Southeast Asia at the Crossroads of Power Rivalry: A Vietnamese Perspective

Dang Cam Tu*

Growing contestation among big powers, particularly between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, is dominating contemporary international politics. Nowhere else is it reflected more evidently than in the Indo-Pacific region. Located at a geostrategic crossroads linking the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia has, therefore, become a site for direct big power competition with multiple impacts. Common regional responses have so far been a mixture of hedging, engaging, and institutional balancing by measures of bilateral ties and multilateral mechanisms initiated and led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The article argues that, while power rivalry creates more fragmentation within the region and lessens appetite for multilateralism, ASEAN retains its relevance for small and medium-sized countries in Southeast Asia to mitigate the negative consequences of power politics. Being an ASEAN member, Vietnam has attached greater significance and emphasis to ASEAN in its effort to delicately balance relations with competing big powers.

SOUTHEAST ASIA AS A FOCAL POINT OF POWER RIVALRY

The Indo-Pacific has become the main theatre for power rivalry. It is because the world’s economic and geopolitical centre of gravity is presumably shifting eastwards to the region which is home to the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies. Major economic, political, security, and strategic interests of the great powers are consolidated here. More importantly, it is also the immediate geostrategic environment wherein China seeks to defend and expand its interest and influence in its ambition to become a global

The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the institution she works for. power. Since the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2017, China has been pursuing increasingly assertive policies in the region within the framework of its peripheral diplomacy, striving towards its proclaimed aim to establish a community of common destiny under its influence. Meanwhile, the United States—a perceived resident of the Indo-Pacific and an incumbent global superpower—finds its primacy in the establishment and management of the world order being challenged and, therefore, publicly declares China its rival.

The ultranationalist foreign policy tendencies of both the United States and China, the introduction of the former’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy (FOIPS) and the latter’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the mutual distrust, the trade war, and the COVID-19 are creating an environment for a chain of actions and reactions through which tensions between the two giants are accumulating and their strategic rivalry is intensifying. In addition to this, for the first time in history, Asia is witnessing three regional powers, namely, China, Japan, and India, rising concurrently and vying boldly to exert their influence. At the same time, medium and small countries in the region, including Australia, New Zealand, and ASEAN members, have shown greater activism in their foreign relations. As the relations among regional countries are largely revolving around the dynamic of competition between the United States and China, the regional strategic landscape has become increasingly competitive, and the modes of power alignment more fluid.

Lying at the centre of the Indo-Pacific and at a crossroads of FOIP and BRI, Southeast Asia appears more salient in the big power rivalry. Being a community with an aggregate population of 630 million people, the fifth-largest economy in the world with a gross domestic product of

approximately USD 3 trillion, home to four of the world’s fastest-developing economies with young and skilled workforce and a growing middle class, Southeast Asia offers many economic opportunities for its big partners.1 It is especially true as their healthy economic growth has turned the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific into key engines for global growth.

Southeast Asia is also where critical sea lines of communication and transportation pass through. Major powers have increasingly competitive interests in gaining economic, security, and logistical access to Southeast Asia, particularly the South China Sea, and in preventing their rivals from obtaining advantage in these regards. Therefore, Beijing’s excessive and unfounded claims, expansive military deployment, and power projection in the South China Sea underline its escalating frictions with the United States, Japan, India, and other claimants, thus turning the South China Sea into a new theatre for power competition.2

Big power competition has both positive and negative implications. On the one hand, to force constellation in their struggle for strategic interest and influence, Washington and Beijing offer regional countries greater opportunity to promote cooperation through bilateral, mini-lateral, and multilateral arrangements that they seek to lead. This means more prospects for Southeast Asian states to gain access to markets, investment, technologies, and know-how and advance security interests through diversifying their sources of weapon systems, defence supplies, capacitybuilding, and joint exercises.

On the other hand, which is perhaps more troublesome, the rivalry between the United States and China casts an atmosphere of heightened uncertainty and mistrust over the region. Uncertainties centre on the future of China’s development and power projection, the US’s commitment and credibility, the Sino-US relationship, and regional arrangements and architecture.

