published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Philosophy

This thesis examines the diplomatic strategy adopted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in response to the 1978 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the subsequent shift in the regional distribution of power with regard to the security of the ASEAN nations. I argue that ASEAN has demonstrated considerable success in preventing a collapse of regional order in Southeast Asia. It is important to understand that ASEAN is a product and tool of its members' foreign policy and should therefore be assessed in the foreign policy, rather than in the regional integrationist, context. This will be examined from the point of view of a group of relatively weak, insignificant states within the international arena, historically plagued by conflict and intervention by external powers, exacerbated by a history of intra-regional enmity rather than cooperation, military weakness, and no collective tradition of diplomatic expertise. Yet, despite these shortcomings and ASEAN's previous inability to come together on issues of economic integration, ASEAN's response to the Third Indochina conflict has allowed its member nations to maintain their independence, preserve their freedom of action, rally international support, and confront the great powers involved in this issue through the use of a regional organization. This thesis will also counter the prevailing view that existing intra-ASEAN differences regarding the primary external threat in the issue (namely Vietnam, China or the Soviet Union) have seriously divided its members to the point of potentially threatening the organization's existence. Instead, I will argue that the combination of ASEAN's curious mode of "conflict resolution" through "conflict avoidance", as well as its diplomatic "division of labour," have effectively incorporated existing intra-ASEAN differences as bargaining assets for the organization's political viability. These internal cleavages have been far from resolved or reconciled, but rather skirted over by a web of unwritten laws, implicit rules and mutual understandings regarding one another's accepted role within the organization. This implicit "regime" has served several purposes: it has allowed ASEAN to sustain its image of unity, boosted its political visability in the international forum, and prevented the "loss of face" of fellow members on points of contention. Research for this thesis was conducted in part at the ASEAN Secretariat and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta, and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

On July 21, 1954, Canada was asked to assume, with Poland and India, the supervision of the Cease Fire Agreements (CFA) in what had been French Indochina. The CFA marked the end of French rule in Indochina, a rule that had never been unquestioned, and that, since December of 1946, had involved France in a bitter and costly war. At the end of 1953 a series of events led to a decision to seek a negotiated peace in Indochina. After eight years of fighting that had drained away manpower and resources, France had lost control of large areas of Vietnam. The death of Stalin in Russia brought new leaders to power who were anxious to secure a lessening of international tensions so that they could turn their attention to improving the lot of the average Russian. The Chinese were about to embark on their first Five Year Plan, and wished to be free of the heavy burden that supplying the Vietminh war machine entailed. The Vietminh and the Americans, on the other hand, seem to have come to the conference table only on the insistence of their allies. The Vietminh considered that final victory was within their grasp and did not wish to stop short of their objective - control over the whole of Vietnam. The new Republican administration in the U.S. was committed to "rolling back" Communism, and foresaw another victory for Communism in the proposed peace conference. Proceedings at the Geneva Conference soon showed the diversity and conflict of aims among the participants. The U.S. soon retired for all practical purposes from active participation, and for quite long periods there was not even an official head of the U.S. Delegation present in Geneva. The Laniel Government fell in France during the negotiations, and Laniel was replaced by Mendès France, largely on the strength of his promise to conclude a peace within thirty days. Britain and the USSR acted as co-chairmen of the Conference and were active in moving their allies closer together; they share the responsibility for the eventual successful outcome of the Conference. Of the differences that developed between the two sides at Geneva, the most significant was the difference of opinion over the composition of an International Control Commission (ICC) to supervise the Cease Fire. A compromise was finally reached on India, Poland and Canada. During the first two years of the Commission's existence it supervised the withdrawal and regroupment of forces provided for in the Geneva Agreement. Particularly in the evacuation of Haiphong and Hanoi the ICC was able to render valuable service. By the end of this two year period, however, the French Union Forces (FUF) had left Vietnam, leaving the South Vietnamese to continue to enforce the Cease Fire Agreement, and the RVN had of course refused to consider itself bound by the Agreements. The Diem Government refused to contemplate the holding of elections that would have re-unified the country and brought to an end the ICC's task in Vietnam. Of all the members of the ICC, it was India's foreign policy that most affected the decisions and the work of the Commission. Indian policy was non-aligned, and must even more importantly be clearly seen to be non-aligned. At the same time India had an almost instinctive dislike of Communism, a dislike that appeared in India's lukewarm support for anti-colonial struggles in Asia that were dominated by Communists. Although the Indian Delegation sided with the Poles more often than with the Canadians during the life of the Commission, on important decisions that affected the South's ability to maintain its security, India sided with the Canadians. After 1956, the Commission became increasingly ineffective. Its freedom to investigate was eroded, financial support was lacking, and eventually the increasing tempo of the war in Vietnam swept the ICC aside as largely irrelevant. The ICC is only one of many peacekeeping operations in which Canada has been involved. UN missions have tended to be popular within Canada, while service on the ICC has not been generally approved. In fact Canada has not been as neutral or as partisan as public opinion has assumed. Certain conditions tend to ineffectiveness in peacekeeping missions, and these conditions have been present in other missions as well as in the ICC. In recent years, Canada has been increasingly reluctant to take on peacekeeping duties where it is judged the chance for effective action has not been great. But Canada has not been involved in peacekeeping simply because it has suited her to be involved. In future dangerous and difficult situations the pressures on us to participate might well be too strong to resist. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

