ASEAN–Australia Relations: Location, Position, and Timing

Malcolm Cook

The last two years have seen the ASEAN–Australia dialogue partner relationship reach a new level of engagement. In March 2018, Sydney, Australia hosted the ASEAN–Australia Special Summit, the first ASEAN–Australia Summit to be held outside of Southeast Asia. Nine of the ten Southeast Asian political leaders made the long trip down under to Sydney. Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte sent his foreign secretary Alan Peter Cayetano. For a number of the Southeast Asian leaders, this was their first-ever official trip to Australia. The special summit delivered the Sydney Declaration, a lengthy and detailed joint statement that reflects the depth and scope of the existing engagement.1

In August 2019, the two sides followed up and released in Bangkok the fourteen-page 2020–2024 Plan of Action to Implement the ASEAN–Australia Strategic Partnership. ASEAN–Australia Dialogue Partner relations were elevated to the status of a strategic partnership at the first ever ASEAN–Australia Commemorative Summit in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, in 2014, held to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of ASEAN–Australia dialogue relations.

In May 2020, Australia and ASEAN agreed that the regular ASEAN–Australia Leaders Summits, held on the sidelines of the November ASEAN Summits, which had commenced on a biennial basis in 2016, should become an annual event. Australia is the sixth of the ten ASEAN dialogue partners to be granted annual summits after Japan, China, the USA, South Korea, and India. Russia, the European Union, New Zealand, and Canada do not have regularly scheduled summits with ASEAN leaders. In June 2020, Australia became the sixth dialogue partner to hold a bilateral ministerial-level meeting with ASEAN to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and support for ASEAN’s pandemic response. China, Japan, the USA, Russia, and the European Union were the five dialogue partners to get in ahead of Australia. South Korea participated in the ASEAN+3 ministerial and leaders’ meetings addressing the pandemic. Australia, along with China, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand, have committed to signing the ASEAN-based Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement by the end of 2020. India pulled out from RCEP in late 2019, while the USA, the European Union, Russia, and Canada were not invited by ASEAN to join the RCEP negotiations, as these dialogue partners do not have bilateral preferential trading agreements with ASEAN.

Australia became ASEAN’s first official dialogue partner in 1974, followed a year later by New Zealand and in 1977 by Japan, the USA, the European Union, and Canada. Developments over the last two years show how strong these dialogue partner relations still are. Despite being the second-smallest ASEAN dialogue partner by population—much larger than New Zealand but much smaller than Canada—Australia is, by many counts, the fourth most engaged ASEAN dialogue partner ahead of the USA, India, Russia, the European Union, Canada, and New Zealand.

Australia’s location on the southern maritime periphery of Southeast Asia and its position in the interstate system as a middle power focussed on East Asia explain Australia’s longest tenure as an ASEAN dialogue partner and Canberra’s enduring interest in supporting ASEAN and ASEAN–Australia relations. Recent regional strategic developments explain why the last two years have seen ASEAN–Australia

dialogue partner relations expand and deepen, and suggest that this trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

LOCATION

Australia’s location as a sparsely populated, continent-spanning, Western democratic state on the southern maritime approaches to Southeast Asia has required Australian security planners to focus on countering potential threats to Australia emanating from or through Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. The fall of Singapore, Japan’s capture of numerous Pacific islands, and Japan’s bombing of Darwin in World War II turned these fears into reality not long after Australia had become an independent country. The 2002 terrorist bombings in Bali, Indonesia, which claimed eighty-eight Australian lives, reaffirmed the centrality of Southeast Asia, and particularly Indonesia, for Australian security as do Myanmar’s role as a major source of heroin for Australia and the transit through Indonesia of many people seeking political and economic asylum in Australia. Australia’s largest overseas mission is not in Washington, DC, or Beijing; it is the Australian embassy in Jakarta. A stable and prosperous Southeast Asia and Indonesia that have good steady relations with Australia are an enduring Australian grand strategic interest.

Before the formation of ASEAN in 1967 and its dialogue partner network, Australia cooperated closely with Southeast Asian states to address common security concerns. Australia contributed troops to Malaya from 1950 to 1963 to combat the communist insurgency and counter the spread of communism. The Five Power Defence Arrangements between Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Singapore, and Malaysia followed from this effort and the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from Southeast Asia in the 1960s. Australia also contributed troops to the Vietnam War to try to prevent the communist takeover of Vietnam and the southern spread of communism to maritime Southeast Asia.

