00:18.2
that we might be thinking about
00:19.8
that you addressed a little bit, so
00:21.2
let me begin with the role of ASEAN.
00:24.3
You know, you said the Philippines is an outlier
00:26.3
and ASEAN has trouble having
00:27.8
national kind of unity among itself.
00:30.0
The ASEAN countries are often at loggerheads,
00:32.0
particularly over countries like Myanmar,
00:34.8
you know, military dictatorship,
00:36.5
and so on. Do you think ASEAN
00:38.2
has a role to play here in
00:40.1
countering China in some way,
00:42.3
given that many of the ASEAN members
00:44.2
themselves have differing foreign policies
00:46.3
like Vietnam, which is much friendlier
00:48.2
with China than the Philippines is currently,
00:50.1
at least. So is there a role
00:52.3
for, because after all, ASEAN was created in 1967
00:55.7
trying to counter communism
00:57.8
and now it's kind of a different communism.
00:59.9
It's not the communism of
01:00.9
North Korea or North Vietnam.
01:04.4
It's the communism of China, but in this case
01:06.2
it's more than communism. It's really
01:07.6
superpower politics. So does
01:09.9
ASEAN have a role here?
01:12.6
Absolutely, ASEAN has a role here.
01:15.8
I think I'm one of the
01:19.6
ASEAN aficionados in the Philippines
01:22.2
because to be honest, whenever I'm in a meeting
01:24.2
with other Philippine experts,
01:27.8
I hear is, ASEAN is useless,
01:30.2
ASEAN is an enabler of China,
01:32.3
ASEAN is an apologist of China.
01:35.0
In fact, some of the leaders
01:36.1
in the region are openly coming out and saying,
01:37.9
oh, don't demonize China, they seem to be
01:39.7
lawyering for China. But if you look at the history of ASEAN,
01:42.5
it is not true that ASEAN is
01:43.8
non-interventionist. It's just not true. We know during
01:45.7
the Cold War period, when it was a much more tight-knit
01:47.8
group of similar-minded
01:50.1
leaders, unfortunately, back then
01:51.6
dictatorial leaders, they actually were
01:53.7
very aggressively intervening in regional affairs,
01:55.7
including what was happening in Cambodia. We know that for
01:57.8
a long time, ASEAN leaders actually supported
01:59.6
the Pol Pot regime in the United Nations
02:01.8
when Vietnam invaded and occupied
02:03.9
Cambodia. And then later on, there was a moment of
02:05.8
redemption when they pressured Hun Sen
02:07.5
and some of the domestic factions in
02:09.7
Cambodia to move towards pluralistic politics
02:14.8
unsaid precondition for joining
02:17.9
ASEAN. That's why
02:21.8
of the opposition of Cambodia, when they go
02:23.8
to Indonesia, they always say, thank you for the contribution
02:25.9
you made in the 1990s to push us to the front.
02:31.6
If you look at ASEAN also, we have a long
02:33.8
history of essentially doing it the
02:35.8
Frank Sinatra way. If we cannot agree
02:38.0
100%, we cannot have a
02:41.9
we can do it minilaterally
02:43.5
in an ad hoc, flexible
02:45.6
way, which doesn't require unanimity.
02:48.2
And I think the most constructive
02:49.9
example is during
02:51.7
the Istimor situation. As you know, obviously
02:53.8
Istimor is a sensitive issue to Indonesia.
02:56.6
You couldn't expect the
02:58.8
positive contribution by Indonesia at
03:01.8
some point because of the history, the bitterness.
03:04.0
So what happened was Philippines, Malaysia,
03:05.9
Thailand, they directly contributed
03:07.8
to peacekeeping operations and
03:09.8
institution building that helped Istimor
03:11.8
to successfully transition
03:13.3
to a more or less robust democracy
03:15.8
towards the end of 1990s
03:17.6
and the early 2000s. So there are many examples
03:21.5
ASEAN countries came
03:23.7
together, intervened in regional affairs,
03:25.7
but in a constructive manner. I would
03:27.6
also add the Philippines' decision
03:29.6
to take China to international court. That was not
03:31.6
supported by any country at this officially,
03:33.7
as far as I know. But in the end,
03:35.8
after the Philippines' unilateral
03:37.4
decision, because this was not done in consultation,
03:39.9
because no one was going to support it, at least
03:41.6
publicly, with the slight exception of
03:43.7
Vietnam, which you can have a discussion about.
03:46.7
But in the end, when
03:47.6
we won the arbitration case, guess what?