Uncertainties come from several factors. One of them is the emerging prominence of the Indo-Pacific as a geostrategic concept in the regional architecture discourse. Contending powers uphold competing interests, values, and perceptions of how to best manage relations in the region. Accordingly, Washington and Beijing are advocating different visions about regional arrangements and architecture in keeping with their preferences. However, uncertainties also arise from the dichotomy between the region’s rising geoeconomics underlined by dynamic growth and the geopolitical and security flux, which are, in large part, a result of growing tensions between and among major powers and other countries. The unknowns and surprises related to the policymaking process in Washington, Beijing, and elsewhere tend to increase, particularly driven by various domestic developments and pressures. Last but not least, the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula, and Taiwan continue to be regional hotspots where possible solutions are remote.

Compounded by uncertainties, mistrust seems to deepen, given that the United States and China are increasingly suspicious of each other’s long-term intentions, while states in the region have different strategic perceptions about, and pursue different paths in their policies towards the big powers. Big power rivalry also limits smaller countries’ strategic choices and increases the pressures on them to take sides.

REGIONAL RESPONSES

The history of colonialism and the struggle for national independence maintain the long-held suspicion and concern in most Southeast Asian countries about interference and domination by the big powers. Yet the former’s development experience suggests their acceptance of the latter’s engagement in the region. As a result, the worries of Southeast Asian countries oscillate between being associated with and abandoned by major powers, being entangled with and constrained by big powers’ regional interests and competition, and becoming their proxies.3 Under the acute pressure of choosing sides, leaning towards either China or the United States does not appear to be a desirable option to most small and medium-sized countries in Southeast Asia. Instead, the common policy option by regional countries is to pursue good bilateral relations with both powers while promoting various layers

of integration among themselves and providing venues for big powers’ engagement in dialogue and cooperation on regional issues.

Individually, most Southeast Asian countries are inclined towards a hedging strategy in their bilateral relations with big powers in the context of intensifying big power competition.4 One reason why they opt for such a strategy is that they are much smaller states, with close economic or security (or both) ties with the big ones but weaker bonds among themselves. Keeping equilibrium in their relations with the global big powers proves to be an optimal policy choice for smaller states that aim at attaining more resources for security and economic development, preserving national strategic autonomy and precluding the possibility of regional hegemony by any single power.

Collectively, ASEAN serves as an effective instrument for regional countries to mitigate the negative impacts of power politics while preserving the positive ones. It is noteworthy that being an arena for power rivalry is not new to Southeast Asia. The region was a battlefield of the East–West confrontation when the Cold War was at its height. Indeed, ASEAN was founded as a group attempt to protect the region’s autonomy from the unwanted intrusion of major power rivalry in the Cold War context. As such, ASEAN has preferred to avoid entanglement in power competition through the principles upheld by the Association since its inception in 1967. The Bangkok Declaration— the founding document of ASEAN—reiterated the member states’ determination to ensure their stability and security from external interference in any form or manifestation in order to preserve their national identities in accordance with the ideals and aspirations of their peoples. The Declaration on the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN), signed by the foreign ministers of ASEAN member states in 1971, captured the aspiration to keep Southeast Asia free and neutral from external interference. It was a further attempt to insulate Southeast Asia from being embroiled in the geopolitics of the Cold War.5

ASEAN neutrality traditionally refers to the diplomatic practice of not taking sides with competing big powers.6 It is embedded in the notions of impartiality—understood as not taking sides in big power dynamic—and autonomy— understood as attempting to limit external interference in regional affairs.7 In the post–Cold War era, as power rivalry manifests new features, centrality becomes a new emphasis in ASEAN’s approach to impartiality and autonomy.

ASEAN centrality has internal and external dimensions. The internal dimension resides in ASEAN’s capacity for serving the national interests of its member states and promoting regional stability and prosperity. It is also indicated by the significance attached to the ASEAN Community (officially established in 2015) in the national agendas and strategic calculations of Southeast Asian countries. The external dimension is embedded in ASEAN’s central role in the construction of regional security mechanisms through inducing, mediating, and engaging major powers to resolve regional issues and prevent and manage regional conflicts. In other words, ASEAN has taken the approach of engaging all powers through a network of ASEAN-led mechanisms of dialogue and cooperation while promoting regional solidarity and resilience in order to maintain strategic autonomy and to avoid being entangled in power politics.

