The S Rajaratnam School of International Studies’ Henrick Z Tsjeng and Collin Koh suggest Singapore make full use of its ASEAN chairmanship to set ground rules among operational agencies.
SINGAPORE: 2017 marks a challenging year for ASEAN, the same year that ushers in 50 years since the organisation was formed.
As with any jubilee celebration, the association’s 10 countries share many significant milestones and recent achievements worth saluting, particularly in the area of security cooperation.
For the Asia Pacific, a region where unresolved territorial disputes – which do not seem likely to be settled any time soon – are potential hotspots for conflict, making diplomatic progress on key agreed principles that undergird countries’ approach to a dispute is the best way to keep all parties engaged in finding a meaningful resolution.
So it is a relief to see significant effort to make progress in the South China Sea culminate in the promulgation of the Framework on the Code of Conduct between ASEAN and China early last month in Manila.
ACTION MORE THAN TALK
As 2017 comes toward a close and the regional bloc’s chairmanship transits from the Philippines to Singapore, we should expect to see further concrete activities and measures to promote peace and stability in this area.
For a country known more for action than talk, and also a neutral party that has no territorial stake in the South China Sea, Singapore stands best placed to advance ASEAN’s agenda in this area.
Having actively shaped security cooperation in the Asia Pacific to make practical cooperation among 18 countries under the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus a reality with joint exercises and professional exchanges, and being a small state that has a knack for making hard-nosed calculations about regional security, Singapore has the instincts to shape the way forward on this issue.
This is not to say that we wish away geopolitical realities of the intractability of territorial disputes and the long process of negotiation.
Political elites and policymakers will likely engage in lengthy discussions over specifics for the Code of Conduct, and indeed, this mechanism would take time to materialise .
But in the interim, practical realities demand that maritime practitioners – the navies and coastguards in this case – devise ways to prevent and mitigate close encounters in these geopolitically contentious waters.
Strong relationships based on habits of cooperation and trust among security agencies in the larger Asia-Pacific to ensure that tensions do not get out of hand and misunderstanding on the ground doesn’t spiral into an armed exchange cannot be understated.
Open channels of communications and clear actions that all sides agree to take in the event of an incident are critical ingredients to regional peace and stability in the South China Sea.
In essence, security agencies will have to keep peace in the short term while the foreign affairs policymakers work together for a shot at peace in the long term.
One such initiative integral to regional countries’ efforts in this regard is the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES), a “gentleman’s agreement” among 21 navies who have signed this code and agreed to its set of ground rules on managing encounters between naval vessels.