03:50.1
All of our neighbors are using it
03:51.6
for protecting their own interest.
03:53.7
So the Malaysians, for instance, in 2019,
03:58.7
formalization of their
04:01.1
extended continental shelf claim
04:03.1
in certain parts of the South China Sea.
04:05.5
And they invoked the Philippine Arbitration Award.
04:07.4
When there was a little bit of pushback
04:09.3
from China during the Maatir era,
04:12.0
their foreign minister
04:14.8
now we have an option of also taking it to international court.
04:17.8
The Indonesian, which are
04:19.1
not directly involved in the South China Sea dispute,
04:21.6
but are now involved because
04:23.2
the tip of China's nine-dash line is so vague,
04:25.6
it's not going to be able to
04:26.5
It's overlapping with their North Natuna Sea.
04:27.9
They are also invoking on-clause
04:29.7
in our arbitration case.
04:31.3
And obviously Vietnam, which is the most important case.
04:34.5
So if you look at Vietnam,
04:36.7
my understanding is
04:38.1
they led us on a little bit.
04:43.1
Because honestly,
04:44.1
when we filed our arbitration case in 2013,
04:46.3
for the next two to three years,
04:47.3
we kept on going to Vietnam, right?
04:49.0
Getting invitations to talk about South China Sea.
04:50.9
And I think some of us got an impression that Vietnam might join us
04:53.8
or file a parallel case.
04:55.6
Technically speaking,
04:57.3
they never did that.
04:58.9
But the Vietnamese essentially took the outcome,
05:01.9
supported it, more or less,
05:03.7
diplomatically and officially.
05:05.7
And they also tend to always invoke
05:08.3
that arbitration case to threaten China
05:10.3
whenever China pushes the envelope
05:15.2
our decision not to consult ASEAN
05:17.3
and to do what we felt was the right thing
05:20.7
ended up being the right thing also
05:22.2
for the rest of ASEAN.
05:23.2
Giving leverage to Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia,
05:25.6
in ways that they would not have had otherwise, right?
05:29.3
So that's why it's a complicated picture.
05:31.5
And the other thing about ASEAN is that
05:33.0
the ASEAN of nowadays is very different
05:35.5
from ASEAN of the Cold War era
05:37.6
or even ASEAN of 2010s.
05:39.4
So I'll give you an example.
05:42.8
when Indonesia was the ASEAN chairman,
05:44.9
Thailand and Cambodia almost came to blows
05:46.7
over that holy temple on their border.
05:50.1
And Indonesia stepped in
05:51.5
and encouraged the two countries
05:52.6
to take their case to the International Court of Justice,
05:54.4
if I'm not mistaken.
05:57.1
you could say that's a form of intervention
05:58.6
or shuttle diplomacy.
06:01.4
when Cambodia under Hun Sen
06:02.9
tried to block any discussion of the South China Sea,
06:05.6
this is shortly after the Scarborough crisis,
06:08.9
Marty Netaragawa,
06:10.2
the great foreign minister of Indonesia,
06:12.6
went across the region
06:13.5
and made sure that under the next chairman,
06:16.2
which was Brunei,
06:18.3
this will not happen again.
06:20.0
That we'll never give a prerogative to a country
06:22.0
to block a regional issue
06:24.6
from being even discussed.
06:25.5
Because that created very, very ugly exchanges
06:28.5
between the late President Aquino and Hun Sen.
06:30.6
If you were there in the November summit in 2012,
06:33.0
they were going at it.
06:33.9
It was really, really bad.
06:35.3
And there were some people in the Philippines
06:37.2
we have to pull out from ASEAN.
06:38.3
This is a useless organization.
06:39.5
So what I'm saying is,
06:41.9
it's not true that ASEAN always operates on consensus.
06:46.5
The problem is that nowadays,
06:48.0
our understanding of consensus is unanimity.
06:52.0
it's impossible to get unanimity
06:53.7
on any sensitive issue,
06:55.1
whether it's Myanmar
06:56.1
or it's South China Sea,
06:58.2
because of the extreme diversity
06:59.6
of the 10 member states.
07:01.0
That's why we know behind the scenes.
07:03.1
People like Lee Kuan Yew,
07:04.3
this is in Wikileaks, right?
07:05.4
I wrote something about that.
07:07.3
Said that the moment we accepted the Cambodians
07:09.5
into the regional organization,
07:11.3
you know, we pushed ourselves back for 20 years, right?
