February 20, 2011 ☼ ASEAN ☼ balance of power ☼ China ☼ East Asia ☼ Foreign Affairs ☼ South East Asia ☼ The Asian Balance ☼ water management
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Excerpts from today’s Business Standard column:
Yet, ASEAN, a regional grouping often celebrated for its pragmatism and competence, has been unable to keep two of its members from going to war with each other. It will now try to play peacemaker, but it is unlikely that it can achieve anything beyond temporary damage control. Cambodia has legal title, but Thailand is more powerful. Preah Vihear is intertwined with Thailand’s domestic political turmoil, and because ASEAN cannot interfere in the internal affairs of its members, meaningful mediation will have to wait until the unrest, intrigue and ferment in Bangkok subsides. Even then, there is no guarantee that the Thais will allow their relative power advantage to be neutralised by accepting third-party arbitration.
ASEAN’s failure to prevent the Thai-Cambodian border dispute from escalating into a shooting war calls into question its ability to take on the more challenging project of anchoring East Asia’s security architecture. That’s not all. ASEAN states have been extremely reluctant to maintain solidarity with their counterparts in the latter’s disputes with non-ASEAN states. It is to the US that Vietnam and the Philippines turned last year when China upped the ante over the maritime territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
But Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam—lower riparians of the Mekong river—have no one to turn to in the dispute over water sharing with China. [Business Standard]
Related Links: More on the Mekong dams, from this interview with Ame Trandem. I also cite Timo Menniken’s academic paper on lessons from the Mekong on China’s behaviour in international resource politics.
If you would like to share or comment on this, please discuss it on my GitHub
Previous © Copyright 2003-2024. Nitin Pai. All Rights Reserved.