As shown by the joint statement from the 2018 ASEAN–Australia Special Summit, shared security concerns feature prominently in ASEAN–Australia relations. The joint statement’s first subsection is Our Region’s Security and covers common security interests from countering violent extremism and maritime rights disputes in the South China Sea to tensions on the Korean Peninsula and transnational crime. The final clause in this statement again underlines the importance of shared security concerns in ASEAN–Australia relations. It welcomes “initiatives arising from this Summit covering the areas of counterterrorism; counter trafficking in persons; cybersecurity and digital trade; defence; maritime; economic; urbanisation and infrastructure; connectivity; education; health; and women, peace and security.”

Southeast Asia is also central to Australia’s economic security as a trading economy rich in raw resources and higher-end services that is particularly complementary with the populous, resource-poor manufacturing economies of Northeast Asia.

Collectively, the economies of the ten ASEAN member states are Australia’s second-largest trading partners. Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia account for over 81% of Australia’s total trade with Southeast Asia. However, as shown in Table 1, the Northeast Asian economies on the other side of Southeast Asia from Australia are much more important to Australia. Australian trade with China is roughly twice as large as Australia’s trade with Southeast Asia, and, while Australia runs a moderate trade deficit with Southeast Asia, it runs significant surpluses with China, Japan, and South Korea.

Australia’s trade diplomacy has reflected this geography of trade with Asia. Australia was the second OECD member to conclude a bilateral preferential trade agreement with China (after New Zealand) and the first with Japan and has one with South Korea. Australia has bilateral trade agreements with Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia in Southeast Asia. Australia is a party to the trilateral ASEAN–

■ Members of the Five Power Defence Agreements (FPDA) ■ Members of the Comprehensive and Progressive

Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) ■ Members of the Quadrlateral Security Dialogue (QSD)

Australia–New Zealand Free Trade Agreement that came into force in 2010 and is a party to the ASEAN-led RCEP negotiations. Australia, along with Japan and Singapore, also pushed hard for the conclusion of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) signed in March 2018 after the Trump administration had withdrawn the USA from these negotiations in early 2017. The CPTPP was signed by Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Mexico, Peru, and Chile. So far, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, Mexico, and Canada have ratified the agreement that came into force in December 2018.

Closer and more predictable trade and investment relations with key Southeast Asian

economies and Northeast Asia are vital for Australia’s economic security. ASEAN, through the trilateral trade agreement with Australia and New Zealand, and RCEP have played an important role in addressing this concern and deepening Australia’s economic relations with Southeast Asia.

Given the importance of trade with Northeast Asia to Australia, Australia has also used its relations with ASEAN to promote the freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea and that a future ASEAN–China Code of Conduct in the South China Sea should “be consistent with international law including UNCLOS, not prejudice the interests of third parties, and reinforce and not undermine existing, inclusive regional architecture.” Recent joint statements from ASEAN and the

Table 1: Australian trade with Southeast Asia, 2018–2019 (in million AUD)

Brunei Cambodia Indonesia Laos Malaysia Myanmar (Burma) Philippines Singapore Thailand Vietnam

SEA total

China Japan South Korea

Exports

107 232 8,360 29 11,545 163 3,873 15,951 7,375 7,609

55,244

153,177 61,728 27,771

Share of SEA total (%)

0.2 0.4 15.1 — 20.9 0.3 7.0 28.9 13.3 13.8 — — — —

Imports

984 427 9,470 24 13,574 51 1,695 16.735 17,336 7,858

68,154

81,777 26,802 13,623

Share of SEA total (%)

1.4 0.6 13.9 — 19.9 — 2.5 24.6 25.4 11.5 — — — —

Balance

−877 −195 −1,104 +5 −2,029 +112 +2,178 −784 −9,961 −249 −12,910 +71,400 +34,926 +14,148

USA, Japan, and Russia have included similar language on the South China Sea and the Code of Conduct.

MIDDLE POWER POSITION

Australia has long classified itself and been classified as a middle power in the interstate system. Not powerful enough to unilaterally shape the country’s external environment to its benefit or to achieve strategic autonomy— but powerful enough to work with others to advance both these goals. This strategic selfidentification has led Australia to have a very activist foreign and defence policy heavily focussed on developing, being active within, and maintaining global and regional interstate institutions. ASEAN is the primary interstate institution in Southeast Asia with ambitions to be the institutional centre of wider East Asian (through the ASEAN+3 process started in 1997) and Asia-Pacific (through the ASEAN Regional Forum established in 1994, the East Asia Summit established in 2005, and ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus process established in 2010) interstate institution-building. Australia’s middle-power activism has supported ASEAN but, at times, has been challenged by ASEAN, as well.