07:14.2
Kosikan Bilahari,
07:15.5
the great Singaporean diplomat,
07:18.4
he got into trouble with Cambodia
07:19.6
by openly saying,
07:20.4
maybe we should expel these guys, right?
07:22.9
Thankfully, that worked
07:23.8
because Cambodia behaved,
07:25.1
I mean, I don't mean it in a patronizing way.
07:27.5
I mean it on the South China Sea issue.
07:28.9
They didn't do anything crazy
07:29.8
on the South China Sea issue.
07:31.4
But that's the thing.
07:33.3
Unlike the European Union,
07:34.6
there's no Copenhagen criteria.
07:36.2
You know, the idea of being a member of South Asia
07:38.6
is just geographic, cultural,
07:40.5
and to a certain degree, psychological.
07:42.2
So when you have an extremely diverse organization
07:45.5
with very different threat perceptions,
07:48.2
very different webs of interdependence with China, right?
07:51.3
I mean, if you're Laos or Cambodia,
07:53.0
you are so dependent on China
07:54.7
in ways the Philippines is not, right?
07:56.9
So let me take that question.
07:59.3
you've given me some examples,
08:01.2
given us examples
08:01.9
where ASEAN was able to intervene.
08:04.1
Intervening in domestic affairs
08:05.6
and dealing with Thailand disputes
08:07.9
is very different
08:08.6
than creating a counter-alliance against China.
08:11.7
ASEAN working together
08:12.7
given that, in many ways,
08:14.6
Cambodia and Laos
08:15.6
are in the pockets of the Chinese, right?
08:17.2
So, in that sense,
08:18.7
even though I'm a big ASEAN fan too,
08:20.4
I don't see what ASEAN can do
08:21.9
from a military perspective
08:23.6
or a joint perspective.
08:24.7
And you've given a few examples.
08:26.9
Okay, they're using the Philippines case.
08:28.9
But the Philippines shot itself
08:29.9
in the foot with Duterte
08:30.8
by not even promoting the case.
08:32.8
So, Philippines have lost
08:34.0
a lot of credibility
08:34.7
in my view as well, right?
08:35.9
So the question is,
08:37.0
is it really possible for ASEAN
08:38.5
to do some of the things
08:39.4
maybe the Americans
08:41.4
or someone else would like to do,
08:42.6
which is actually serve
08:43.4
as a counterweight to China?
08:45.7
So there are three levels to that.
08:47.8
you have certain member states
08:49.2
which see the Philippines
08:51.0
as the ASEAN provocateur
08:52.1
and America as a kind of
08:53.7
a meddling external.
08:54.7
And they essentially buy
08:56.5
the Chinese narrative on this.
08:57.8
We know which countries these are.
08:59.2
I don't want to get
08:59.7
into diplomatic trouble.
09:01.3
And then you have
09:03.2
because I gave a talk
09:03.9
in ASEAN Summit last year.
09:05.3
We had interesting discussion.
09:06.6
The other perspective is this
09:07.8
and I think some of our
09:08.8
Indonesian friends
09:09.6
tend to be very much
09:12.1
invested in this argument.
09:13.3
The idea is this.
09:15.1
ASEAN is just too weak
09:16.4
at this point in time
09:17.3
to stand up to China.
09:19.5
And at the same time,
09:21.0
we're doing good economically.
09:25.8
We're growing faster from China.
09:27.6
And then by 2030, 2035,
09:29.3
we're going to sit down with China
09:30.5
on a much better terms
09:33.0
So let's just do nothing crazy now.
09:35.4
Focus on economic growth.
09:36.8
And it's not a totally crazy argument
09:38.3
because for the first time
09:39.9
Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines
09:40.9
are all growing faster than China.
09:43.3
Indonesia is already going to be
09:44.3
a multi-trillion dollar economy.
09:45.9
Philippines and Vietnam.
09:49.8
let's be the Deng Xiaoping's.
09:53.2
or whatever little claws you have.
09:54.7
And in 10 to 15 years,
09:56.3
we'll be strong enough
09:57.1
to deal with China
09:59.5
There comes the third group.
10:00.8
The third group is
10:04.0
except anything could happen
10:05.2
in the next days and months.
10:08.1
Forget about the next 10 years.
10:11.0
that we can keep things
10:12.8
for the next 10 to 15 years?
10:14.5
I mean, I just talked about
10:15.3
the second Thomas Scholes situation
10:17.2
which is extremely explosive.