Rising tensions between the United States and China are posing a series of challenges to ASEAN. If Sino-US rivalry further intensified, ASEAN would be divided and put at the forefront of great power competition once again, with the South China Sea as a case in point. If ASEAN’s internal cohesion cannot be maintained, ASEAN-led regional mechanisms will be jeopardised, and, as a result, ASEAN’s centrality in regional cooperation and architecture will be endangered. Concerns have already been raised about whether ASEAN can adapt and cope as major powers become more assertive and active in trying to exert their influence over the direction of the ASEAN-led multilateral mechanisms.8 Hence, ASEAN faces the challenge of how to balance divergent interests while, simultaneously, ensuring the major powers’ continued commitment to and engagement with these mechanisms.

In the new context, ASEAN will remain relevant if the merits of impartiality and autonomy are recognised and nurtured. In pursuing them,

ASEAN put greater emphasis on developing its normative, convening, and engaging power. From a Southeast Asian perspective, it is better to have the big powers within the ASEAN-led frameworks and engage them on the basis of rules and norms set by ASEAN than have them outside these frameworks and beyond ASEAN’s ability to manage. While states in the region remain divergent in and divided by the perceptions of what laws and rules to use to govern interstate relations, at least there is a general acceptance on the shared norms set by ASEAN, with thirty-seven signatories to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) to date, including the United States, the EU, and China.9 The increasing number of signatories reflects the growing recognition of the TAC by non-ASEAN states and reaffirms ASEAN’s normative power in providing a core code of conduct to advance trust and cooperation among states in the Indo-Pacific.

ASEAN’s convening and engaging power still has room to grow when distrust among states, especially among major powers, runs high—not only between the United States and China but also between Japan, India, and China. The inability of any of these powers to have a clear strategic advantage and take on a leading role provides them with additional incentive to deepen their engagement with the region and advocate the central role of ASEAN in regional multilateralism.10 In this connection, ASEAN, with its long-established incremental and “comfortable-to-all” approach, has much to offer for the role of a neutral convener. While initiatives for multilateral cooperation might become more exclusive because of increasing great power rivalry, the perceived ASEAN centrality rests on the inclusive nature of the institutional arrangements that ASEAN supports.

Thus, ASEAN continues to provide an appropriate channel for collective response by Southeast Asian states to the pervasive uncertainty and mistrust in the current regional strategic environment heavily influenced by intensifying power rivalry. It is more so when taking into account the fact that, over more than half a decade of regional integration, ASEAN has proved to serve the interests of its members increasingly well. ASEAN members have also developed a habit of skilfully keeping a flexible balance in their relations with major powers. If history is any indication, centrifugal forces in the external environment would serve as a push factor to enhance ASEAN’s unity and role. ASEAN countries are deeply aware of how bad it was for small states to be marginalised and get trampled underfoot in the proverbial jungle of fighting elephants.

THE EXPERIENCE OF VIETNAM

The long history of struggling for national independence and being caught up in great power politics has been informing Vietnam’s insistence on its foreign policy posture of self-reliance, diversification, and international integration since the Doi Moi (Renovation) process was launched in 1986. In its post–Cold War foreign policy, Hanoi attaches greater priority and emphasis to its relations with neighbouring countries and major powers.

Vietnam is the only member in ASEAN that is either a strategic or a comprehensive partner of all the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, all major powers in the Indo-Pacific, and all the founding members of ASEAN. As key players are increasingly shifting their attention to the Indo-Pacific and enhancing their engagement with regional countries, Vietnam’s role is becoming more salient in their strategic calculations, as seen in the policies of the United States, Japan, India, and the EU towards the region.11

In response to big power rivalry, the choice of Hanoi is to stick to its policy of independence and to delicately balance relations among all the powers, particularly the United States and China, and see these relations in positive-sum terms. In the context of escalating Sino-US tensions and China’s assertive expansion of influence in many parts of the world, including the South China Sea, there are views that any boost in Vietnam’s relations with other powers is at China’s expense. However, it is not necessarily the case. The reality is that Hanoi is simultaneously deepening its relations with both the United States and China, as well as other powers like Japan, India, and the EU. More importantly, it has historical and practical reasons for not taking sides with any single power. The independent posture of Vietnam’s Doi Moi foreign policy is well reflected by its defence policy

where it strictly follows a “three-nos principle”— namely, no military alliances, no foreign military bases on Vietnamese territory, and no alignment with a second against a third country. Continued adherence to this principle is the policy mainstream although Hanoi has been under some domestic pressure to review it.12

