ASEAN will lose relevance if it ignores the coup in Myanmar

THE GENERAL who led a coup against Myanmar’s elected government two months ago celebrated Armed Forces Day in late March with a parade followed by a lavish dinner, fireworks and drones configured to create a night-sky portrait of himself. His junta had gone all out to make the day a triumph, including warning Burmese that they risked being shot “in the head and back” if they took to the streets in protest at military rule. They did so anyway, and the army, as good as its word, killed 141 of them on the bloodiest day since the coup. To date, more than 500 civilians have died, many of them children. While the capital, Naypyidaw, was illuminated for Min Aung Hlaing’s delectation, in nearby Mandalay his goons burned a street vendor alive.

The army’s brutality appals many of Myanmar’s neighbours in South-East Asia and creates a mounting crisis for the ten-country Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member. ASEAN’s success as a grouping has come from aiming low. The “ASEAN way” is all about agreeing never to disagree. Its insistence on consensus tends towards the extraordinarily bland or the impossibly vague.

Extreme blandness is not self-evidently a route to success. But South-East Asia’s modern history is full of horrors, from genocides to coups to civil wars. Ethnic and religious antagonisms lurk in even the more peaceable societies. And more or less authoritarian leaders are prickly about sovereignty in a region mostly of young nations.

So form trumps substance. Yet given this constraint, the growth to date in ASEAN’s effectiveness is surely remarkable. Its economy is big and fast-growing, with a central role in global supply chains. As for geopolitics, the region’s “centrality” has prompted the world to court it. ASEAN has convening power over a plethora of summits that bring world and regional leaders together, notably at the annual ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the East Asia Summit. As Aaron Connelly of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore points out, America and China are careful to show a degree of respect to ASEAN’s interests.

Yet the downward spiral in Myanmar represents a grave challenge to ASEAN‘s centrality. Not least, President Joe Biden and his administration may come under intense domestic pressure to shun ASEAN’s various summits if representatives of Myanmar’s junta are in attendance. The ARF is in August. Far worse would be if prolonged internal conflict turned Myanmar into a failed state where China, America and India fought via proxies, and refugees flocked for sanctuary to neighbouring countries. For now, Myanmar lays bare the hollowness of commitments in ASEAN‘s charter to democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

The most authoritarian ASEAN members have remained predictably mute. Communist Vietnam and Laos are no friends to democracy. Cambodia’s Hun Sen rigs elections and oppresses the opposition. Thailand is run by a former general, Prayuth Chan-ocha, who also came to power in a coup. (Thailand, Vietnam and Laos all sent representatives to General Min Aung Hlaing’s bash.) Yet Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia have been unusually unbuttoned in airing concerns. Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, expressed his “deep sympathy” for the junta’s victims and called for dialogue that would restore democracy.

Jokowi also called for an emergency ASEAN summit on Myanmar. The country that holds the group’s rotating chairmanship, Brunei, is racing to convene one before Ramadan begins in mid-April. Many think ASEAN should be seen to be doing something. What that might be is another matter. Suspending Myanmar’s membership is not something ASEAN’s more authoritarian members are likely to condone. Trying to engage with the junta is the only viable option. Moe Thuzar of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore argues that ASEAN must present itself as “the central platform around which dialogue can coalesce”.

There is a precedent. In 2008 the callous ineptitude of the junta of the day compounded a humanitarian crisis caused by a devastating cyclone. ASEAN persuaded the generals to let it lead a UN-backed rescue mission, which then led to wider engagement. But there is also a difference. In 2008 the generals were stuck up a tree and in search of a ladder. General Min Aung Hlaing is also up a tree, but shows no desire to climb down. That is not just Myanmar’s agony, but ASEAN’s too.