Introduction

The complexity of international politics and security in the Asia Pacific region has persuaded regional leaders to review the conventional concepts of foreign policy and security. Leaders are confronted with the reality of the Post-Cold War world which produced two dimensions of security considerations, i.e. multilateralism and multidimensionalism.

Multilateralism

Multilateral organisations in Asia were born during a period of great geo-political change. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in combination with the U.S. departure from its bases in the Philippines provoked considerable uneasiness within Asia on the future of regional security in the post-Cold War environment. The result was a proliferation in the early 1990s of official and unofficial multilateral security dialogues intended to address the imperatives of a new multi-polar world. Academics and scholars were the driving force behind many of the first dialogues, including the Council on Security Co-operation in the Asia-Pacific or CSCAP, established in Kuala Lumpur in June 1993, and the Northeast Asia Co-operation Dialogue or NEACD, established in California later that year.

The most important of the organisations to emerge from this ferment was the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). In 1993, the Clinton Administration reversed previous policy of hostility to multilateralism and joined with ASEAN as a founding member of the ARF, the first region-wide consultative body in Asia focused on security issues

The great variety of actors in the region and the great number of strains and conflicts created the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) to provide the region with an institution to absorb multilateral dialogues on security and to develop further the concepts of confidence building, preventive diplomacy and finding ways to resolve regional tensions and conflicts towards developing instruments for conflict resolution in the region.

The ARF met for the first time in Bangkok in July 1994 and included the ASEAN members, ASEAN's dialogue partners and Papua Niu Guinea, China, the Russian Federation, India, Mongolia.

The ASEAN Regional Forum adopted in July 1996 the following criteria for participation:

1. Commitment: All new participants, which must be sovereign states, must subscribe to, and work co-operatively to help achieve the ARF key goals. Prior to their admission, all new participants should agree to abide by and respect fully the decision and statements already made by the ARF. All ASEAN members are automatically participants of ARF.

2. Relevance: A state should be admitted only if it can be demonstrated that it has an impact on the peace and security of the "geographical footprint" of key ARF activities (i.e., Northeast and Southeast Asia as well as Oceania).

3. Gradual expansion: Efforts must be made to control the number of participants to a manageable level to ensure the effectiveness of the ARF.

4. Consultations: All applications for participation should be submitted to the Chairman of the ARF, who will consult all the other ARF participants at the SOM and ascertain whether a consensus exists for the admission of the new participant. Actual decisions on participation will be approved by the Ministers.

The current participants in the ARF are as follows: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, European Union, Republic of Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Mongolia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Russian Federation, Singapore, Thailand, United States, Vietnam.

Multidimensionalism

The other reality of the Post-Cold War world is the multidimensionalisation of security. The complexity of developments in the Asia Pacific region has produced new disturbances and threats, beyond the conventional field of foreign policy and security. It is this complexity that created the need to multidimensionalise the concept of security, comprising those aspects of security against narcotraffic, international crime, formerly dubbed low intensity threats, and increasingly against environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, emerging diseases, overpopulation, and political unrest as a consequence of these new kind of threats.

1. Biodiversity loss, which is the fastest moving of all environmental problems and irreversible, hence hampering future prospects of achieving stability.

2. Environmental degradation, which is a threat driven by production and consumption of goods and services in a manner that is not environmentally benign.

3. Emerging diseases, primarily infectious diseases affecting humans, plants and animals, are spreading rapidly as a result of trade and travel, and -- amplified by malnutrition -- threaten public and productivity on a broad and intensive scale.

4. Overpopulation as a consequence of population growth is putting excessive demand on human and physical capacity to meet human needs for food, housing, health, employment, and education. A conservative estimate of the globe's population projects 8.5 billion people on the planet by 2025.

5. Political unrest and its consequences. Warfare, ethnic and social clashes set back efforts to meet critical human and environmental needs. They tend to be a regional problem with global impact as a consequence of forced migrations and other disruptive effects.

A discussion of Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) and Preventive Diplomacy should hence begin with an explanation of the concepts on CBMs and Preventive Diplomacy and their objectives as well as the extension or expansion of those meanings and concepts as a consequence of the multidimensionalisation of foreign policy and security.

