AS Malaysia concluded the first month of its Asean chairmanship in January 2025, there is a tendency by some commentators to measure its potential and pulse on the basis of one-off events, one of which is the Asean Foreign Ministers Retreat in Langkawi.
While some scholars’ negative commentary of all that manifested from the “Retreat Diplomacy”, – where foreign ministers are occasionally encouraged to meet face-to-face to build up their camaraderie – not necessarily backed by the presence of a large team of translators and sides, can be harsh, the same cynical scholars of Asean have missed the larger picture of what Asean is all about to begin with.
“Conference Diplomacy”
Whether the scholars are from within Malaysia, or for that matter without, they have failed to comprehend the power of ‘Retreat’ or what some top Japanese scholars on Asean would also call “Conference Diplomacy”.
By the latter, the academia in Japan does not mean talks and more talks, which is a pejorative moniker, indeed, label arbitrarily slapped on Asean by its naysayers. Rather, what some elite Japanese academics, formed of outstanding minds such as Sato Seizaburo, Yamakage Susumu, Okabe Tatsumi, Shiraishi Tadashi, Suzuki Ayame, Go Ito, and more have understood “Conference Diplomacy”, is the deep history to confer privately, cosily, usually at the beginning of the year of the chairmanship of the host country.
By deep, one can refer to the original Bali Summit of 1976, where foreign ministers of Asean laid down the first basis of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC). Measuring no more than two A4-size paper, all the key founders of Asean, from the member states of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines, affirmed that all member states must eschew the use of “force” as an instrument of their foreign policy. This was a critical statement since Australia was the first Dialogue Partner of Asean in 1974.
Australia was then already a member of the Five-Power Defence Arrangement (FPDA) which consisted of, and still does, the likes of Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (UK).
In one bold stroke, wisely, the Asean Leaders gathered in Bali, in cosy atmosphere, had successfully helped their respective ministries of foreign affairs and defence to understand the division of labour of Asean foreign ministers, who will always chafe at any wanton reference to the use of force.
Invariably, to use it or threaten to use it, to extract any combination of foreign policy outcomes in anyone’s favour.
Had TAC not been made the cornerstone of Asean to this day, the concurrent existence of various ministries of defence, which are traditionally more preponderant to the use of force, would have induced internal and external actors in Asean, that armed intervention is always on the table. It isn’t and never will be.
That’s because Australia had wanted Asean to know how to divide “defensive diplomacy”, which is the pure focus on talks and more talks to find a breakthrough to any impasse in Southeast Asia, from issues that can be considered by the Ministry of Defence of each country as the last alternative, much as Asean leaders in 1976, or for that matter in 1967 when Asean was first established, to focus on artful diplomacy always.
Wars, after all, are easy to start and difficult to end. The next Dialogue Partner that was sufficiently inspired by the maturity of Asean leaders, foreign and defence ministers of ASEAN, to keep defensive diplomacy and offensive use of force neatly separated, was Canada. In 1977, Ottawa became the second Dialogue Partner of Asean.
Misunderstanding over “Retreat Diplomacy”
There are some ASEAN studies experts, such as those in the ASEAN Studies Centre in the Yusuf Ishak Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, primarily those from Vietnam and Myanmar, who misunderstood the origins of the “Retreat Diplomacy” by conflating forms and functions. Why?
Due to their countries’ late participation in ASEAN, joining it only in 1997, especially when the seat of the scholars’ location is in Singapore, they confused “Retreat Diplomacy” with the initiative of the government of Singapore alone in April 1999, specifically the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore.
This is a misreading since the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Singapore is subsumed by the authority and prerogative of the Prime Minister’s Office of Singapore.
Thus, on paper it may appear “correct” to attribute Retreat or Conference Diplomacy to Professor Jayaretnam who floated the need for it in April 1999. The truth of the matter is that such an initiative could not have passed any muster without the explicit or implicit permission of the likes of then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, and indeed, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.
The two of them had realised as early as 1984-1991 that the problem with ASEAN diplomacy was not the lack of the need to talk as fellow peers, but the need to do so in an austere yet nonchalant manner, not given to leaks, let alone the false reports of local or foreign media. Top leaders in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, too, had long concurred with the two Singapore stalwarts.
Thus, whilst on surface, it seemed like Professor Jayaretnam was the one who hoisted the idea of a “Retreat Diplomacy” in April 1999 at the Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, often abbreviated as AMM in the regional press, where foreign ministers would convene to see eye-to-eye, aided and abetted as and when necessary by one senior official to double as the translator, to iron out any miscommunication in English, the official language of communication of ASEAN, a more sophisticated understanding of “ASEAN Retreat and Conference Diplomacy” was captured by Japanese scholars first, followed by Australians and Canadians, and in turn the think tanks or epistemic community of the Anglo-Saxon world such as the United States (US) and New Zealand. By September of 1998, however, it was the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in Harvard, co-lectured by Ezra Vogel and Paul Evans, that was the first to introduce a course on “Asia’s Soft Institutionalism” at the MA and PhD Level at the Department of Sociology, although some seminars were held in the Asian Studies Centre of Harvard, too, where Vogel was the director.
Even the instructors, too, understood the importance of understanding diplomacy in the most convivial manner by allowing faculty and students of the course to have some classes in the professors’ very own residence, with free pizzas to allow all 25 or 30 students to touch on every aspect of Asia Pacific.
