🇲🇲 'Even Superman cannot solve the Myanmar problem'

Asean foreign ministers meet in Cambodia

Hello friends!

Let’s take a look at last week’s Asean Foreign Minister Meeting.

I’m beginning to miss the good old days of mid-2010s Asean meetings. “Cambodia blocked the Code of Conduct, will circle back to it next time.” Easy! Next! 

The Myanmar crisis has made the stakes much higher and more immediate and, with representatives from all over the world attending the East Asia Summit, Taiwan and China loomed large. In some respects, I think that’s a bit upsetting. Blinken, Yi and Lavrov plus PLA drills around Taiwan are an enormous distraction from Myanmar in what should have been a meeting dominated by the recent executions of four political prisoners and the failure of the junta to follow the Five Point Consensus. BUT, on the other hand, what could the foreign ministers have achieved beyond a few damning words? 

This did also give me pause:

I do think Myanmar’s representatives should be held to a different standard, given they are full members of the bloc. But what standard is one that North Korea can clear so easily? This is a very trying time for the region (and the whole dang world), but for the purposes of this newsletter, we will focus only on the Foreign Ministers meeting and Myanmar, which ended over the weekend. 

“I think that even Superman cannot solve the Myanmar problem.”

Cambodian Foreign Minister and current Asean special envoy to Myanmar Prak Sokhonn tempered expectations over the weekend.

“Issues cannot be solved by one meeting, by two meetings, by many years of meeting. Negotiation takes years, like the issue in Myanmar. After two visits of the special envoy, two visits only, some people start to lose patience and ask for results,” he told reporters, as quoted by the AFP. 

Not even Superman can solve the crisis, he added. “I am just a special envoy, I am not a superman.” 

Elsewhere, Prak Sokhonn again blamed a “lack of trust” between the various parties. “Without this trust, the fight will continue and the political process will never stop because no one will come if they fear for their life,” he said, as reported by Reuters. 

This is a common refrain from the Cambodian envoy and it triggers me. There is no reason for any party to trust the junta and extending a modicum of goodwill is a folly. Sometimes I think Cambodia sees the current crisis as a singular, isolated incident, rather than an extension of decades-long warring between the military, civil society and various armed factions. This ‘lack of trust’ didn’t emerge after the coup in February last year, it is deeply entrenched and predates Asean. 

But, again, what can Asean even do about that? 

Becoming so deeply involved in the crisis is a departure from long and deeply held beliefs that the bloc should not ever interfere in the domestic issues of a sovereign member. This is driving a well-documented wedge (not quite a schism — yet!) into the bloc between those who are keen for far more involvement and those who are happy to sit on the sidelines and monitor any regional fall-out, like the movement of refugees over borders. 

Cambodia appears deeply ambivalent about the hand it has been dealt. Chairing Asean is a great opportunity to show off to the region and, depending on what’s happening and the response to it, create a legacy. But this is also a no-win situation. As Prak Sokhonn says above, nothing can be solved in a year. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Hun Sen was literally counting the days before the chairmanship is handed over to Indonesia. 

So what do you get? Brunei, as 2021’s chair, copped enough flak for not handling it ‘right,’ however one may view that, particularly when sending envoys to Myanmar. Cambodia is damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t. The junta won’t let anyone see Aung San Suu Kyi, but any visitor is slammed for not seeing her or other political prisoners. 

Hell, you can’t even arrange some sort of trip to the Netherlands or anything to negotiate a peace deal or power transition because any engagement with the military is seen as legitimising. Am I becoming a realist!? 

And what of the communique? 

Nothing surprising. The bloc’s foreing ministers “were deeply disappointed by the limited progress and lack of commitment of the Naypyitaw authorities to the timely and complete implementation of the five-point consensus,” the communique released Friday said, via Nikkei Asia. Adding: “Towards this end ... we recommended that the Asean summit assesses the progress towards the implementation of the five-point consensus by the [Myanmar's] State Administration Council to guide the decision on the next steps.”

This kicks any real decision down the road a couple more months to the annual Summit in November. Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah hasn’t ruled out pushing for Myanmar’s suspension from the bloc. But then what! What leverage does that give the region? But then again, it’s hardly been successful in leveraging for the last 18 months. 

Not sure if I have a cohesive point here. Mostly, I’m glad I’m not in the Cambodian foreign ministry or the Asean secretariat because this is exceptionally difficult. I’m grateful Indonesia is next up alphabetically. I don’t think there’s much Asean can do, but if it does work something out, the guiding hand of Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi would be a welcome one. 

Incidentally, she seemed to be very much in her element in Phnom Penh, hitting her 10,000 steps a day in style: 

Elsewhere, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Chinese counterpart Wang Yi walked around each other and Taiwan. While my trip to Taipei is one of the highlights of my life (a gentleman on the train leaned over to my friend [incidentally, one of Indonesia’s best young journalists] and asked if he spoke Chinese and then told him, in Chinese, to ask me to shut up. Absolutely bodied on the Metro), it is a little far north of my remit and shall leave that coverage to others. Mostly I just wanted to tell my train story. 

Further reading:

Malaysia has been leading calls for a tougher approach to Myanmar’s military administration, and has also called for the group to engage with the National Unity Government (NUG) established by the elected politicians the generals removed from power.

The Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore have also pushed for a firmer line.

The Five-Point Consensus called for an immediate end to violence, the appointment of a special envoy and discussions involving all stakeholders. Friday’s ASEAN statement stressed the envoy must be allowed to meet with “all relevant stakeholders”.

Semantics aside, what ASEAN urgently needs is not an “official language” or even a “second official language”, but better connectivity to promote improved mutual understanding among its member states and its people.

Covering about 4.5 million square kilometres, or around three per cent of Earth’s total land area, ASEAN stretches from Rakhine State in Myanmar to the far-flung Indonesian town of Merauke, from Batanes Province in the Philippines to Rote Island in Indonesia. ASEAN is not only huge in size but also diverse in terms of cultures, faiths, ethnicities, traditions and, of course, languages.

Beijing’s recent Pacific moves will further poison US-China relations. Students of strategy and the use of power will understand the significance of this contest for the security of East and Southeast Asia, much of which depends on maintaining a balance of power. This in turn hinges on a robust US military presence that is forward deployed in the Western Pacific.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations needs to watch closely how the tussle between these two great powers plays out at the PIF. It should also monitor how Pacific nations react collectively and individually to intensifying great power competition. Can they maintain their unity and successfully exercise their agency? Only time will tell.

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