International Trends (Mezhdunarodnye protsessy). Volume 15. No. 3 (50). pp.

46–55

“DIALOGUE PARTNERSHIPS”
IN ASEAN'S EXTERNAL
RELATIONS
EKATERINA KOLDUNOVA
ASEAN Center, MGIMO University, Moscow, 119454, Russian Federation

Abstract
The association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is one of the oldest integration institutions in the
world focused on the regional political, economic and socio-cultural issues. From 1999 onwards ASEAN
has united under its auspices all ten countries of Southeast Asia. Theoretically speaking, this fact creates
necessary preconditions for productive discussions of all regional cooperation issues because no regional
actor is left outside regional interaction and can voice concerns at the regional level. The Association has
no plans to expand its membership further, beyond Southeast Asia. However since 1970s “functional
expansion” has become a distinguishing feature of ASEAN. Nowadays it envisages that the Association,
not expanding formally, nevertheless establishes special frameworks (dialogue partnerships) for interaction
with a number of important macroregional and extraregional players. This article analyzes the phenomena
of “functional expansion” in ASEAN activities and the significance of dialogue partnerships for ASEAN
today. ASEAN’s fiftieth anniversary thus provides a good opportunity, on one hand, to perform a retro-
spective analysis and, on the other hand, to appraise ASEAN’s current policy in the region in the context
of its interaction with other major international players. Referring to the extensive ASEAN-focused
research literature and official documents, this article argues that for the past five decades ASEAN mem-
ber states have passed through several periods of interaction with these kind of players. ASEAN started by
mastering the ability to neutralize external leadership impulses towards the region and gradually moved
towards working out its own institutional and normative instruments of managing its external relation-
ships. This system of management, however, is not without its own limitations. Structurally the article
refers to the historical retrospective of ASEAN’s relations with external players at various stages of the
Association’s own development, analyses the current state of these relations and their functions for
ASEAN external policy and finally focuses on the ways ASEAN is trying to manage and influence these
relations in the way beneficial for the Association.
Keywords:
ASEAN; dialogue partners; the USA; China; Russia; Southeast Asia.

The countries of Southeast Asia are known
for their ability to adjust to an international
environment which was changing rapidly dur-
ing the second half of the twentieth century,
and, in the case of this part of the globe, chang­
ing radically, plunging the comparatively small
countries of the region into a quagmire of un-
precedented acute political, social and eco-
nomic strife and transformation. The estab-
lishment of a common integration structure –
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) – fifty years ago constituted an im-
portant accomplishment for this region. Des­
pite its initial anticommunist bias which was in
accordance with the confrontational logic of
bipolarity, some researchers [Mahbu­bani and
Sng 2017, Kivimäki 2014] maintain that it has
been able to act as a catalyst for the transition
from regional conflict to regional cooperation.
Since 1999, all ten countries in the region
have been members of ASEAN. Thus, theo-
retically all prerequisites have been created for

Corresponding author:
Email: e.koldunova@inno.mgimo.ru
 47
“DIALOGUE PARTNERSHIPS” IN ASEAN'S EXTERNAL RELATIONS

