Author: Ernie Bower, CSIS

Elections around Southeast Asia have assumed a new and empowering role in defining the region’s political outlook.

Emanating from Indonesia’s historic transition from autocracy to nascent if chaotic democracy, the people of ASEAN are using the ballot box to send strong messages. Read more…

Author: Ernest Bower, CSIS

On April 9, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III stood on the blood stained soil of Bataan province and reminded us of the amazing resilience of the human spirit, the ability to forgive and reconcile and the powerful hope intrinsic to those two facts.

Tens of thousands of Filipinos and Americans gave their lives fighting the Japanese army on this hallowed ground a lifetime ago. In soft rain that reminded those present of the tears of heaven, President Aquino solemnly observed that former enemies were now best friends. Read more…

Author: Ernest Bower, CSIS

The Cable’s Josh Rogin shared an open secret in an edition last week, namely that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton does not plan to continue in the Obama administration should the president win a second term in office. A post-Clinton Foggy Bottom is a real concern for Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia’s worry is this: Clinton and Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell clearly saw the need and opportunity to engage the region, and they grasped it — firmly and decisively. Read more…

Author: Ernest Z. Bower, CSIS

Last week in the snowy Swiss enclave of Davos, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia threw down the rhetorical gauntlet and announced Indonesia’s plans to be a global player. Addressing a well-heeled World Economic Forum audience, he asserted Indonesia’s intent to influence global trends: ‘Asia is of course more than China, Japan and India,’ he said.

Mr Yudhoyono has a good case to make. Indonesia is the world’s fourth-largest country and third-largest democracy. By most criteria, Indonesia has a stronger claim on BRIC membership — the group including Brazil, Russia, India and China — than Russia. Read more…

Author: Ernie Bower, CSIS

The Obama Administration deserves the highest marks for reinvigorating the US’ focus on Asia. Trips by the President and the US Secretary of State have been well prepared and executed. These trips have elevated existing ties with old friends, transformed relationships into partnerships, and have been characterized by substantive agendas and heart. But leaving Seoul without an agreement on the US Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) is not the right signal to an Asia that considers American determination to pass KORUS as the acid test for whether the US can return to a leadership position on trade. For the US, a strong trade policy is crucial to foreign policy in Asia.

The US Administration’s full-court press in Asia is important. Read more…

Author: Ernest Z. Bower, CSIS

In late September or early October, President Barack Obama will host the first US-ASEAN Summit on US soil. The summit will be the second of its kind following the inaugural meeting in Singapore last November. There are two venue options now being considered by the White House: New York, on the margins of the UN General Assembly; or Washington D.C., the US capital. There is only one correct answer to this foreign policy test: Washington.

While the policy teams at the State Department, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the Commerce Department, and the Office of the US Trade Representative will understand immediately the core importance of ASEAN, political leaders may not have connected the dots yet. Read more…

Author: Ernest Z. Bower, CSIS

Indonesian democracy is one of the Asia-Pacific’s most remarkable recent accomplishments. The turn this giant country made from autocracy under Suharto to a system of ‘one person, one vote’ is truly breathtaking. Indonesia has been transformed.

At the same time, Jakarta is well aware that stable democracy is not an easily-won goal; the country cannot rest on its laurels. Indeed, Indonesians can learn an important lesson from their colleagues in Thailand; strengthen the institutions of democracy when you have the opportunity, and don’t wait until crisis comes knocking. Read more…

Author: Ernest Bower, CSIS

Bilateralism, secrecy, and quiet pressure are being confronted by multilateralism, transparency, and efforts to appeal to international rule of law in one of the twenty-first-century’s most important bodies of water—the South China Sea.

