THE 40th and 41st Asean Summits in Cambodia from Nov 10 to 13 will include discussions about the conflicting claims in the South China Sea (SCS).
Apart from the human rights crisis in Myanmar, the SCS issue has been frequently brought up in Asean meetings and summits.
The SCS issue for Asean is no longer only a territorial one. It now affects Asean's existence as a regional organisation.
Asean has been impacted by the Indo-Pacific nations' geostrategic rivalry, and China particularly in many ways.
This brings up the matter of the Code of Conduct (CoC), which is supposed to be a sort of "bible" to be consulted if any altercations occur. In other words, this is to ensure the behaviour of conflicting parties in the SCS, primarily China's, is under control. It is not finalised, yet.
Asean must not be hesitant to express concerns over the SCS. It need not feel intimidated and demonstrate it can manage disputes on its own.
The Asean Regional Forum (ARF) has demonstrated its ability to manage disputes. It was founded in 1994 as a forum for discussion and consultation on current regional security challenges, as well as the development of cooperative measures to promote peace and security in the Asia-Pacific.
Asean has been able to establish Asean-led security institutions based on the concept of "cooperative security"— an inclusive institutional arrangement aimed at facilitating security dialogues, confidence building and norm creation among members with the objective of politically taming regional powers and shaping their behaviour.
Besides that, the Asean Political-Security Community (APSC) is a body tasked with ensuring that the region's countries coexist peacefully with the rest of the world in a just, democratic, and harmonious environment to promote and strengthen Asean's defence and security cooperation.
However, the regional body has been criticised for its inability to resolve the community's lengthy history of territorial issues.
Numerous analysts argue that Asean has failed to achieve its vision of a "complete" security community due to the region's seemingly "never-ending" traditional and non-traditional security challenges.
Therefore, the Asean Security Community also established the Asean Defence Ministers' Meeting (ADMM) and ADMM Plus to strengthen security and defence cooperation for peace, stability, and development in the region and also the Asean Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, which at this point serves as a perspective rather than a strategy.
Having all these regional security mechanisms available, Asean needs to be honest of its strengths and weaknesses as their implementation and practical impact appears to be limited.
Asean lacks both the funds and the organisation to resolve these disagreements once and for all.
However, Asean might consider non-traditional security approaches as it may provide different opportunities for maritime governance, information sharing and capacity building as well as defence diplomacy, when establishing cooperation.
This may result in more calm conversations and meetings between competing parties. In addition, Asean should establish economic diplomacy between conflicting governments in order for military de-escalation in the SCS.
As most of the conflicting parties have economic ties with China, it is about time to use economic diplomacy to tone down the tension in SCS.
Economic diplomacy with China can begin with all Asean member states cooperating on or contributing to a common agreed economic cooperative project.
The potential for conflict to erupt in SCS is never ending. Though Asean is adapting to the new geostrategic reality and preparing the regional organisation to manage regional security, it needs to act and not play the waiting game any more.
The existing mechanism must be utilised and Asean need not fear about making decisions on its own as it is about time that Asean takes a collective and unified stand as a regional organisation.
The 40th and 41st Asean Summits should be the platform for all Asean member states to prove this year's theme "Stronger Together" as a solution to current challenges, especially the SCS.
The writer is senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and is a participant of the ANU-Malaysia Maritime fellowship programme (August 2022-January 2023)