ANALYSIS: ASEAN to Hold First Joint Military Drills to Counter China Threat

Yudo Margono (C), Commander of the Indonesian National Armed Forces, poses with ASEAN chief commanders for a group photo during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Chiefs of Defence Force Meeting (ACDFM) in Nusa Dua, on Indonesia's resort island of Bali, on June 7, 2023. Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP via Getty Images

News Analysis

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will conduct its first joint military exercises in the South China Sea in September. The move indicates that ASEAN is joining other countries pushing back against communist China’s hegemonic ambitions.

Indonesia, the rotating president country of ASEAN, made the announcement on June 8. In addition to the 10 member states, participants will include the observer country East Timor (Timor-Leste).

The ASEAN members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma (Myanmar), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Admiral Yudo Margono, Indonesia’s military commander, confirmed ASEAN’s joint military exercises. He told Indonesia state news agency Antara on June 8 that the move aims to strengthen the “ASEAN centrality,” Reuters reported.

Indonesian military spokesman Julius Widjojono said the exercise is related to the “high risk of disaster in Asia, especially Southeast Asia.”

At the 20th ASEAN Chiefs of Defence Forces Meeting convened in Bali on June 7, defense force commanders approved a document establishing the ASEAN Military Intelligence Community (AMIC). They decided to meet again in the next few months to discuss the details of AMIC in Vietnam.

Observers say ASEAN members seek to extend joint operations to the military field from the political and economic spheres. ASEAN has long maintained a restrained and tolerant attitude toward the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) aggressive actions in Southeast Asia.

The ASEAN Summit will also be held in Indonesia in September, and one of the main topics is the South China Sea.

South China Sea: A Disputed Area

The joint exercise site agreed upon by ASEAN military chiefs is in the North Natuna Sea, the southernmost part of the South China Sea, a disputed area that Indonesia insists is its exclusive economic zone. The Chinese regime claims the area as part of its territory—a claim the United States says has no legal basis.

In recent years, Indonesian vessels had conflicts with the Chinese fishing ships off the northern Natuna islands.

The first-ever joint military exercise would showcase ASEAN’s determination to defend its sovereignty in the South China Sea. Indonesia, which plays the leading role in the ASEAN meeting, is taking the opportunity to demonstrate against CCP.

It’s worth noting that ASEAN members passed a joined military exercise plan in a shorter time than expected. It’s usually challenging for the 10 Asian countries to reach a consensus due to different interests and historical factors, according to Luo Qingsheng, the executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Taiwan.

Faced with the growing threat from the CCP regime, ASEAN countries are more willing to adopt an integrated attitude to exert their military influence in the Indo-Pacific region, Luo told the Chinese language edition of Voice of America on June 11.

To avoid upsetting Beijing, the location of the military drills was carefully selected. It is a “low-disputed area,” said Luo, citing that there is no dispute over the sovereignty of the northern Natuna islands. “Technically speaking, it is only a question of the distribution of maritime rights in economic waters [of North Natuna Sea],” he said.

Therefore, according to Luo, the CCP may not be happy with ASEAN’s military move but can only accept it under the pressure of the U.S.-China competition.

ASEAN’s Military Partnership With US, India

ASEAN participated in its first military exercise with U.S. naval forces in September 2019.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) sits next to Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi during a meeting with foreign ministers of the ASEAN nations on the sidelines of the 76th U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 23, 2021. Betancur/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

The 14th ASEAN-U.S. Joint Cooperation Committee was held in Jakarta, Indonesia, on May 17, where both sides renewed their commitment to making the comprehensive strategic partnership more meaningful, substantive, and mutually beneficial.

ASEAN enhanced cooperation with India in military security, with the first joint exercise in May in the South China Sea, involving other countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei.

In the early 1990s, India completed joint naval exercises with Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, and opened the Blair military port to the naval attachés from Southeast Asian countries. In 2002, ASEAN and India opened the 10+1 Sessions, and India subsequently joined the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia.

