The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has sent a strong message to China with the recent events at the 16th Foreign Ministers’ Meeting of the East Asia Summit
NEW DELHI — The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has sent a strong message to China with the recent events at the 16th Foreign Ministers’ Meeting of the East Asia Summit (EAS), a forum for strategic, political, and economic dialogue comprising 19 countries in Manila, according to a report.
On the sidelines of the 16th Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, the Quad Foreign Ministers met and issued a dedicated joint statement on cooperation with ASEAN. They also reiterated their commitments unveiled at the 11th Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in New Delhi.
According to the report by ‘The Diplomat’, this opened the door to a more substantive relationship with the Quad, and this achievement should not be underestimated, as ASEAN has spent much of the past year mulling questions about drift and division.
It said that the statement reflected the Quad’s willingness to overcome its appeasement of China. Despite being inherently a counterweight to China, the Quad avoided being seen as enraging Beijing, but the meeting in Manila seems to shed this longstanding hesitation.
Beijing is a full participant in the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Regional Forum.
In the joint statement, the Quad countries called themselves "ASEAN Comprehensive Strategic Partners" and noted "the practical implementation of the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific", as part of their agenda.
“The fact that ASEAN accepted and enabled the Quad’s effort to insert itself as a stakeholder with a collective interest in the region is significant. Beijing has repeatedly described the Quad as an Asian NATO and has made its discomfort with the grouping known. Further, ASEAN has always sought to avoid becoming an arena for great power rivalry. Beijing is a full participant in the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Regional Forum," the report noted.
The report called this joint statement a response to critics who question the Quad’s lack of engagement with regional countries.
"The signal emerging from ASEAN is just as important, and arguably braver. The bloc communicated to Beijing that it is not afraid to engage the Quad, and that it might like to do more of that. The visible loosening of ASEAN’s reflex to keep the Quad at arm’s length will not be lost on Beijing," the report added.
The report said that the Quad being “not an anti-China grouping” has been useful but also noted that ASEAN will face dilemmas regarding China and its actions.
It suggested that disaster response and maritime domain awareness are natural areas to begin the cooperation if the two sides want a proof of concept that sidesteps the more politically difficult questions.
It said that "the Quad and ASEAN could establish a regional rapid-response protocol covering coordination, logistics and emergency communications. A similar approach could be adopted in the maritime domain. Through the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA), launched in 2022, the Quad provides maritime tracking data to some ASEAN states. This could be expanded into a more formal arrangement for regular information-sharing across the bloc".