
heightened anxieties.
Indeed,
going into the AMM, there are already clear signs of Beijing’s hand in trying
to prevent the issuing of a separate statement by ASEAN on the ruling or even a
joint communique with strong language on the South China Sea, despite the fact
that the latter (and, arguably, even the former, as I have argued) would
constitute par for the course for the grouping rather than something
headline-worthy (See: “ASEAN Should Be Ready With
Statement on South China Sea Arbitration“). China has also once
again been touting the fact that several countries including Laos support its
position on the ruling, a fact that Lao officials have subsequently denied.
Suffice to say, any Phnom Penh-like breakdown of ASEAN consensus on the South
China Sea would be a huge blemish on Laos’ chairmanship.
While
much of the media attention will likely be on the international front in
Vientiane this week, there could also be some scrutiny on the domestic front in
Laos for the remainder of its chairmanship. Human rights continue to be an
issue, with the case of the disappeared Sombath Somphone proving a rallying cry
for activists as well as a point of concern for Western as well as some Asian
governments to varying degrees. Those domestic concerns spilled over into the
regional domain as well even before Laos assumed the chairmanship, with reports
emerging as early as October 2015 that the country would not host the regular
meeting of Southeast Asian civil society organizations on the sidelines of the
ASEAN summit this year. For the first time in ASEAN’s history, groups will meet
not in the host country but in East Timor – which, somewhat ironically, is not
yet even a member of ASEAN. Though Lao officials continue to cite many technical
and procedural reasons for why this ended up being the case, it is also true
that they have hardly bent over backwards to prevent that outcome and are far
from displeased by it.
Another
area of focus is Laos’ role with respect to the management of the Mekong – one
of the world’s largest and longest rivers which flows through China and
mainland Southeast Asia – which is increasingly in peril in part due to a
string of hydropower projects by riparian states. Though other countries are
complicit too – most notably Beijing upstream – Laos has placed a significant
emphasis on hydropower as it seeks to become the “battery” of Asia. But some of
Vientiane’s projects, most notably the Xayaburi Dam in northern Laos and the
Don Sahong dam in Champasak province near the Lao-Cambodia border, have come
under scrutiny for their negative impacts. When then-secretary of state Hillary
Clinton visited Laos back in 2012, she gave the country an earful on this
issue. In response to a question from The Diplomat, Ben Rhodes, one of
Obama’s closest advisers, did say last week at an event at the U.S.-ASEAN
Business Council that the United States would look to address the Mekong as
part of its conversations with Laos, though he did not specify exactly what
Washington would look to say.
Conclusion
As is the
case every year, media accounts of Laos’ ASEAN chairmanship are likely to focus
on a few key issues, most notably the South China Sea this week. Though that is
understandable given the greater attention to these global matters, we should
also keep in mind that they are but one small part of the broader challenges
and opportunities that the chairmanship presents to Vientiane, as it does to
any ASEAN chair each year.
By Prashanth Parameswaran for The Diplomat
No comments:
Post a Comment