The Concepts of CBMs and Preventive Diplomacy

Confidence Building Measures

Confidence Building Measures are tools that adversarial states (can) use to reduce tensions and avert the possibility of war. CBMs work to eliminate the elements of secrecy in military activity in order to help states distinguish between real and unfounded fears about the intent of or threat posed by a real or potential adversary. At the same time, however, agreements implementing CBMs must manage to preserve or enhance, rather than endanger, the involved states' national security.

CBMs are ideal tools for the 21st century, a time in which promising trends and troubling developments coexist uneasily in many parts of the world. Under these confusing circumstances, political leaders can employ CBMs to accentuate the positive and guard against the negative.

Communication, constraint, transparency, and verification measures are the primary CBM "tools." These tools are designed to make the behaviour of states more predictable by facilitating communication among states and establishing rules or patterns of behaviour for states' military forces, as well as the means to discern and verify compliance with those patterns.

Communication measures help keep channels of communication open between conflict-prone states or states with tense relations. Communication measures can help defuse tensions during moments of crisis. They can also be employed on a more regular basis, as consultative mechanisms designed to allow states to air grievances and ward off crises before they occur.

Constraint measures are designed to keep certain types and levels of states' military forces at a distance from one another, especially along borders. Constraint measures, in the form of requirements to provide advance notice (up to 1-2 years in some cases) of certain levels of troops movements, also aim to constrain states' abilities to move the troops and equipment needed to mount large-scale offensives.

Transparency measures are measures that states engage in to foster greater "openness" of their military capabilities and activities. Transparency measures merit a special focus as important first steps in the confidence-building process.

Verification measures are designed to collect data or provide first hand access in order to confirm or verify a state's compliance with a particular treaty or agreement.

It is indeed not possible and, moreover, not necessary to strife for uniformity in the security perceptions on account of the high degree of variety of security outlooks in the region. What should be searched for and endeavoured is mutual understanding and appreciation of various perceptions and perspectives of security among members in the region, so much so that the different perceptions and perspectives do not create or sustain mutual suspicions. This objective can be achieved by developing the habit of co-operation and consultation to obtain a better understanding of the strategic perspective and dilemma of other members.

Hence, the objective of CBM is to reduce tension and suspicion, to reduce the risk of armed conflict, both as a consequence of an accident, and of miscalculation; to develop communication and co-operation to reduce the use of military power, to increase mutual understanding on security issues and defence priorities of each party, as well as develop the meaning of strategic confidence in one area or between two countries. What should be emphasised here is that efforts at CBM are tightly knit to the political will to work for mutual understanding which underlie every form of negotiation towards conflict avoidance or conflict diffusion.

What has now become equally important and what will create tensions between and among countries in the region are the emergence of new types of threats and disturbances, primarily of a non-conventional nature. The issue of forest fires and haze, unchecked population growth as a consequence of the economic development models which orient themselves to growth with its negative effects on the environment with its perturbing effects, and which create huge differences in incomes and social gaps, spontaneous migration, narcotraffic, food crisis and so forth have become additional challenges and threats to neighbouring countries and the region.

Preventive Diplomacy

Preventive Diplomacy is the next step in the series of managing tensions towards their resolution. Preventive diplomacy goes by different names: conflict avoidance, preventive action, and conflict management, conflict resolution and so forth. All these terms mean the same thing: conflict avoidance at a very early stage is more humane, less expensive and more manageable than at a later and more advanced state. Preventive diplomacy is thus an endeavour to avoid the occurrence of conflict between or among parties or countries, to avoid existing conflicts to escalate into armed conflict and prevents conflicts already taking place from expanding further. Together with peace keeping, peace making and peace building, preventive diplomacy is an important endeavour in stepping up regional and international peace. Initiated by regional organisations, preventive diplomacy is complementary to the UN effort in extending peace, since it gives various opportunities for partnership between regional organisations and the UN in facing and handling security problems.

Theorists who study how wars start and continue, describe conflicts as a cycle, from early disturbances between antagonistic groups to first stage animosity which develop into open wars and the attempts of resolution. At every stage, intervening steps by formal or informal institutions can help to avoid a conflict from escalating to a more serious stage. An old, familiar adage is especially apt: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The most difficult aspect of conflict prevention is to know what approaches should be applied, with which actors and when exactly those approaches should be applied.