Despite the role played by the South East Treaty Organisation (SEATO) in the defence of Western interests in that region during the Cold War, there has to date been no scholarly attempt to examine the development and performance of the organisation as a military alliance. This thesis is thus the first attempt to do so and as such seeks to take advantage of the recent release of much SEATO-related official material into the public domain by Western governments. This material throws new light upon SEATO???s aims and achievements, particularly in regard to the first ten years of its existence. Because SEATO was eventually rendered irrelevant by the events of the Second Indochina War (1965-1975) a popular perception has arisen that it was always a ???Paper Tiger??? lacking in substance, and thus easily dismissed. This thesis challenges this assumption by examining SEATO???s development in the decade before that conflict. The thesis analyses SEATO???s place in the wider Cold War and finds that it was part of a rational and consistent response within the broader Western strategy of containment to deter, and if need be, defeat, the threat of communist aggression. That threat was a very real one for Southeast Asia in the aftermath of the First Indochina War and one that was initially perceived in terms of the conventional military balance of power. This focus dominated SEATO???s strategic concepts and early contingency planning and rightly so, as an examination of the strength and development of the PLA and PAVN during this period demonstrates. SEATO developed a dedicated military apparatus, principally the Military Planning Office (MPO), that proved itself to be perfectly capable of providing the level of co-ordination and planning needed to produce a credible SEATO deterrent in this regard. SEATO enjoyed less success with its attempts to respond to the emergence of a significant communist insurgent threat, first in Laos then in South Vietnam, but the alliance did nonetheless recognise this threat and the failure of SEATO in this regard was one of political will rather than military doctrine. Indeed this thesis confirms that it was the increasingly disparate political agendas of a number of SEATO???s members that ultimately paralysed its ability to act and thus ensured its failure to meet its aims, at least insofar as the so-called ???Protocol States??? were concerned. But this failure should not be allowed to completely overshadow SEATO???s earlier achievements in providing a modicum of Western-backed stability and security to the region from 1955-1965.