Chinese Aggression

China has been interacting frequently with neighboring countries.

On June 12, military attachés and spouses from 51 countries were invited to visit relevant military units in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province and receive briefings on the Belt and Road construction by officials from the Central Theater Command of the Chinese military, according Radio Free Asia.

The Belt and Road Initiative is the CCP’s global expansion strategy involving the development of infrastructure projects with other countries.

In late May, China organized a six-party military working group with Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam for the first round of consultations on the multi-national joint exercise in Guangzhou. In mid-May, the Chinese navy dispatched its Qijiquang ship to visit Vietnam, Thailand, Brunei, and the Philippines.

At the same time, tensions between China and other southeastern Asian countries intensified.

Beijing claims much of the South China Sea as its own territory under its so-called nine-dash line. The Hague Tribunal ruled in favor of legal action taken by the Philippines in 2016. Still, the ruling did not see the Chinese regime change its behavior, with Chinese vessels repeatedly intruding into the Philippines’ maritime zones.

In May, Chinese and Philippine authorities began setting up buoys in the waters around disputed islands and reefs in the South China Sea to assert their sovereignty.

Fishermen from Masinloc town, who fish at the Scarborough Shoal, and activists carry a wooden fishing boat during a protest outside the Chinese consulate in Manila on July 12, 2016, ahead of a U.N. tribunal ruling on the legality of China's claims to an area of the South China sea contested by the Philippines. Ted Aljibe/AFP via Getty Images

The Philippine Coast Guard invited several media reporters on April 18–24 to expose the increasingly transgressive behavior of the CCP in the South China Sea. During the voyage, the Philippine patrol boats BRP Malapascua and BRP Malabrigo were followed by Chinese naval vessels and maritime police boats and ordered to leave the area several times.

The CCP stepped up its aggression after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office and expanded the U.S. Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, which includes four new Philippine military bases for rotating use by U.S. forces.

Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said on June 8 at the Center for New American Security that the United States is “working with the Philippines on asymmetric capabilities in the maritime domain” and other security issues, according to a report by U.S. Naval Institute.

ASEAN’s History

Successive Southeast Asian governments have abhorred subversive Chinese communist infiltration throughout history.

ASEAN was preceded by the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA), formed on July 31, 1961. The mission of the founding five countries—Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia—was to prevent the expansion of communist forces in the region and ensure military security and political neutrality, according to a 2009 article published in Review of Global Political, a journal of the Institute of International Politics of Chung Hsing University in Taiwan.

ASEAN was established on Aug. 8, 1967, in Bangkok with the signing of the ASEAN Declaration by ASA member nations. Subsequently, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Brunei joined, collectively known as the ASEAN 10. There is one candidate country, East Timor, and one observer country, Papua New Guinea.

A young Cambodian woman looks at the main stupa in Choeung Ek Killing Fields, which is filled with thousands of skulls of those killed during the Pol Pot regime, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Aug. 6, 2014. Omar Havana/Getty Images

At the time of the founding of ASEAN, communist China was undergoing a sociopolitical movement, the “Cultural Revolution,” launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and communism was largely spreading to neighboring countries. The governments and peoples of the ASEAN countries were subjected to violence and harassment by armed communist groups supported by the CCP in the region for years. Atrocities were committed by communist parties in Indonesian, Filipino, Thai, and Malay, particularly the notorious Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

The CCP views ASEAN as an anti-communist group, and the two have been in a state of confrontation for some time.

It was not until 1972, when then-President Richard Nixon visited China to ease tensions between Beijing and Washington, that ASEAN member states began to follow the U.S. lead, establishing diplomatic relations with the Chinese regime and lifting the ban on trade with China.

The CCP’s aggressive and domineering stance toward its neighbors in recent years has created a sense of solidarity and identity among the ASEAN countries that intend to elevate their military alliance through the first joint military exercises. This indicates that ASEAN is joining the world’s anti-communist camp led by the United States.