an efficient discussion of problems concerning
the development of the region, since no one
regional player is excluded from the processes
of interrelationships, every one of them has the
right to be heard on a regional level and to
contribute to the agenda of the development of
the region. No supranational institutions have
been created within the Association, a deliber-
ate decision in order to avoid any infringement
on the national sovereignty of its member
states. It is common knowledge that in the ab-
sence of such supranational institutions chair-
manship in ASEAN rotates annually based on
the alphabetical order of the English names of
member states. The member state assuming the
chairmanship gets to determine the details of
the agenda of the regional cooperation for the
year ahead and, as a consequence, can steer
the cooperation in a preferable direction as far
as the existing institutional framework will al-
low. Apart from the question of including the
Association of East Timor, which is under dis-
cussion these days, no further formal expan-
sion of ASEAN is planned.
However, starting in the 1970s, so-called
“functional expansion” has been a distinctive
feature of the Association. This term, coined by
foreign researchers Khong and Nesadurai
[Khong and Nesadurai 2007: 33], encapsulates
the fact that although the Association does not
expand its membership formally, it does create
and support special institutionalised formats of
interaction (dialogue partnerships) with other
important regional and non-regional players.
Among these players are the predominant
“heavyweights” of international and regional
politics like the United States, China, Japan,
Russia, India, South Korea, Australia, Canada
and the European Union1. Some of them
(China, Japan and South Korea) have been in-
cluded in the format ASEAN+3, and they are
also part of the ASEAN format ASEAN+8, to-
gether with India, Australia, New Zealand, the
USA and Russia, all of which are also partici-
pants of the East Asian Summit (EAS). EAS has
been meeting in this format since 2010 when
Russia and the USA were invited to join in.
The existing research literature, in some
cases pointing to this interesting phenomenon
[Khong and Nesadurai 2007; Severino 2007;
Baykov 2012: 118], does not, however, provide
a comprehensive answer to the question why
ASEAN needs this complex institutional struc-
ture in its interactions with a growing number
of states which are not members of the organi-
sation and whose political and economic po-
tential significantly surpasses those of the
Association2. A  possible explanation for this
may be that ASEAN, whose main attention is
focused on regional problems and the tasks of
regional development, like no other institu-
tional segment of the world depends on the
macroregional and, in some cases, even global
context. It is no secret that small and medium-
sized countries, who are under the influence of
the structure of international relations and,
above all, the conduct of the leading powers
within the framework of international rela-
tions, do not have a lot of options and are usu-
ally confined to balancing between several
more powerful players or relying on one of
them [Walt 1987].
However, whereas in the case of other
countries or less institutionalised regional cas-
es this is often the extent of their options, in
the case of ASEAN the range of options has
been expanding significantly over the past fifty
years. Sometimes this happened thanks to the
historical experience of certain member states
of the Association, which has led to institu-
tional and normative innovations3. Specifi­
cally, the member states of ASEAN have in the

1
In this article we will not address the relations between ASEAN and Canada, Pakistan, Norway,
Switzerland and the countries of the European Union, especially Germany, with whom dialogue partnerships
have also been established.
2
This is the main difference between ASEAN and, for instance, the European Union (EU), which also
forms special relationships with external partners, for example with its closest geographical neighbours;
however, the EU surpasses most of these partners economically as well as politically.
3
An analysis of the cases of the countries of Southeast Asia would go beyond the scope of this paper.
However, it should be mentioned, that an interesting analysis of Thailand’s conduct towards the
superpowers can be found in the paper by E.A. Fomicheva [Fomicheva1991], an analysis of Myanmar/