For Vietnam, like many other Southeast Asian states, to avoid being dragged into the power politics game and to achieve the prioritised national goals of development and security, a greater association with ASEAN stands out as a wise and instrumental policy choice. The establishment of the ASEAN Community, which rests on the three pillars of Political-Security Community, Economic Community, and Socio-Cultural Community, provides Vietnam with an effective vehicle for its strategy to enhance national resilience in terms of economic growth and strategic autonomy and to deepen international integration. Furthermore, membership in the ASEAN Community equips Vietnam with greater collective status for further integration beyond Southeast Asia. ASEAN also serves as a good mechanism for proponents of a peace- and rule-based order, especially with regards to dispute management and solution in the South China Sea.

The lesson of history remains in the current context that, only when united and resilient, can ASEAN countries mitigate the negative impacts of the intrusion of power politics into the region. In that sense, it is clearly in the long-term interest of all members to keep the ASEAN Community cohesive and resilient. Therefore, Hanoi’s foreign policy priority is to support ASEAN centrality in Southeast Asia and beyond. Playing the role of ASEAN Chair in 2020, Vietnam is in a better position to contribute to the collective efforts at shoring up the Association’s cohesiveness and responsiveness in coping with traditional and nontraditional challenges, especially those posed by the growing big power rivalry.

ENDNOTES

1

Dian Septiari: ASEAN world’s fifth-largest economy: Report. The Jakarta Post. 26 November 2019. <https://bit.ly/2YA7IoN >; ASEAN to become world’s fourth-largest economy by 2030: Singapore PM Lee. Singapore Business Review. 30 August 2018. <https://bit.ly/2ULghMG >

2

The SAGE Handbook of Asian Foreign Policy, edited by Takashi Inoguchi. SAGE Publications, London–Thousand Oaks–New Delhi–Singapore, 2020. 468–476.; China, the United States, and the Future of Southeast Asia. Volume II, US–China Relations, edited by David B. H. Denoon. New York University Press, New York, 2017.; Fenna Egberink–Frans-Paul van der Putten: ASEAN and Strategic Rivalry among the Great Powers in Asia. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs. 2010/3. 131–141.

3

Malcolm Cook: Southeast Asia and the Major Powers: Engagement not Entanglement. Southeast Asian Affairs. 2014. 37–52.

4

Bilahari Kausikan: Dodging and Hedging in Southeast Asia. The American Interests. 12 January 2017. <https://bit. ly/3hxYm5L >

5

John D. Ciorciari: ASEAN and the Great Powers. Contemporary Southeast Asia. 2017/August. 253.; Richard Stubbs: The ASEAN Alternative? Ideas, Institutions and the Challenges to Global Governance. The Pacific Review. 2008/December. 457.

6

Amitav Acharya: The Myths of ASEAN Centrality. Contemporary Southeast Asia. 2017/August. 227.; B. A. Hamzah: Introduction—ZOPFAN—Its Strategic Intent. In: Southeast Asia and Regional Peace, edited by B. A. Hamzah. Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Kuala Lumpur, 1992. 3.

7

Ralf Emmer: Unpacking ASEAN Neutrality: The Quest for Autonomy and Impartiality in Southeast Asia. Contemporary Southeast Asia. 2018/3. 349–370.

8 9

Emmer.

The Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) is a foundational treaty by ASEAN to establish a code of conduct to govern interstate relations in Southeast Asia, based on the adherence to such principles as non-interference, no use or threat of force, peaceful settlement of disputes, and others. It was originally signed in 1976 by the five founding members of ASEAN: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. 10 Tang Siew Mun: Sino-Japanese relations and its effects on archipelagic Southeast Asia. S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Policy Report. 2014/December. 5–8. 11 Thuy T. Do: Vietnam’s moderate diplomacy successfully navigating difficult waters. East Asia Forum. 16 January 2015. <https://bit.ly/2UJhOmj > 12 Nguyen Vu Tung: Stronger US–Vietnam Relations Are not at China’s Expense. The Diplomat. 11 June 2016. <https://bit. ly/2AIKoNH >

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