It is true that by 2001, the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting once again liked the idea and genuine practice of the “Retreat Diplomacy” or “Conference Diplomacy” conducted two years prior. Hence, it was not just Asean Foreign Ministers or AMM alone that heralded the sublime nature of such a highly intimate and stylised form of diplomacy, but ASEAN defence ministers and, in turn, ASEAN Plus 3 ministers, indeed the Senior Officials Meetings (SOM) of the East Asian Summit (EAS) convened in 2005, that regale in this buttoned down, though still respectable, gathering of like-minded diplomats and Track 1.5 and Track 2 thinkers that have understood the need to reduce their anxieties and stiffness.
So successful was this method of Modus Vivendi that diplomats and scholars themselves, rightly or wrongly, lulled by their own sense of comfort, in turn “Dialogical Society”, a term not unfamiliar to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and the Rector of the International Islamic University in Malaysia, can attest to the substance and silhouette of “ASEAN” or even the “Asian Pacific Way”. The diplomacy of Chatham House pioneered in the aftermath of the end of World War I in 1999, adopted by all think tanks and universities that came after, each trying to work hand-in-hand with various government officials to understand the problems of war and peace, adopted the Chatham House rule in London, albeit globally.
Official or non-official scholar diplomats, the latter includes the likes of John Fairbank, Edwin Reishauer, Wang Gungwu, Khong Yuen Foong, Kishore Mahbubani, Tommy Koh, Walter Woon, Tan Sri Nordin Sopiee, Tan Sri Jawhar Hassan, Tan Sri Hasmy Agam, Dewi Fortuna Anwar, and indeed Datuk Dr Osman Bakar himself, could speak in their private capacities where their views, while close to their respective country of residence, do not represent the policy of their governments or the academic institutions they work for.
No fixed agenda
This created a beautiful flow of ideas from the Helsinki Summit in 1972-1975 to be localised by the think tanks such as the Centre of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta formed in 1974.
Retreat Diplomacy, whether benchmarked from 1976, or for that matter 1999 or 2001, did not require all leaders to come in with a fixed agenda. At the Langkawi Retreat in January 2025, for instance, the tradition was not to immediately lock into a list of talking points and formal notes that must be discussed in unadulterated form by the ASEAN Leaders Summit in May 2025.
The whole ontological premise was to allow what social psychologist Herbert Kelman at Harvard called “forgiveness transactional psychology” to gain deeper roots, meaning that issues discussed at the early part of the year do not have to be adversarial or semi-legally obsequious.
Of course, it would have been great to have a joint statement by all the foreign ministers of Asean – instead of just the Chairman’s Statement, in this case Malaysia – on a smorgasbord of issues.
But this Chairman’s Statement was not from Prime Minister Anwar, who was in Dubai, London and Davos on official trips. In turn, when the likes of Bridget Welsh affirmed that the Malaysian chairmanship had shown early signs of potential failure, to put it mildly, since it did not address the issue of Myanmar or tariff war more bluntly, she was misguided on all sense.
Retreat Diplomacy is a simple salvo, not unlike the fireworks that marked the dawn of a new Gregorian calendar of 2025 or the Lunar New Year that began in January 29, 2025, which is celebrated by China, some traditional parts of Japan, the whole of Korea, Vietnam and all their diaspora.
Even all who want to mark the beginning of their year with the Lunar Calendar can do so too. It is a calendar just as accurate as the Gregorian and Islamic calendars.
Fallacy
What is key is to understand the history of “Retreat and Conference Diplomacy”, and why it is not time to take it too seriously yet since the very concerning nature of the global issues demand, almost insist, that all leaders and thinkers in Track 1 and Track 2, indeed Track 3 Diplomacy in civil society, must know how to let their proverbial hair down without letting down their guard on a turbulent world in 2025 and after.
Anyone who affirms that the Langkawi Retreat Diplomacy had gone awry can only be those who insist that their clairvoyance alone, and only theirs alone, must be taken seriously by a region of 700 million people.
This is a fallacy. In the Asean Secretariat or Headquarters the team and the respective diplomatic members of the Asean Host must finalise the issues at the Asean Coordination Council (ACC), sometimes in Jakarta, and occasionally in Kuala Lumpur. Before the ACC can meet in April or May of each year to make sure the Asean Summit can hit on all the correct issues the following month after ACC, the Committee of Permanent Representatives (CIP) would have to weigh in too. It helps to have a dynamic Secretary-General of Asean who enjoys the status of a ministerial rank to know how to go in and out to meet Prime Minister Anwar and other state leaders in Asean.
If he is unaware or poorly advised by Asean directors, it is worth noting that each Asean member state will participate in the National Security Council’s “Retreat Diplomacy”, scheduled to take place at a resort in Terengganu. ASEAN’s Retreat and Conference Diplomacy – whether conducted through various ministries or under the frameworks of the East Asia Summit (EAS) – has played a role in reducing inter-state wars within the region since 1979, the year marking the end of the last border skirmish between Vietnam and China. Even the Thailand-Cambodia border conflict over Preah Vihear was effectively brought to a halt. According to the East Asian School of Peace, led by distinguished Scandinavian scholars, ASEAN has achieved a world-record reduction of combatant fatalities from inter-state conflicts – by an impressive 99 per cent. It is no coincidence that Asean is regarded as one of the most successful regional organisations, standing alongside the European Union (EU).
Indeed, while Chapter 8 of the UN Charter encourages all regions to solve their own conflicts, both internal and external, Myanmar remains a persistent challenge. UN Special Envoy Julia Bishop of Australia conceded to Prime Minister Anwar and other dignitaries that achieving peace is far from easy, despite the first point of the Five-Point Jakarta Consensus calling for a total ceasefire in Myanmar first. Critics and naysayers of Asean or the UN are often the first to see the glass as half empty, if not totally empty, driven by the superficial analyses of self-proclaimed experts. – February 5, 2025
Phar Kim Beng is Professor of ASEAN Studies at the International Islamic University of Malaysia.