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48
EKATERINA KOLDUNOVA

course of the past five decades gone through
several stages of interactions with external
players – from the collective „dampening“ of
the leadership ambitions of more powerful
countries concerning Southeast Asia (a phe-
nomenon that has been shrewdly observed and
analysed in detail in publications by the emi-
nent Russian researcher A.D. Bogaturov
[Boga­turov 1997, 2010]) to the creation of
tools for the collective control of asymmetric
relations, which, however, have their own
limitations. These are predominantly related
to the limited political and economic potential
of the ASEAN member states themselves as
well as to the desire or willingness of larger
players to be subject to such control not only
formally, but in practice, too.
In order to show the evolution of this con-
trol system of external partnerships, this paper
approaches the relations of ASEAN countries
with these partners during the different stages
of development of the organisation itself in
historical retrospect, analyzes the contempo-
rary status and functionality of the relations,
and examines the set of mechanisms existing
within ASEAN to influence them.
1 frontation.
ASEAN emerged in 1967 due to the efforts
of five countries – Indonesia, Malaysia,
Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines – un-
der difficult historical conditions. The process
of state-building in the modern sense of the
word had only just begun in this region. For a
number of countries, especially for Eastern
Indochina, decolonialization was a painful
process, which involved force of arms and
dragged on for three decades. At the end of
World War II and even two decades later the
idea of the countries of Southeast Asia forming
a united region in the context of international
politics seemed doubtful at the very least. The
Cambridge History of Southeast Asia expressly
emphasizes the role of external influences on
the geopolitical formation of the region, espe-
cially the decision by the USA, Great Britain
and Canada at the Quebec Conference in 1943
to create a South East Asia Command, com-
prising Burma, Malaya, Sumatra and Thailand.
A resolution by the Potsdam Conference in
1945 led to the addition of the Dutch East
Indies and Indochina south of the sixteenth
parallel [Tarling N. 1999: 258]. The capability
of these territories for regional governance and
less for influencing more powerful players
within the international system was completely
out of the question.
Directly after the beginning of the “Cold
War”, as during the period of colonialism and
during World War II, the region was the object
of the influence of bigger players. This time
these players were the USA and the USSR as
well as the People’s Republic of China (PRC),
whose position concerning the region by the
1970s had come to differ cardinally from
the  Soviet Union’s position. In the conflict
between the, figuratively speaking, “capital-
ist” and “communist” blocs, this added an-
other division along the line Vietnam-Cam­
bodia within the latter bloc. All of this result-
ed in Southeast Asia becoming one of the
most volatile regional arenas of global con-
Apart from the polarizing role played by
external players, tensions between the coun-
tries in the region did not contribute to the
stability in Southeast Asia. A case in point,
among others, is the sharp confrontation be-
tween Indonesia and Malaysia (konfrontasi),
caused by the process of creating Malaysia as
such. It lasted from 1963 to 1966 and brought
to naught attempts at organizing a regional
cooperation framework that preceeded the cre-
ation of ASEAN.
Communism was perceived by ASEAN as a
threat with external and internal dimensions.
The support for communist movements within
the founding countries of ASEAN on the part
of PRC at the time was believed to be one of
the main problems of national security. At the

Burma in the paper by K.A. Efremova [Efremova 2016]. In one of his papers, Amitav Achariya concentrates
on the national experience of the organization of the political process in Indonesia, which was adopted by
ASEAN for its practice of decision making [Acharya 2001]. A number of papers by foreign authors contain
a theoretical analysis of possible options of conduct between balancing and relying on a powerful player for
“second-tier powers” [cf., e.g., Chong 2003].