In October 2003, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) proposed the establishment of a security, economic and socio-cultural community by the year 2020. Given that initiators of the ASEAN proposal were informed by the scholarly literature on the concept of a 'security community', this dissertation develops and then tests the concept in relation to the ASEAN states. Here, the concept of a 'security community' is understood as 'a transnational grouping of two or more states whose sovereignty is increasingly amalgamated and whose people maintain dependable expectations of peaceful change'. The application of the 'security community framework' developed in this study is necessary to provide a conceptual basis for critically assessing the major factors that could potentially impede ASEAN's evolution towards a security community. For the purpose of such an assessment, the study provides a detailed investigation of the most significant historical issues and contemporary security challenges that inform the nature of inter-state relations in Southeast Asia. As a complement to this approach, the dissertation incorporates the analysis of data obtained from extensive fieldwork in all ten of the ASEAN states involving over 100 in-depth interviews and two survey designs (one at the elite level and another at the communal level) involving 919 participants. While the survey work, especially at the communal level, is best considered a pilot study and the results are therefore to be considered as indicative, the research nevertheless represents the first empirical assessment of regional perceptions of trust, intra-mural relations, security, economic integration, and liberalisation and of a broad range of other factors relevant to the analysis. The interview data has also been invaluable in uncovering previously unpublished information and in contextualising the analysis. Despite a considerable strengthening of the region's security architecture since ASEAN's formation, the ten chapters in the study reveal that the Association has a long way to travel before it will satisfy the defining criteria of a security community. The region lacks a common sense of community and consequently the level of trust between the Southeast Asian states remains problematic. The political elite continue to engage in episodes of competitive behaviour, have been unable to resolve territorial disputes, and thus the continued potential for armed conflict undermines the prospect for 'dependable expectations of peaceful change'. Therefore, ASEAN's evolution towards the status of a security community, if it proceeds further, will likely occur over the course of many decades rather than by ASEAN's current goal of 2015.

Despite the role played by the South East Treaty Organisation (SEATO) in the defence of Western interests in that region during the Cold War, there has to date been no scholarly attempt to examine the development and performance of the organisation as a military alliance. This thesis is thus the first attempt to do so and as such seeks to take advantage of the recent release of much SEATO-related official material into the public domain by Western governments. This material throws new light upon SEATO???s aims and achievements, particularly in regard to the first ten years of its existence. Because SEATO was eventually rendered irrelevant by the events of the Second Indochina War (1965-1975) a popular perception has arisen that it was always a ???Paper Tiger??? lacking in substance, and thus easily dismissed. This thesis challenges this assumption by examining SEATO???s development in the decade before that conflict. The thesis analyses SEATO???s place in the wider Cold War and finds that it was part of a rational and consistent response within the broader Western strategy of containment to deter, and if need be, defeat, the threat of communist aggression. That threat was a very real one for Southeast Asia in the aftermath of the First Indochina War and one that was initially perceived in terms of the conventional military balance of power. This focus dominated SEATO???s strategic concepts and early contingency planning and rightly so, as an examination of the strength and development of the PLA and PAVN during this period demonstrates. SEATO developed a dedicated military apparatus, principally the Military Planning Office (MPO), that proved itself to be perfectly capable of providing the level of co-ordination and planning needed to produce a credible SEATO deterrent in this regard. SEATO enjoyed less success with its attempts to respond to the emergence of a significant communist insurgent threat, first in Laos then in South Vietnam, but the alliance did nonetheless recognise this threat and the failure of SEATO in this regard was one of political will rather than military doctrine. Indeed this thesis confirms that it was the increasingly disparate political agendas of a number of SEATO???s members that ultimately paralysed its ability to act and thus ensured its failure to meet its aims, at least insofar as the so-called ???Protocol States??? were concerned. But this failure should not be allowed to completely overshadow SEATO???s earlier achievements in providing a modicum of Western-backed stability and security to the region from 1955-1965.

This thesis has explored two basic themes in post-Cold War international relations. The first is the transformation of the global and regional security environments leading to a projected decline in the importance of traditional realist-style security problems. The second is the supposed shift in state behavior with conflictual strategies giving way to accommodation. These presumed trends are explored in the context of Southeast Asia and, more specifically, China's security strategies and relations in the region. This study argues that conventional security problems have declined in Southeast Asia in the short term but still remain prominent. In terms of policies, while China's goals remained partly revisionist with regard to territorial issues and status/power relationships, its approaches became more accommodative in coping with disputed issues in the region. This was manifested above all in its gradual acceptance of a multilateral framework for dialogue on regional security issues and in its willingness to undertake some confidence building measures in the military area. This shift can be explained partly in terms of China's external political concerns at both the global and regional levels. The more fundamental explanation, however, lies in China's drive for economic modernization with an accommodative regional strategy intended to ensure the flow of external resources required for this purpose.

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