Page 25 - The Ethics of ASEAN

The Founding Ethical Enterprise

regional communities like the European Union which is predominantly Christian and
requires that its member states remain constitutional democracies.
As an ethical community, a hyper-diverse association of nations like ASEAN can
only function through respect for differences and an ability to cooperate across cultures,
religious beliefs and national politics. But this has been the historical experience of
Southeast Asia for many centuries. The knack of communicating across cultures and
the ability to establish trust in diverse contexts has made Southeast Asians champions
in cultural intelligence, cooperative management and hospitality. Communication,
cooperation and collaboration is an ethical foundation of ASEAN, best expressed as
gotong royong used by Indonesians and Malaysians. Respect for differences and ability to
collaborate in diversity is what made ASEAN an unlikely success during the geopolitical
pressures of the Cold War – a recent book on ASEAN even called it a miracle6.

ASEAN’s Ethics in the Cold War

At the time of its founding in 1967 ASEAN represented a pact against communism, similar
to NATO in Europe with military support by the United States. As ASEAN expanded its
members this alignment became an ethical problem. American presence in Vietnam was
escalating into a regional war with massive daily bombings in North Vietnam – all shown
daily on television screens around the world- while in the American-controlled South
the number of war refugees reached more than two million. ASEAN never became an
American aligned regional organisation.
Stronger than the ethical ideologies of Cold War politics was the specifically
Southeast Asian ethic of merdeka – the word used in Malaysia and Indonesia during
the political struggle from colonial independence and later adopted at the creation of
an independent Singapore in 1965. The word also resonates in the Philippines with the
Tagalog cognate maharlika used in the Philippines’ struggle for independence. As an
ASEAN ethic, merdeka designates the primacy of sovereignty and political independence
in the face of pressures by world powers to align.
The spirit of merdeka as liberation from European colonies did not wait for the 20
th
century. Perhaps the best example of a full-blown revolution is the one associated with
the Philippine national hero and writer José Rizal. His movement failed and Rizal was
executed in 1896, two years before The United States formally acquired the Philippines
from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American war. Rizal himself wrote that independence
should be granted by Spain after political freedoms were introduced and transition to an
autonomous government was secured. None of the European powers were ready for that.
Merdeka in what was then called the Indies did not yet reach the scope of Southeast Asia
as a region, much less an Association of autonomous states. Yet, as the modern map of
ASEAN shows, the boundaries between modern states are very much the same as the 19 th
century European colonies.
Returning to ASEAN, although it was founded in 1967 by five non-Communist
countries, it did not become a Communist-free region. The American war in Vietnam failed
to prevent Communist nations Vietnam and Laos from joining ASEAN in the 1990s.

6 The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace, by Kishore Mahbubani and Jeffery Sng, NUS press 2017 ISBN 9814722499

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