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“DIALOGUE PARTNERSHIPS” IN ASEAN'S EXTERNAL RELATIONS

time of ASEAN’s foundation the motive of op-
posing the external powers dividing Southeast
Asia, as this was understood in the capitals of
the countries of the Association, and the idea
of the development of the region were closely
intertwined, laying the foundation for the
unique conception of the “external” function
of ASEAN.
The concentrated expression of this concept
can be seen in the words of Sinnathamby
Rajaratnam, Singapore’s first minister for for-
eign affairs, about “ensuring a stable Southeast
Asia, not a balkanized Southeast Asia”4. The
1971 Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality
Declaration (ZOPFAN), adopted by ASEAN,
postulated the idea that Southeast Asia should
be a region “free from any form or manner of
interference by outside Powers”5. This is why
the principles of mutual respect for the sover-
eignty and non-interference in the internal af-
fairs of one another6 are the fundamental inter-
national principles, stated in the Treaty of
Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia from
1976, which gave ASEAN its final institutional
form as a regional organisation of cooperation.
The second principle mentioned above mer-
its special attention. Being one of the funda-
mental principles in international law, in
Southeast Asia it was intended to play a dual
role. On the one hand, it was supposed to keep
outside powers from interfering in the affairs of
Southeast Asia, at least formally. It is no coin-
cidence that over time the signing of the Treaty
of Amity and Cooperation has become the
prerequisite for the development of relations of
a dialogue partnership with ASEAN. This will
be discussed in detail later. On the other hand,
the principle of non-interference was intended
to “defend power structures (i.e. the estab-
lished illiberal, clannish capitalist regimes –
E.K.) against excessive outside attention and
to isolate internal opponents from outside
help” [Jones 2012: 97]. Thus, the countries of
ASEAN, wishing to remain independent of
outside powers while at the same time actively
looking for economic and military support
(above all American), had to demonstrate to
the citizens of their countries as well as to their
neighbours in the region the attractiveness and
political and economic viability of the chosen
road of development.
The principle of non-interference in the
internal affairs of each other had a special im-
pact on the activities of ASEAN at all stages of
the development of the Cambodian problem
associated with the Pol Pot regime’s rise to
power in Cambodia in 1975, the acute domes-
tic crisis in the country, and essentially the
genocide of his own nation. The rapidly wors-
ening relations between Cambodia and
Vietnam as well as provocations at the border,
initiated by Pol Pot, led to Vietnam’s invasion
of Cambodia in December/January 1978 and
to the proclamation of the People’s Republic
of Kampuchea [Mosyakov 2010: 391]. In re-
sponse to the actions of Vietnam, China, which
supported Cambodia, conducted a „punitive“
[Alagappa 1993: 451] invasion of the north of
Vietnam in February/March 1979. At this
point neither Vietnam nor Cambodia were for-
mal members of ASEAN. However, the
Cambodian problem led to a re-evaluation of
ASEAN’s role in the region and to a change in
the character of its interactions with outside
powers. Although the Association officially
continued to adhere to its position of non-in-
terference, the fear that the establishment of a
regime in Cambodia in 1979 that the member
states of the Association considered a puppet
of Vietnam would cause a domino effect in the
other countries of the region, actually forced
ASEAN to become an active participant in the
settlement of the problem.
On the international level, the ASEAN
countries made efforts to isolate the new Cam­
bodian regime in the United Nations Orga­

4
The Founding of ASEAN. ASEAN Web Site. [electronic source]. URL: http://asean.org/asean/about-
asean/history/ (access date: 19.07.2017).
5
Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality Declaration. November 27, 1971. [electronic source].
URL: http://www.icnl.org/research/library/files/Transnational/zone.pdf (access date: 19.07.2017).
6
Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia. February 24, 1976. ASEAN Web site. [electronic
source]. URL: http://asean.org/treaty-amity-cooperation-southeast-asia-indonesia-24-february-
1976/ (access date: 19.07.2017).

