ASEAN's security not an alliance road show: China Daily editorial

When the participants gather in Cebu, the Philippines, on Wednesday and Thursday for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defense Ministers' Meeting Plus, the question will be whether the gathering strengthens regional peace or becomes another exercise in geopolitical bloc-building.

With the Philippines hosting and Japan eager to accelerate its military buildup, they will be tempted to try and turn what should be an inclusive regional forum into an exclusive club.

But, as Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun stressed, ADMM-Plus should encourage dialogue, deepen trust and promote cooperation, rather than allow individual countries to pursue selfish interests, hijack ASEAN or manufacture trouble. His cautionary words go to the heart of a contradiction increasingly troubling Southeast Asian diplomacy: ASEAN's centrality is universally praised, but not always respected.

Established to bring ASEAN members together with eight dialogue partners, including China, the United States and Japan, ADMM-Plus does not require participants to identify common enemies before discovering common interests.

Yet some participants appear determined to do just that. At last year's meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Japan's defense minister presented a familiar catalogue of "dangers": China, Russia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. He also proposed weaving defense exercises, equipment cooperation and capacity-building initiatives into a multilayered regional "security" network.

The language was deceptively "multilateral", but in substance it was bloc rivalry. The strategic ambition behind it was considerably less innocent than presented. Japan wants to connect the US-backed security networks across East Asia, Southeast Asia and the wider "Indo-Pacific", increasingly drawing on its alliance with the US and other regional allies. Manila has offered a particularly receptive ear.

Pete Hegseth, US defense chief, is attending the meeting, with Washington promising to strengthen deterrence, alliances and regional burden-sharing. For the Philippines' geopolitical speculators and Japan's neo-militarists, his presence provides an opportunity to demonstrate they have US support for their exclusionary stance.

Bilateral and smaller multilateral meetings involving defense officials of the US, Japan, the Philippines and other countries are scheduled for Wednesday, ahead of the broader gathering on Thursday. Such an arrangement offers an opportunity to establish a preferred narrative before the ADMM-Plus discussions begin. ASEAN members should resist any suggestion that preliminary alliance consultations amount to a regional consensus.

Some in Manila are adept at using international gatherings to exploit the Philippines' maritime disputes with China in the South China Sea in order to cast themselves as defenders of "freedom and order", as they did at a regional foreign ministers' meeting in Manila in July.

Yet the more energetically the Philippines and Japan insist that ASEAN must respond to "regional threats", the more they subject the bloc to external pressure of their own soliciting.

ADMM-Plus works precisely because it accommodates countries with different interests. Its purpose is not to transform Southeast Asia into an extension of somebody else's strategic architecture. It is to prevent disagreements from becoming confrontations.

At this year's Shangri-La Dialogue in June, the Japanese and Philippine defense ministers already put on a two-man show, echoing each other in well-rehearsed harmony. Now they are sharing the stage again — before much the same audience — and one should expect them to trot out new tricks to play to the gallery.

ASEAN's centrality means little if its agenda can be commandeered by whichever participant brings the most assertive friends.

The politicians in Manila and Tokyo seeking to sow the seeds of discord have failed to grasp the lessons of the Ukraine crisis and the Middle East crisis. Their zealotry and shortsightedness are a root cause of regional instability and risk triggering a conflict of their own making.