Lately, civil society organisations play a very important role in conflict avoidance. These organisations reflect the expansion of civil society, which use a very wide spectrum of approaches. Non-formal intervention can begin with advocacy and by public interest organisations, mass media, human rights organisations, academia or other non-governmental organisations. A typical initiative of civil society organisations is to organise meetings between non-formal representatives of the contending or conflicting parties, a process which is now usually called track two diplomacy as it works parallel to or under the formal process, which is track one. More frequently it is only one civil society organisation that can persuade contending parties and create a " space for dialogue" as a consequence of the sensitivity of such a meeting.

ASEAN as a Mechanism for Conventional Peace Making

In the course of its development, ASEAN materialises as a mechanism for CBM and Preventive Diplomacy, as a mechanism for peace building, not only in Southeast Asia, but also in the Asia Pacific. ASEAN formalises its role as an important contributor for peace and stability by signing the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation in Southeast Asia (TAC) on February 24, 1976 in Bali.

The fundamental principles of the treaty is that Southeast Asian regionalism is not supposed to hamper "the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and national identity" of all nations. The treaty guarantees that each country in the region shall have the right to "lead its national existence free from external interference, subversion or coercion"; that there will be "non-interference in the internal affairs" of one another; that "settlement of differences or disputes shall be conducted only by "peaceful means"; and that the "threat or use of force" shall be repudiated, and that "effective co-operation among themselves" shall be fostered.

These rules of conduct reaffirm a fundamental characteristic of ASEAN's regionalism --that ASEAN is and will remain a dependent variable which means that ASEAN remains a variable that depends on the political will of each member country to relinquish relevant components of their sovereignty in order to construct of organised regional life in Southeast Asia. Hence, the level and weight of ASEAN co-operation are very much decided by sensitivities among member countries to the issues of sovereignty. The regional level and weight of interaction can thus increase only if member countries are willing to overcome those sensitivities.

The Treaty simultaneously provides for internal as well as for external security. If a dispute between countries in the region which were likely to disturb regional peace and harmony were to occur, and if the parties to the dispute were unable to resolve it, they would turn to a High Council comprising a Representative at ministerial level from each of the High Contracting parties "to take cognisance of the existence of disputes or situations likely to disturb regional peace and harmony".2 This method of preventive diplomacy refers succinctly to paragraph 33 (1) of the Charter of the United Nations. The stipulation is, however, only valid if the parties to the dispute agree to apply the instrument to their dispute. On the other hand, parties to the dispute should be persuaded to take the initiative in finding solutions through peaceful negotiations and in the shortest time possible.

Implicitly, the Treaty on Amity and Co-operation -- which in the process had grown into an instrument for conflict abating or diffusion, then conflict avoidance and prevention, and hence an instrument of preventive diplomacy rather than of conflict resolution -- indicates that Southeast Asian regionalism will not be realised if no effort is being made to face, and if possible, to substantially reduce and finally to eradicate the elements which hamper solidarity and mutual understanding among the members. This relates directly to the sensitivities of sovereignty.

Conflict prevention in ASEAN is largely informal in nature. It is the strict adherence to intra-ASEAN norms of non-interference and non-use of force in interstate relations as well as the time-consuming practice of consultations and accommodation that have enabled ASEAN member countries to diminish the possibility of military escalation of intramural disputes.

Since the Association's establishment, ASEAN member countries have proved that they are capable of co-existing in peace and harmony. Although regional disputes and differences have not been resolved, ASEAN countries have learned to diffuse or abate their conflicts and not to exploit it for their own interests at the cost of the Association. Hence, ASEAN's existence is a security guarantee for peaceful and harmonious bilateral relations.

It has become increasingly difficult to visualise a conflict between two or more ASEAN member states. Sub-regional relations have developed an ASEAN spirit, which strongly supports ASEAN regionalism. Despite the legal character of the Treaty, ASEAN's preference is for informal approaches to solving conflicts, placing emphasis on relationships rather than on formal structures; and emphasising consensus building. There is a general distrust for the "Western" way of approaching conflicts in a structured and legalistic manner without sufficient consideration of the situation and the emotional state of the conflicting parties. But will this hold in the 21st century?

The Manila Protocol

On December 15, 1987 ASEAN made amendments to paragraph 14 and 18 of the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation to enable Papua Niu Gini and by default the "States outside Southeast Asia"3 to become party to the treaty. As a result, countries outside Southeast Asia can also become a party to the treaty "by consent of all the States in Southeast Asia which are signatories to this Treaty". (Manila Protocol)

Although the ASEAN Regional Forum has endorsed the purposes and principles of the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation, ASEAN does not want to apply in its entirety, as an international code of conduct. There is still disagreement over the Manila Protocol. ASEAN feels that allowing outside countries to become party to the treaty will enable them, in the name of dispute resolution, to intervene in Southeast Asian affairs.