10:19.2
And that third school of thought
10:21.0
is for mini-lateral cooperation
10:24.7
So the most natural one
10:26.9
the Philippines and Vietnam.
10:29.7
we can have a long conversation
10:31.3
because Vietnam is also going
10:32.5
through its own political transition
10:34.5
They're essentially purging
10:36.0
and the reformist figures.
10:37.6
I mean, liberals with Vietnam standards
10:40.0
kind of KGB style guys
10:43.7
even more paranoid
10:44.4
about Western influence
10:45.5
in their country.
10:46.1
But nevertheless,
10:47.2
when Marcus visited Vietnam
10:48.5
earlier this year,
10:50.0
he got a very good reception
10:51.9
and both sides agreed
10:54.2
maritime agreements
10:55.2
including potentially
10:56.1
maritime security agreements
10:58.4
there's a certain degree
10:59.5
of security cooperation there.
11:01.8
Now, no one is under
11:03.9
that Vietnam and Philippines
11:05.0
alone can hold China
11:09.4
or three countries,
11:10.1
let's say maybe Indonesia
11:11.1
and their more assertive
11:12.6
that's still up in the air
11:13.5
because Prabowo could be also
11:14.5
like a Duterte, Toscan.
11:18.3
they work with other
11:19.2
trilaterals like AUKUS,
11:20.4
then they can collectively
11:21.5
have a different kind of
11:22.5
counterbalancing effect.
11:24.9
school of thought.
11:26.0
So, there are multiple
11:27.7
And I think the problem
11:28.3
with ASEAN is that
11:30.0
just one school of thought
11:31.6
there are multiple
11:32.4
schools of thought
11:33.1
simultaneously looking it out.
11:35.0
So, maybe you could say
11:36.4
Philippine domestic politics
11:38.5
on which I'm not an expert.
11:39.5
But it seems that you have
11:43.2
and then there's some
11:44.8
and they say they get along
11:46.0
but on the other hand,
11:46.8
she's being criticized
11:48.1
by her own brother.
11:49.7
So, is it a sustainable
11:51.1
domestic coalition
11:55.5
the United States
11:56.2
and countering China
11:57.0
which is what you're advocating
11:57.9
which I'm actually for.
11:59.2
So, I'm not going to
11:59.8
criticize that strategy
12:00.8
but is it domestically
12:02.2
politically feasible
12:03.3
given that you have
12:06.3
from the previous
12:07.6
and then you have
12:14.3
It's a pretty weird
12:15.3
coalition if you think about it.
12:17.3
people are free to
12:18.0
listen to our podcast
12:18.8
series because we
12:19.6
discuss this every day.
12:20.7
No, but kidding aside,
12:29.8
the daughter of the
12:30.5
former president,
12:33.3
of multi-alignment
12:38.3
Marcos administration
12:39.9
the daughter of my father,
12:41.2
the sister of my brother
12:43.0
bashing the president
12:45.1
things are going to get
12:45.9
more and more tricky
12:46.9
as we move forward
12:48.5
because as the tensions
12:51.7
there's a loyalty
12:54.8
in the Philippines
12:56.0
is Sarah Duterte,
12:58.0
the vice president
12:58.9
who has everything
13:04.9
on the South China Sea
13:07.2
And the only time
13:09.1
making any statement
13:14.4
on the anniversary
13:20.6
or something like that.
13:22.2
you can ask my Mandarin
13:23.1
speaking friends,
13:24.0
how good her Chinese was.
13:25.7
the meme nowadays is,
13:27.1
what is Sarah Duterte's comment?
13:28.5
And then they get
13:29.0
clip of her Mandarin
13:31.5
I think it's becoming
13:32.6
more and more difficult
13:33.5
for Sarah Duterte
13:34.4
to be that kind of
13:35.6
a multi-aligned figure.
13:37.2
And I think she's being
13:37.9
more pulled and pulled
13:38.8
to the side of her father.
13:39.9
And as I understand,
13:41.8
seeking to visit China again
13:44.0
a special friend of China.
13:46.8
with Henry Kissinger.
13:49.7
he's hoping to go back
13:51.5
And they're just,
13:52.6
unabashed about it.
13:54.5
U.S. is the empire.
13:59.3
nationalist groups
14:03.5
they were kind of enemies.
14:04.6
suddenly you have
14:05.7
strange bedfellows
14:08.2
happening in the Philippines
14:10.5
the center of gravity
14:14.0
are critical of China
14:14.9
and want us to have
