Security experts: NATO-type Southeast Asian defense alliance not feasible at present

MANILA - A Southeast Asian defense alliance modeled after NATO and aimed at countering China may not be set up any time soon because the region’s nations would want to maintain good relations with the superpower, regional security analysts said.

The creation of more minilateral agreements, though, rather than multilateral ones like the 32-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization, are not only likely but may be more effective, they added.

A minilateral agreement is an accord between a small group of nations that have come together to achieve mutual goals or tackle shared problems, according to international relations experts.

For instance, a good example is a minilateral agreement renewed last year by the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia for joint patrols on their seas, said geopolitics expert Don McLain Gill.

“The most we can expect [in the form of a defense alliance] for now is an area- specific and time-dependent security cooperation between particular states in the region in a way that would also reflect individual varying sensitivities,” he told RFA affiliate BenarNews.

Another lecturer from the university concurred.

“I think that [creating] minilaterals is more plausible,” political science lecturer Sherwin Ona told BenarNews.

“I also think that armed enforcement has its limitations and has a tendency for escalation.”

Established in 1949, NATO commits its 32-member countries to each other’s defense in the event any are attacked. Aside from the United States, other NATO members include the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, and Canada.

Conversation about a regional NATO, Asian or Southeast Asian, revived after now-Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba wrote a paper late September for think-tank Hudson Institute about his proposal for such a defense alliance.

“[T]he absence of a collective self-defense system like NATO in Asia means that wars are likely to break out because there is no obligation for mutual defense,” Ichiba wrote late September.

“Under these circumstances, the creation of an Asian version of NATO is essential to deter China by its Western allies,” added the then-candidate for prime minister added.

The proposal was rejected by the United States and India said it doesn’t share Ishiba’s vision.

Similar ideas have irritated Beijing, which sees itself as the main focus of these proposals, in the same way that Moscow has accused NATO of concentrating its defense efforts against Russia.

In Southeast Asia specifically as well, the idea of a NATO-like grouping has been talked about in response to some countries claiming harassment by Beijing’s vessels in the South China Sea, where they have overlapping claims.

Beijing claims most of the South China Sea, but its claims overlap those of Taiwan, which isn’t a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, all of which are.

Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. trod carefully when asked on Tuesday about a grouping similar to NATO consisting of the 10 members of ASEAN.

“I don’t think it is possible at this time because of the dichotomies and divergence between country interests,” Teodoro answered at the venue of a private conference in Manila.

Still, he acknowledged the need to boost multilateral security alliances.

Teodoro noted that Manila has a bilateral defense alliance with Washington since 1951, even before it became one of the Southeast Asian countries to set up the ASEAN in 1967.

RELATED STORIES

US not seeking to create ‘Asian NATO,’ defense secretary says

Vietnam, Philippines to sign defense cooperation agreement

US election: Trump II to affect trade, security in SE Asia, experts say

Sherwin Ona, a political science lecturer at Manila’s De La Salle University, told BenarNews that ASEAN nations would stick to the bloc’s “non-interference policy.”

Besides, some Southeast Asian countries are very pro-Beijing because their economies are heavily dependent on China, indicated Ona.

“I agree [with Teodoro] about the beneficial relationship between countries that are pro-Beijing.”

Another reason Southeast Asian countries may be cool to the idea of an “Asian NATO” is because they have different security interests, noted a researcher at the New Delhi-based think-tank Observer Research Foundation.

“This is because most countries are convinced that a multilateral security architecture will only elevate regional insecurities, and make them subservient to great power contestations,” Abhishek Sharma wrote in the Deccan Herald.

‘Loose, flexible’ minilaterals

Minilaterals are “loose and flexible,” believes Gill.

“This is not NATO’s established collective security structure,” he said.

Minilaterals are “only as good as they last.”

Gill explained that if one country in a three-nation minilateral agreement felt it did not any longer share the same interest with the other two, “it can walk out anytime.”

Geopolitical analyst Julio Amador III believes a network of “minilateral ties” might be able to offset this shortcoming and would be more effective.

Additionally, he said there was a way ASEAN as a bloc could become “a formidable diplomatic counterweight.”

If the group’s members, particularly those that drift towards China, agree that there are some issues “that go beyond national interests, that there are issues that do matter to the collective interests of the group,” ASEAN could be powerful, Amador said.

However, De La Salle University’s Gill said that the character of Southeast Asian cooperation tended to be based mostly on mutual interest.

“An ASEAN version of NATO is unlikely going to happen given the nature of ASEAN,” he said.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.