Page 34 - AEI Insights 2018 Vol 4 Issue 1

AEI Insights, Vol 4, Issue 1, 2018

On the whole, the South China Sea dispute is characterised as complex and difficult due to the
zero-sum nature of the competing legal claims and its association with nationalist sentiment
with the varied cast of claimants (Ba 2011:271). Specifically for ASEAN countries, the South
China Sea is profoundly associated with issues regarding the rule of law, the establishment of
the Code of Conduct and confronting Beijing's hegemonic ambition in the region. For this
reason, the measures undertaken by ASEAN countries signify the pre-determined expectations
in regards to the regional desire to achieve an effective and lasting form of win-win agreement
that could satisfy all the parties' interests. However, when it comes to the conflict in South
China Sea, the current regional approach is rather manifestly positional due to China's status
quo as the Great Power, the low degree of regional resilience among ASEAN member states
as well as the involvement of other major powers. Given the concern, the article seeks to
analyse how ASEAN and its member-state deal with the conflict in South China Sea underlying
the concept of principled-pragmatism.

Principled-pragmatism, hypothetically suggests that the solution underlies the principality of
moral conscience and at the same time is realistic by taking account the full economic, social
and political dimension in the conflict (Juncos 2017:6). In terms of foreign policy, principled-
pragmatism by no means is entirely new or unique. Principled-pragmatism is one of the key
features in the 2016 European Union Global Strategy (EUGS), which aspires to bridge the
reality gap between the EU's conventional role underlying the democratic principles that seems
to be less relevant and ineffective outside its neighbourhood. That is why the EU's principled-
pragmatism suggests that it needs to develop a more flexible and low-key that are based on
technical engagement, joint interests and shared ownership in some sectoral areas for a
constructive policy.

For ASEAN, the term "principled-pragmatism" has never been formally addressed in its
official statements, by the regional diplomats or any of the ten countries' leaders. The nearest
examples that might show how ASEAN is often described as pragmatic in its approach
underlying the political-security, economic and socio-cultural interests. In the context of South
China Sea, the countries' responses to China's increasing assertiveness in the contested water
depend on the individual state's priority. Vietnam is seen as more vocal due to its status as
claimant and the myriad of physical confrontation in its claimed seas, while on the opposite
end, Cambodia is considered as ‘neutral' and ‘under the Chinese control'. The indictment is
mainly due to its frequent disagreement to the strongly worded joint-statement against Chinese
militarization activities in SCS during the non-issuance of 45th AAM joint-communique and
in many other regional meetings.

Here we examine what principled-pragmatism means for ASEAN by looking at the approaches
of the Association and its member states in regards to the dispute in SCS. In this sense, the
article proposes that the combination of "low cost-high benefit" expectation can be conserved
in the dispute. For example, "low-cost" method means diplomatic engagement to manage the
multidimensional interests in SCS, but at the same time, the measures are realistic to the fact
that the Association is unable to fully contain the foreign powers' "high-benefit" in SCS. Our
presumption is that there is a genuine expectation in the region that ASEAN by no possible
means would adopt high-cost methods like military alliance or collective arbitration ruling, nor
it can effectively use low-cost methods like multilateralism, to reach a win-win agreement with
all claimants in SCS. It also relates to the article's deeper interest relating to the concept of
ASEAN principled-pragmatism, in which it seeks to analyse the extent of member countries'

34