This argument can be further elaborated upon. First, the Manila Protocol allows for accession of states outside Southeast Asia only "by the consent of all the States in Southeast Asia which are signatories to this Treaty and Brunei Darussalam." Hence, ASEAN would have to stipulate on what terms that consent could be provided. Moreover, an additional protocol to the treaty will, it is argued, help it to retain its legal character and will bind the major powers legally to their commitments. Thus Indonesia is proposing that an additional protocol which emphasises self-reliance be added to the Manila Protocol.

ASEAN should, it is argued, never relinquish this principle of self-reliance. A non-Southeast-Asian country can only sit on the High Council "in cases of disputes to which it is directly involved". This is in response to Article 16 of the treaty which allows states outside the region to interfere legitimately in Southeast Asian affairs. That article is inconsistent with the basic principle contained in Article 11 which states that "

The High Contracting Parties shall endeavour to strengthen their respective national resilience ... in conformity with their respective ideals and aspirations, free from external interference as well as internal subversive activities in order to preserve their respective national identities".

Dispute Resolution in ASEAN

There are indeed a number of disputes among signatories to the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation. The most decisive difficulty is that all countries have border or territorial disputes with Malaysia. This makes it difficult to apply the Treaty to the Sabah or Ligitan-Sipadan problems, for instance, since no member of the High Council can be purely objective. Moreover, paragraph 14 of the treaty can only be applied if all the parties involved "agree to its application to that dispute" (paragraph 16). This is the main reason why ASEAN has not yet been able to move forward in finding solutions to the various border or territorial disputes among them.

If ASEAN were to strive for resolution of those disputes, a number of additional efforts would be needed, such as the application of pressures or sanctions. However, if sanctions were to be applied -- apart from it being, so far, a non-ASEAN way of approaching disputes -- the country being sanctioned would probably refuse to participate in further endeavours at peace-keeping and development of prosperity in the region. That country may even resort to desperate moves, such as military action, a situation no one state in the region would wish to see happen.

Moreover, sanctions are part of a concept of law and order based upon the traditional theory of international relations that involves separating disputing or conflicting parties and guiding them towards negotiation and resolution, either by way of sanctions, or through persuasion.

However, a new reality is now taking shape and is transforming the fundamentals of the hitherto accepted legal thought and traditional order. What is usually labelled as "political realism" is not realistic anymore in light of telecommunication developments (the uses of the Internet) and the availability of various forms of arms to oppose existing authority. Countries are now facing various situations, both domestically and internationally, which cannot be countenanced without integrated endeavours through new and comprehensive approaches and by involving civil society organisations.

As long as the basic pattern of the new legal system and societal order is evolving, we will still have to base our proposal for solutions on the traditional legal thinking and order, but with a view to the new thinking. A first proposal is to allow non-Southeast Asian countries to become party to the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation. Secondly, ASEAN submits disputes to the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

The first possibility has been turned down -- particularly by Indonesia -- as some countries feel that enabling a major non-Southeast Asian country to become party to the treaty will automatically enable that country to interfere in Southeast Asian affairs in its own interest at the cost of the member countries and the region as a whole. This is the reason why in the Declaration of the South China Sea only the purpose and principles of the Treaty are singled out as a basis for devising the code of international conduct, and not the Treaty in its entirety. However, with the entering into force of the Second Protocol amending the TAC, to which the ministers already agreed as being a key regional instrument for strengthening security in the region, the code of conduct will be adhered to in the wider Asia Pacific region. (Chairman's Statement of the 6th ARF, Par. 10) The unlimited acceptance of the UN brokered multinational force for East Timor under the command of the Australian government is a glaring example of Indonesia's total surrender to external pressure and threats. This may serve as a warning that excessive external pressure may force ASEAN to succumb to pressures beyond paragraph 16. For Indonesia, specifically, this development will make it more difficult for Indonesia to keep insisting on non-interference.

Submission to the International Court of Justice of the Pedra Blanca and Ligitan Sipadan cases has already taken place. However, the big question is whether the contending parties will accept and abide by the Court's decision. If they are not, the issues will remain unsolved. ASEAN will indeed have to step its efforts to move from preventive diplomacy here to real conflict resolution.

