ASEAN’s Indo-Pacific Dilemma: Why Myanmar’s Crisis Cannot Be Ignored
Four years after the coup, Myanmar has transformed from a domestic political battlefield between the Myanmar Junta and the democracy-led bloc into what Amitav Acharya called a ‘tragic nation’. This is due to the normalization of systematic mass killings and the surging number of political prisoners, at around 13,000 resistors in overcrowded detention centres in Myanmar.
Not only does it make the country look paralyzed, but it also makes ASEAN, for the first time in a while, look dysfunctional. Although its ability to offer a direct mechanism for conflict resolution is repeatedly under question, ASEAN’s convening power for peaceful reconciliations among ASEAN member states through the ‘ASEAN way’ (informal dialogues and norm exercises) proved to have passed the test of time as exemplified in the conflict of territorial delimitation in intra-ASEAN (i.e., Indonesia vis a vis Vietnam) and the infamous informal workshop in managing territorial disputes in the South China Sea between China and Southeast Asia claimants that became the key milestone of its preventive diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific.
ASEAN and Southeast Asian nations have been relatively quiet about Myanmar at multilateral and bilateral levels. All eyes are pointing to the rise of Trump and the peaceful rise of China as the mood starts looming to anticipate external projection rather than fixing fractured cohesion. Misplacing priorities remains an issue that prevents the regional bloc from transforming from mere conflict management to a full-fledged conflict resolution-minded organization. The ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) has likely become the most celebrated ASEAN projection to the outside world after the passing of the Five Points Consensus (5PC) towards Myanmar and the Code of Conduct (CoC), the ASEAN-led dialogue mechanism with China.
While paying great attention to the blue economy and maritime security, issues of internal stability are starkly missing. Despite grassroots voices becoming relatively shadowed by external noises, ASEAN elites remain vocal to Junta leadership, particularly from the human rights hierarchy, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). Former Indonesia’s representative and chair to AICHR, Wahyuningrum, expressed that ASEAN needs to exercise the Troika Plus Mechanism towards Myanmar by suspending the Junta representation in ASEAN processes. This could emphasize the bloc’s stance against the current administration and ensure that ASEAN’s ambiguous days are over.
This article argues that Trump 2.0 is a bold marker for internal reconciliation in Southeast Asia and that its Indo-Pacific vision can no longer be reactionary but must project peace and stability to the outside world by being responsive to internal affairs while being decisive to geopolitical changes. This will not only expedite the ASEAN community-building vision into reality but also reshape its geostrategic imaginary in the Indo-Pacific as a stable and peaceful regional order.