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EKATERINA KOLDUNOVA
nization (UN) and also sought to restrict its
access to international aid via the mechanisms
of the UN [Jones 2007: 527]. Furthermore,
there were discussions in the countries of
ASEAN about other ways of influencing the
situation in Eastern Indochina. In the 1980
Kuantan Declaration, Indonesia’s president
Suharto and Malaysia’s prime minister Hussein
Onn defined their conception of a “complex
political solution” of the Cambodian problem
as follows. It included the “liberation” of Viet­
nam from Chinese and Soviet influences and,
at the same time, the recognition of Vietnam’s
special interests concerning Cambodia.
Although this approach was criticised by the
Vietnamese side (to them the renunciation of
special relations with the USSR was unaccep-
table) and Thailand (due to the necessity of the
inclusion of Vietnam’s interests in neighbour-
ing Cambodia), essentially its “political and
strategic logic” continued to be active in re-
spect to the situation in the region and beyond
it [Narine 2002: 48]. In other words, ASEAN
aimed at keeping the discussion of the main
problems of the region among its members and
gradually pushing outside powers to the pe-
riphery of this process. During the following
decade ASEAN’s collective position, which
precluded the Great Powers from conducting
negotiations concerning key issues of the re-
gion with each of the Association’s members
individually, was the unique development of
this logic. This inevitably led to the “dissolu-
tion” of leadership impulses in the negotiations
process of ASEAN [Bogaturov 2010: 161].
The result of the activization of the
Association in the solution of the Cambodian
problem were international negotiations that
took into consideration the interests of ASEAN
and included Cambodian forces supported by
the Association, and the guarantee of non-in-
terference by third parties, subsequently for-
malised in UN documents, particularly in the
resolution A/RES/35/67. In a broader context,
the 1980s were the time when ASEAN began to
develop new ways of regional governance and
mechanisms neutralizing external influences.
7
A/RES/35/6. The United Nations Organization. [electronic source]. URL: http://www.un.org/
documents/ga/res/35/a35r6e.pdf (access date: 19.07.2017).
International Trends (Mezhdunarodnye protsessy). Volume 15. No. 3 (50). July-September / 2017
The end of the period of bipolarity, on one
hand, allowed ASEAN to translate into reality
a goal that had seemed unattainable before, i.e.
the unification of all ten countries in the region
within the Association notwithstanding the
differences of ideologies, political systems,
political regimes and economic orders. Viet­
nam joined ASEAN in 1995, Laos and Myan­
mar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999. However,
at the same time the communist bloc col-
lapsed, the founding countries could not count
on their special status of forward posts in the
fight against communism any longer. The clo-
sure of Soviet as well as American military
bases created fears that the resulting “power
vacuum” would entail a decrease in economic
attention to the region. The answer to this
challenge was found with the help of a new
instrument: the support of sensible competi-
tion between major external players on ASEAN
territory so that this competition could bring
ASEAN economic as well as political divi-
dends. We are referring to the idea of the “cen-
trality” of the Association for the whole com-
plex of institutional processes of the regional
cooperation. As Rodolfo Severino, one of the
former Secretaries-General of ASEAN, put it
later, the Association was supposed to become
“the core of regionalism in East Asia and the
Asia Pacific” [Severino 2007: 406].
Dialogue partnerships between ASEAN and
the key players in the Asia Pacific Rim and
beyond, the format ASEAN+3, the ASEAN
Regional Forum (ARF), created in 1994, the
Asia-Europe Meetings (ASEM), established in
1996, and East-Asia Summit (EAS), which
commenced its activities in 2005, have all be-
come inextricable components of the regional
institutional network with ASEAN at its center.
The forum of the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC), although not formally
related to ASEAN, however accepted the nor-
mative culture of ASEAN, which is known as
the „ASEAN Way“ in literature and the profes-
sional language of diplomacy and is character-
ized by the rejection of rigid forms of institu-
tionalization and of the creation of suprana-