Another possibility is to leave the border and territorial disputes to solve themselves by stepping up co-operation among the disputing countries in various fields of collaboration prescribed by ASEAN. Most probably this third possibility of conflict avoidance or diffusion still has the highest prospect of success since other efforts have so far failed or are considered to be incompatible to the ASEAN way of approaching intra-mural conflicts. However, this does not mean that the other means of problem solving need to be disregarded. What will have to be avoided is the misuse of the conflict resolution process by the major outside powers. And this can only be done by constantly raising confidence building measures and preventive diplomacy among the Southeast Asian nations and in the final analysis applying its own conflict resolution mechanism. This also includes inviting the major powers to collaborate, on ASEAN terms, in the maintenance of security and stability in the region through economic and social development programmes.

The efforts to realise ZOPFAN, TAC and SEANWFZ proof that stability, security and prosperity in Southeast Asia cannot be guaranteed without the constructive and comprehensive involvement of external states. This is reflected in the amendments of Paragraph 14 and 18 of TAC. The ASEAN regional forum in its first session in Bangkok (25 July 1994) agreed to accept the objectives and principles of TAC as "a code of conduct governing relations between states and a unique diplomatic instrument for regional confidence-building, preventive diplomacy, and political and security co-operation". (Par. 6) At the 6th ARF in Singapore (25 July 1999) members recognised TAC as "a key regional instrument for strengthening security in the region". This will involuntarily promote the development of a "region-wide code of conduct". (Par.10) Following this train of thought, the acknowledgement of non-Southeast Asian countries of the Treaty on Southeast Asia as a Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone is expected to contribute to the comprehensive denuclearisation of the region.

The Incorporation of Non-Conventional Security Factors and Considerations

The expansion of the spectrum of threats and disturbances has meanwhile equally expanded the threat dimension to member states and the region as a whole to sustainable development and democracy. Environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, population explosion, unbalanced distribution of resources lead to and even cause tensions and conflicts which are more social in character which may lead to internal strife and in its trail regional tensions and conflicts. Environmental degradation and population explosion can create conditions that threaten national security and weaken central power of the state. Both make dominant groups in the respective countries to design policies on unbalanced distribution of resources, which conjure up problems of environment and politics. Threats of global warming and ozone depletion, of maritime pollution and coastal degradation are some of the phenomena that make environmental degradation into a global problem. But beyond that, population explosion in the ASEAN countries, and in other developing countries, and consumption patterns in the industrial countries are the main cause of environmental degradation and depletion of natural resources. For that specific reason the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992) was held to assess the prospects of nations for sustainable development, to start discussing together the basic needs of human beings and the need to protect the environment entering the 21st century and formulate them into a concept of human security.

In the Southeast Asian region, haze as a consequence of forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan in 1997 is a clear example of the effect of environmental degradation on neighbouring countries: the pressure of haze on the immediate environment forces schools to close, causes serious disturbance of shipping and air traffic. The haze was considered the cause of collision of a tanker and transport ship in early August 1999, which caused the death of more than 10 people. The haze also pushed the pollution index across the Straits of Malacca to extremely high levels. And Brunei Darussalam has already threatened to take Indonesia to court. ASEAN's environment ministers met in August 1999 to discuss the forest fires and haze problem. Simon Tay, chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs stated that his institute planned to send a delegation to Indonesia in October 1999 to find a solution to the haze problem and its impact on Singapore society. One of the reasons is to find information on which firms were or are responsible for forest clearing by burning.

The haze problem has conjured up various questions on the seriousness of the Indonesian government to solve what is increasingly seen as sustained crisis. The Consultative Group on Indonesia in September 1999 will meet again with the government, this time exclusively on the management of forces, in the context of assistance to overcome forest fires.

The unpreparedness of Indonesia and other ASEAN countries recognise and deal with the new dimensions of security straightforwardly is complicated by the emergence and widely applied concept of human security. The term means safety for people from challenges, threats, and disturbances, both violent and non-violent. The principal and conventional objective of national security is the protection of national territorial integrity and political sovereignty from external aggression. It is now considered to be insufficient in guaranteeing people's security. The concept takes people as its point of reference rather than focusing exclusively on the security of territory or sovereignty. Human security entails taking preventive measures to reduce vulnerability and minimise risk, and if prevention fails take remedial action. A human security perspective thus asserts that the security of the state is not an end in itself.

