Page 33 - AEI Insights 2018 Vol 4 Issue 1

ASEAN’S PRINCIPLED PRAGMATISM AND THE EVOLVING
NORMATIVE SECURITY STRATEGY ON THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

Amira Athira Azman
+
Sameer Kumar

Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya, Malaysia

+ Corresponding author: sameer@um.edu.my

Abstract

The South China Sea dispute has been considered as one of the crucial tests for ASEAN due to
factors such as member-states' weak national resilience, China’s hegemonic expansion and
non-traditional security issues involving economic activities and environment, making it a
significant political-security agenda for the regional institution at the age of fifty. The overall
purpose of this article is to explore the core assumptions regarding ASEAN principled-
pragmatism and the evolving role of ASEAN normative security strategy underlying the
concepts of ASEAN Way, neutrality, multilateralism and centrality relating to the South China
Sea dispute. Based on the conceptual frameworks, we show that ASEAN’s principled-
pragmatism is imperative in determining the ten member states foreign policies underlying the
expectation of ‘low cost-high benefit’, ‘low cost-low benefit’ or ‘high cost-low benefit’. We
further argue that the aspects of threat perception, economic dependency and national resilience
are necessary not only to explain the extent of how ASEAN could reach the condition of ‘win-
win' in its framework, but to also help elucidate the Association's viability as a regional
organisation in managing the multifaceted interests in its political-security paradigm.

Keywords: ASEAN, South China Sea, principled-pragmatism, normative security strategy,
political-security

Introduction

As a regional institution, the initial role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’
(ASEAN) half a century ago could be simply understood as a platform to encourage
"meaningful communications between neighbours who have minimal knowledge about each
other in the thick of ultra-nationalistic security ambitions" (Makaruddin and Mohamad
2004:15). This attempt was considered a remarkable success, as evidenced through the myriad
of multilateral engagements and extensive member-states cooperation underlying the crucial
aspects of political-security, economy and socio-cultural architypes. However, as the
Association cemented its standing as a regional grouping in these key areas, its strategic role
was once again brought into focus following the fallout of fundamental global challenges of
the twenty-first century in climate change, food security, unemployment, refugees and
occurrences of pandemics and epidemic diseases. At the most critical juncture, ASEAN, in
particular, is currently facing perilous tests in relation to its centrality on the South China Sea
dispute, which immensely determines the adjournment of the ‘long-promise' towards the
creation of ASEAN Political-Security Community. In this sense, the article argues that it is
significant to understand the mechanisms that ASEAN utilise to strategically manage the South
China Sea dispute.