“DIALOGUE PARTNERSHIPS” IN ASEAN'S EXTERNAL RELATIONS
tional institutional bodies, by decision-making
by way of consultations and consensus, and by
moving towards a common goal at a pace that is
comfortable for each of the participants, in-
cluding those which are not the most advanced.
The idea of establishing special relations
with extraregional partners which are the most
important for ASEAN has its roots in the
1970s. In 1974, a dialogue was established be-
tween the Association and Australia, and in
1977 dialogue was officially established be-
tween ASEAN and the European Economic
Community (subsequently the EU), the USA
and Japan.
In the 1990s, ASEAN established dialogue
partnerships not only with Russia, but also
with China, South Korea, and India. In 1997
the ASEAN+3 format (China, Japan, South
Korea) was set up, contributing to the fact that
smaller and medium-sized countries of ASEAN
essentially took on the leadership function in
the process of institutionalising regional eco-
nomic cooperation on a macro-regional scale.
Russian researcher N.P. Maletin found an apt
description for the inclusion of economically
more powerful Japan, South Korea and China
in the integrational initiative of ASEAN.
He  remarked that “the tail was wagging the
dog” [Maletin 2009: 53].
For better or worse, at the close of the 20th
century ASEAN had at its disposal a large and
varied instrumentarium of influence over the
macro-regional processes, and its status, at
least its formal status, was that of an equal
partner of the most powerful international
players. At the same time the Association's ar-
senal also included not only diverse regulatory
ways of “dampening” the leadership ambitions
concerning the region, but also certain meth-
ods of influencing considerably more influen-
tial partners. The following chapter will exam-
ine these methods more closely.
2 necessary for security reasons as well as for
The Association approached the middle of
the first decade of the new century with a clear
understanding of new requirements which the
most important external partners of ASEAN
were supposed to meet. The controversy about
them manifested especially clearly at the mo-
International Trends (Mezhdunarodnye protsessy). Volume 15. No. 3 (50). July-September / 2017
51
ment of the discussion of the question which of
these partners should be admitted to EAS and
whether Russia should be invited. We would
like to point out that in 2005, when the EAS
inaugural summit took place in Kuala Lumpur,
Russian president V. Putin was present at the
invitation of Abdullah Badawi, who was Prime
Minister of Malaysia at the time. Russia ex-
pressed the desire and willingness to join EAS,
but this was to happen only five years later.
Limiting its macro-regional economic am-
bitions through the format ASEAN+3 men-
tioned above, but not having decided definitely
yet which set of external partners would be
ideal for the macro-regional political platform
with ASEAN at its core, the countries of the
Association in 2005 refrained from inviting
Russia and the USA (incidentally, the United
States did not seriously consider the idea of
joining EAS at the time). For some time, it was
believed in the countries of ASEAN that an ac-
tive involvement of the three regional super-
powers China, Japan and India in the affairs of
Southeast Asia were principally sufficient to
avoid the emergence of a “power vacuum” in
the region [Acharya 2001: 168].
Still, ASEAN developed a set of criteria for
the invitation of additional participants in
EAS. Among these criteria are a dialogue part-
nership with ASEAN, the signing of the Treaty
of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia
and a significant level of economic cooperation
with the Association. It seemed that compli-
ance with these criteria should be sufficient for
competition over Southeast Asia to self-per-
petuate at a level providing the region with ex-
ternal impulses for development. At the same
time the necessary principles of international
conduct would be adhered to by all.
At that point, the function of certain dia-
logue partnerships had also become more or
less transparent. An active involvement of the
USA in the affairs of the region was considered
economic reasons, and periods of relative
“withdrawal” of the USA from the region (for
instance, under G.W. Bush or in a situation of
uncertainty concerning the policy of the Trump
administration) caused alarmist sentiments
[Tay 2010]. The rise of China seemed a favour-
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EKATERINA KOLDUNOVA