The concern for human security as concern for the safety of people now extends beyond national borders. It is seemingly a logical extension of current approaches to international peace and security. The UN Charter embodies the view that security cannot be achieved by a single state in isolation. The term "international peace and security" implies that the security of one state depends on the security of other states as well. A human security perspective seemingly builds on this logic by noting that the security of people in one part of the world depends on the security of people elsewhere. It seems to imply that the security of states, and the maintenance of international peace and security, is ultimately constructed on the foundation of people who are secure. Human security will thus have to be incorporated in the dimensions of national and regional security.

Human security also emphasises that women are equal partners of men in all walks of life and throughout their life cycle. Women have equal rights and responsibilities in the building and enjoyment of a genuine partnership in dynamic development and a lasting community of caring societies of the SEA nations, and in the building and enjoyment of a world community of nations that consistently promotes and protects human rights and fundamental freedoms of all women and men. Negligence of the equality of women is a waste of intellectual assets, skills and knowledge, creative minds and caring compassion of more than half of our people.

The 1994 UNDP Human Development Report defined human security -- to which the term is associated -- as the summation of seven distinct aspects of security: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political. By focusing on people and highlighting non-conventional threats the UNDP made an important contribution to post-Cold War thinking on security.

The scope of the UNDP approach may make it unwieldy as a policy instrument, yet we will have to seriously discuss it as the challenges we face in the future are indeed multidimensional and work out the various approaches towards formulating adequate policy instruments.

Another new aspect in this context is the growth of internal conflicts, which as Mary Robinson describes "often unpredictable and volatile". These conflicts drag on for years without settlement or burst out afresh when peace seems near. Here, the village has become the battlefield and the primary target is the civilian population. Civilians are, in Robinson's evaluation, no longer just victims of war -- in today's world they are regarded as instruments of war. Three core crimes have for some time now become the concern of men: they are genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Mary Robinson's proposal here is the establishment of an effective International Criminal Court to strengthen respect for human rights and humanitarian and refugee law.

The expansion of the security spectrum simultaneously made it possible for external forces and states and international institutions to intervene into the internal affairs of Southeast Asian countries, particularly in the name of human security and democracy.

At the UNGA Session, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Western leaders appealed for recognition of the right of humanitarian intervention when states commit massive human rights abuses. German and Italian foreign ministers said that the UN had to develop new criteria to deal with humanitarian interventions, such as in Kosovo and East Timor.

Southeast Asian countries will thus have to discuss the impact of the monetary and financial crisis, environmental degradation, emerging diseases, for humans, animals and plants, human security, which is now being systematically promoted, and spontaneous migration on neighbouring countries and societies, political unrest and collectively find ways to tackle it.

We will have to discuss these issues thoroughly to confront them and find out the approaches to resolve them by formulating the measures into the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation in Southeast Asia to make it compatible with the new security issues. This is our challenge for the coming century. If such an attempt were to fail, then new, more comprehensive instruments will have to be designed.

This reminds us of the concept of national and regional resilience, which basically is comprehensive in character, of comprehensive security, of total security. However, the application of the concept is still too focussed on conventional security issues, which are political and conventional security. The serious challenges, disturbances and threats which we faced since the financial and monetary crisis showed us that each ASEAN country was not ready to face the attacks which came from an angle that did not feature at all in the spectrum of conventional threats.

The severe financial and economic crisis thus had profound effects on the security outlooks and designs of the ASEAN countries. It seemed to have shattered ASEAN dreams and simultaneously exposed the fragility of its security outlook and doctrine and of ASEAN as a regional institution. It has failed to provide immediate answers to the economic collapse and has resorted to individual approaches to safeguard the interest of each constituent member. Their leaders frequently contradicted each other on the basic policies they earlier made. It is feared that relations with neighbours may suffer in the process of finding solutions to domestic instabilities. This distraction will turn the attention of the member states mainly. Long-standing tensions among members may resurface in new attire.

What we need is to work for is factoring non-conventional threats and threat perceptions into the existing security instruments or design new instruments to cater for new sources of threats. The security concepts and outlook and the recent developments clearly indicate that it will be very difficult indeed to sustain an artificial dividing line between the various dimensions of security and the levels in which they operate, as envisioned by the founding fathers when they designed the concepts of national and regional resilience and comprehensive security.

Jakarta, 23 September 1999

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