Ironically, a tripartite agreement signed in Manila on March 14, 2005, one that China hoped would remain under the radar, helps to reveal the regional dynamics at play. That deal was called the Joint Maritime Seismic Understanding (JMSU). It merits a look as policymakers and politicians digest the results of last week’s important discussions at the 43rd ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) and 17th ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Hanoi, Vietnam. Read more…

Author: Ernest Bower, CSIS

Phnom Penh was a small town in 1969, but one that writhed with intrigue worthy of the Ramayana, the ancient Sanskrit epic that would redden Shakespeare’s cheeks even as he sat with pen over scroll conceiving Act III of Richard III.

As the Vietnam War raged to the east, its tendrils crept down the alleys and creek beds each night as darkness fell. Phnom Penh joined other restive capitals in Southeast Asia as a setting for casting key characters in the Cold War drama. Read more…

Author: Ernest Bower, CSIS

Anyone near the corner of 18th & K Streets last week would immediately align themselves with remarks attributed to Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew regarding air conditioning’s role as the breakthrough technology that helped transform Southeast Asia’s post-colonial commodity-dominated economies into some of the world’s fastest-growing financial and industrial markets.

In addition to enabling ASEAN leaders’ economic plans to be realized, nuclear power can play a significant role providing electricity for running those air conditioners. Read more…

Author: Ernest Bower, CSIS

As Graham Greene hunched over his desk perched on the wisened teak floors of Hanoi’s Metropole Hotel knitting together the silky threads of naiveté and intrigue to craft his masterful tale of Alden Pyle and Thomas Fowler, he unwittingly foretold a key element of modern Vietnamese politics: what you see is not what you get. Unlike many of its Southeast Asian neighbours, Vietnam has the capacity to keep its politics behind closed doors.

Vietnam is in the middle of the most intense part of its political cycle—the socialist corollary to the last four months of US elections—the lead-up to the Communist Party of Vietnam’s (CPV) 11th National Party Congress (NPC), which will take place in late January and early February 2011. Read more…

Author: Ernie Bower, CSIS, Washington

The prophetic novelist Thomas Wolfe said, ‘you can’t go home again,’ and apparently he was right. In the wee hours of the morning today Presidential Spokesman Robert Gibbs delivered the verdict on the third attempt for President Obama to visit Indonesia, a country where he grew up and a relationship his Administration hopes to enhance in a transformative manner along the lines the Bush Administration changed the paradigm with India.

Gibbs explained the with the Gulf of Mexico still in crisis, the President could not follow through on his planned visit to Indonesia and one of America’s five treaty allies in Asia, Australia. This is the third time – the proverbial third strike – that the President has postponed his trip. Read more…

Author: Ernest Z. Bower, CSIS

Transforming swamps and paddies into roads and factories, Southeast Asia’s ‘great’ leaders built nations, wrenching post-colonial commodity-based economies into newly industrialised nations seemingly on pure will. These men will forever be known as nation-builders and rightly so – Indonesia’s Soeharto, Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew, Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohammad, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Burma’s Ne Win, and King Bhimipol Adulydej in Thailand.

Yet their legacies are not as straightforward or literal as the runways and buildings they erected. Read more…

Author: Ernest Z. Bower, CSIS

Put yourself in US assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, Kurt Campbell’s shoes – National Security Council Senior Director for Asia, Jeff Bader’s moccasins would work too – and think about this November. It’s not quite a horror movie – more like ‘Gallipoli’.

The scene is Bader’s office in the Old Executive Office Building, the camera slowly pans 360 – security safe a crack open with papers hanging out, cabinet spilling over with books on various moments in Asian history, half empty take-out container with braised tofu teasing mold, couch rumpled – looking slept on, 14 foot ceilings feeling unappreciated. Read more…

Author: Ernest Z Bower, CSIS

ASEAN is like a big family and it has issues.  When you set a table for eleven, in this case the ten leaders of the ASEAN countries Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam plus the ASEAN Secretary General, you are bound to have some drama.  That was certainly the case in the most recent ASEAN summit held in Hanoi.

The key message from the summit in Hanoi is that no one can forget that ASEAN is made up of 10 countries and each one of them has its own problems.  But the group is vitally important to its members and to international partners. Read more…