able economic chance, and the PRC itself,
which at the beginning of the 1990s had com-
pletely given up its support of communist
movements in the countries of Southeast Asia
and was intent on establishing a dialogue with
ASEAN, seemed a partner, the relations with
whom could be guided in a direction which was
desirable for the Association. Despite its rela-
tively weak economy, Japan retained its funda-
mental presence in the region, due to, among
other things, the moving of its production fa-
cilities to Southeast Asia and investing actively
in Southeast Asia’s economy. The European
Union has become one of the key foreign mar-
kets for those countries in the region whose
economic systems are export-oriented, as well
as a key investor. The other partners were nec-
essary for the “densification” (term coined by
A.D. Bogaturov) of the regional political (as
was the case with Russia) or economic space.
ASEAN managed to keep this difficult
structure under control in the following man-
ner. Thanks to the creation of an extensive
network of regional institutions the Association
developed in a desirable direction the process
of educating outside partners of the culture of
regional dialogue and regional socialization8.
This logic made the mere fact of participation,
the submission to the annual metronome of
summits and meetings albeit without concrete
results seem like a value in itself. The latter
characteristic was especially clearly demon-
strated by the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF),
which because of its multitudinous and hetero-
geneous make-up (27 participants, including
the EU and DPRK), of its decision-making
exclusively by consensus and because of its
rather abstract goals (a transition to preventive
diplomacy some time in the future) ended up
becoming the object of constant criticism.
The special normative culture of ASEAN,
earlier described as the „ASEAN Way“ has also
become an important tool of leverage over out-
side partners. They were required to adhere to
the norms and principles adopted by the
8
An interesting analysis of this process can be found e.g. in the book by the Japanese researcher Hiro
Katsumata [Katsumata 2009: 102-112].
9
We would like to point out, however, the controversialness of the idea of an expansion of ASEAN’s
normative culture to the whole Asia Pacific Rim. The main arguments in the discussion about this can be
found e.g. in the research of Amitav Acharya [Acharya 2001: 166-167].
Association, and those whose conduct for
some reason or other was in discord with the
generally accepted practices of conduct of
ASEAN9, were subjected to various forms of
informal censure [Katsumata 2009: 109].
Additionally, the members of ASEAN have
constantly supported the idea of ASEAN’s
special, central role, a recurrent theme in all
formal documents of the Association and re-
lated regional institutions. At the same time,
however, on an informal and expert level one
could often hear reflections about the absence
of a fixed leadership in the region, about ad
hoc leadership, meaning that any state, large
or small, can take on the role of the leader (Tay
2001: 214-215). Thus the Association attempt-
ed to limit leadership ambitions of larger play-
ers, while in fact attempting to establish a hier-
archy of layers of regionalism with ASEAN at
the top [Bae 2015: 248]. The main arguments
supporting this position were that ASEAN was
the only platform for dialogue, acceptable for
all, and that „small and medium-sized powers
would hardly abuse their leadership” [Pham
2015: 82]. Therefore only the continued posi-
tion of ASEAN “at the helm” of regional pro-
cesses could guarantee a genuinely conflict-
free development of East Asia and the Asia
Pacific Rim.
With ASEAN’s recent adoption of several
important documents – the General Plan for
the build-up of ASEAN interrelationships in
2010 and plans for the creation of three com-
munities, (in the spheres of policy and securi-
ty, economy, and in the socio-cultural sphe­
re) – the Association’s dialogue partners have
begun to be assessed formally as well as infor-
mally according to their contribution to the
object of  strengthening the relations within
Southeast Asia itself and according to how
closely they are connected with ASEAN. This
type of assessment was intended to spur on
competition for the realization of infrastruc-
ture projects and to boost the interest of inves-
tors in the region.

