序章 等身大のASEAN像を求めて

ASEAN全体像の検証

抄録

During the hectic days of the late 1980s, when the Cambodian conflict was dragging its heels to the negotiated settlements, only a few observers, if any, were so optimistic about the future role of ASEAN as to expect this regional body would play a pivotal role in forging a structure of peace and stability n the Asia Pacific region. A decade later, in the late 1990s, when ASEAN is taking the initiative to promote confidence- and security-building measures through the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), skepticism has not vanished regarding the real capabilities of ASEAN: some observers magnify intra-regional discord among member countries, others discredit the ARF's potential of conflict resolution.
The primary objectives of this volume are, therefore, to evaluate ASEAN without falling in optimistic or pessimistic perspectives, to identify its weaknesses as well as strengths, and, in short, to know what ASEAN is all about.
This volume consists of ten articles including an introduction. In this introductory chapter, I first give a brief sketch of ASEAN's development by dividing it into five periods: embryonic, take-off, politicization, maturation, and leap-forward. Special attention is paid on the regional and international settings and ASEAN's major achievements in each period. Secondly, I try to identify factors that impede our understanding of ASEAN as it is. Three sets of dichotomies regarding Southeast Asian history introduced by Prof. Donald K. Emmerson provide us with as excellent framework: diversity vs. unity; originality vs. reliance; and continuity vs. change. Thirdly, I summarize ASEAN's achievements and limitations or, in other words, its strengths and weaknesses in domestic, regional, and international dimensions.
Finally, I try to provide a comprehensive framework which hopefully enables the readers to comprehend and appreciate the significance of ASEAN in a proper perspective. This framework shows, in a nutshell, a real ASEAN is most likely to be put somewhere in between a favorable/optimistic viewpoint on the one extreme and a critical/pessimistic viewpoint on the other extreme. This conclusion may sound too simple as well as axiomatic but, as a matter of fact, we used to lean to either of these extremes from time to time. This is primarily because, more often that not, ASEAN has appeared as a Janus, advocating, for instance, self-reliance to keep regional security while, at the same time, revealing its reliance on the American military presence in the region.
Lest one should fall off balance, those critics should recall how poor, divided and conflict-stricken Southeast Asia was prior to the establishment of ASEAN. Those favorable observers must, on the other hand, recall the severe fact that the ASEAN countries simply lack power to manipulate the extra-regional great powers such as the U. S., China and Japan without their consent or acquiescence.