Australia’s becoming ASEAN’s first dialogue partner reflects this convergence between Australian and Southeast Asian strategic interests. So does the role Australia played with Japan, Singapore, and Indonesia a quarter century ago in the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN’s first ASEAN+ grouping that focusses on security issues affecting Southeast Asia. As indicated in the joint statement from the 2018 Special ASEAN–Australia Summit, Australia is a strong supporter of the East Asia Summit that brings together under ASEAN the ten ASEAN member states and eight of the ten ASEAN dialogue partners: Japan, China, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, India, Russia, and the USA. The ADMM-Plus process has the same membership. Australia, along with the USA and Japan, successfully pushed for the ADMM-Plus meetings of defence ministers to become an annual event. When the ADMM-Plus grouping was established in 2010, it was agreed that these meetings would occur only once every three years.

Before ASEAN began to use its dialogue partner network to develop ASEAN-based larger regional groupings, Australian prime minister Bob Hawke announced in South Korea the idea for an Asia-Pacific-wide economic grouping that became APEC in 1989. APEC’s formation and the inclusion of all ASEAN member states as founding members of APEC certainly contributed to ASEAN’s decision to set up its Asia-Pacific groupings for fear that APEC may reduce ASEAN’s relevance. In 2008, Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd announced, with no prior notification to ASEAN or Southeast Asian states, the idea for a new Asia-Pacific Community interstate body, arguing that the current ASEAN-centred regional architecture was lacking.2 Led by Singapore, ASEAN member states quickly mobilised against this Australian idea that was soon dropped by the Rudd government.

At the same time, after successful disaster relief cooperation in the wake of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that hit Southeast Asia hard, Australia, India, Japan, and the United States agreed to form a quadrilateral consultation forum that became known as the Quad. The Quad, opposed by China, has become a more regularised forum since 2017. This forum often convenes on the sidelines of ASEAN Plus meetings involving Australia, Japan, India, and the USA. Despite its original purpose to aid Southeast Asia, the Quad has generated some ambivalence (and even stronger negative sentiments) among ASEAN member states and their wider strategic communities, since they fear it could develop into a more substantial format. It is obviously opposed by China, and there seems to be a general agreement that it could also threaten ASEAN centrality and relevance.3 While these concerns are overstated and tell us more about Southeast Asian fear than Quad realities, they do show how Australia’s middle-power activism is not uniformly welcome in Southeast Asia or by ASEAN. If the Quad develops into something more regular and formal, this divide between Australia and ASEAN could widen.

TIMING

The last five years have seen a proliferation of defence and foreign policy strategic documents from successive Australian governments and many Southeast Asian states. All recognise that the regional security environment is becoming more complex and threatening. China is more unilateralist and aggressive under President Xi Jinping. The USA is more unilateralist and unpredictable under President Trump. The US–China superpower rivalry is deepening, broadening, and becoming more virulent. The threat of terrorism still looms large while organised crime networks expand and cybercrime and interference flourish. Australia and Southeast Asian states see all these developments as detrimental to their national interest and security. The enhancement of ASEAN–Australia relations over the last two years is a reflection of these shared concerns and an attempt to deepen cooperation to address them.

As indicated clearly in the recent 2020 Australian Defence Strategic Update, Australia’s location at the southern maritime approaches to Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands is even more important now than are closer relations with Southeast Asian states and ASEAN.4 For Southeast Asian states, strengthening ties bilaterally and through ASEAN with like-concerned dialogue partners such as Australia is of greater importance, too. The Cold War and the US–Soviet rivalry forged ASEAN and ASEAN–Australia relations. The growing rivalry between the USA and China could lead ASEAN–Australia relations to greater heights—or not.

ENDNOTES

1

Joint State prospects. Parliamentary Library Research Paper. 2009–10/13.

3

William Choong: Quad goals: wooing ASEAN. IISS. 11 July 2018. <https://bit.ly/30gq0wj >

4

2020 Defence Strategic Update. Department of Defence, Australian Government. <https://bit.ly/2WCqY4U >