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“DIALOGUE PARTNERSHIPS” IN ASEAN'S EXTERNAL RELATIONS
However, the situation began to change at
the turn of the second decade of the new cen-
tury. By that point, a marked economic
strengthening of China had taken place, whose
regional role took on an ambivalent hue in the
eyes of the political elites of the countries in
the region. Since 2011, there has been a height-
ened territorial controversy concerning the is-
lands in the South China Sea, which are
claimed not only by the PRC but also by
Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia,
Malaysia, and Brunei. This has only amplified
the fears of the small and medium-sized coun-
tries in the region. The polarization of
Southeast Asia was exacerbated also by the
policy of ‘pivot to Asia’, initiated in 2011 by
the previous US-administration which hoped
to limit the increase in China’s influence
through political, strategic and economic
means. At the time when Chinese-American
tensions loomed large in the power balance of
the region, the Association’s limitations also
revealed themselves powerfully.
Under the Obama Administration (2008-
2016) and indeed under the following adminis-
tration, the USA continued to formally recog-
nize the „central“ role of ASEAN while de
facto ignoring regional institutions in the most
important issues. In the discussion of security
issues, depending on the position of any given
administration, they are allotted a secondary
role at best. Instead the American idea that it is
necessary to turn the bilateral military alliances
with the USA into a multilateral network has
been circulating more and more actively10.
At the turn of the century, China sought to
strengthen its relations with ASEAN in every
way possible, trying to become a part of all re-
gional structures related to the Association. At
the same time it was the only country which in
2002 managed to conclude an agreement es-
tablishing a free-trade zone with ASEAN as a
unified organisation instead of getting stuck in
bilateral negotiations with each of the member
countries of the Association seperately, as it
happened to Japan, for instance. The unprec-
10
Remarks by Secretary Carter and Q&A at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore. June 5, 2016.
[electronic source]. URL: https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/
791472/remarks-by-secretary-carter-and-qa-at-the-shangri-la-dialogue-singapore/ (access date:
19.07.2017).
International Trends (Mezhdunarodnye protsessy). Volume 15. No. 3 (50). July-September / 2017
53
edented economic growth of China, however,
resulted in a situation where the PRC’s voice
acquired more authority in foreign policy as
well. The culmination of this process was the
„Belt and Road Initiative“ advanced in 2013.
One of its ‘sections’, the „Maritime Silk Road“
concerns ASEAN directly, but at the same time
its realization would mean a “drawing” of
ASEAN into China’s orbit rather than the
other way round, the way that ASEAN had
been so careful to steer all the previous years.
The escalation of the conflict concerning
the islands in the South China Sea also put the
spotlight on the contradiction of two „norma-
tive systems“ – the „ASEAN Way“ mentioned
above and China’s understanding of proper,
harmonious relations. This contradiction can
be traced, e.g. in the description of the se-
quence of international activities China would
perceive as being in accordance with the classic
Confucian conception of a “harmonious
world”. They are described in well-known Tai­
wa­nese author Shih Chih-yu’s book and can
well be projected onto the situation concerning
the territorial conflicts between China and the
member countries of ASEAN [Shih 2013].
In theory, should an acute international
problem arise, Beijing could settle for a com-
promise unilaterally, even on an issue concern-
ing its core interests, just to demonstrate the
harmony of its relations with its partners. We
would like to remind the reader that the catego-
ry of China’s “core interests” includes Taiwan,
Tibet and Xinjiang. Before their reintegration
into mainland China, Hongkong and Macao
were also considered “core interests”. In 2013-
2015, the time of an escalation of the territorial
conflict concerning the islands in the South
China Sea, in the news circulated, then tailed
off, reports that these islands, too, were now
considered “core interests” by China. The re-
verse motion on the issue could be considered a
manifestation of compromise of sorts by Beijing.
However, compromise reached by unilateral
actions, in China's understanding, places a
moral obligation on the opposing side not to
54
EKATERINA KOLDUNOVA
undertake further conflictual steps. The prob-
lem, however, is that the opposing side (the
countries of ASEAN) may fail to realize this
and continue to insist on a resolution of the
conflict. What follows is what is deemed by
China a „loss of face“ (while in fact preserving
its strong positions in the region), as was the
case with the decision by the Hague Tribunal,
which in 2016 ruled that China’s territorial
claims, based on a historical approach were il-
legal. As a result, China feels compelled to take
an even tougher stand. The result of this devel-
opment of events is a spiral of conflict.
At a time of rising regional antagonisms,
Russia could provide support to the idea of
ASEAN’s centrality. Russia shares common
strategic interests with the Association, mani-
festing in an objective interest in the establish-
ment of a polycentric world and regional order.
Russia’s assets are its policy “Turn to the East”
which has gradually been acquring clearer con-
tours, and its dedication to establishing pro-
ductive, worthwhile relations with the Asso­cia­
tion, which are, however, going hand in hand
with the unwillingness to compete for the eco-
nomic and political attention of the Association
for the sole purpose of balancing the activities
of China and the USA in a way that is con-
venient for ASEAN. This might partially ac-
count for Russian senior administration offi-
cials’ unwillingness to visit Eastasian summits,
to which Russia was invited in 2010, after all,
and the frustrated reaction of all ASEAN
member-states without exception which is ex-
pressed in the argumentation of Bilahari
Kausikan, one of the heavyweights of Singa­
porean diplomacy, claiming that Russia has not
figured out yet how to find its place in the re-
gion and in the world [Kausikan 2016: 28-40].
***
“Functional expansion” is an important
institutional innovation, distinguishing
ASEAN from many other organizations and, at
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