At first glance, the most recent foreign ministers meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, was singularly disappointing. The gathering in late July in Vientiane—the capital of Laos—did manage to bring together representatives of all the major powers, including Japan, India, the European Union and Russia, while also offering the opportunity for crucial bilateral talks between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi. But on the most contentious geopolitical challenges facing the region, the confab was all sizzle, no substance.
In particular, the festering disputes in the South China Sea, which have seen multiple clashes and confrontations between Chinese and Philippine maritime forces, was only generically discussed on page 32 of the unusually lengthy joint statement that emerged from the meeting. The document expressed consensus on the “importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety, and freedom of navigation in and overflight above the South China Sea,” yet provided no concrete steps toward managing, let alone resolving, the disputes that threaten all of those goals.
Nor was there any sign of collective pressure on China to stop dragging its feet on the decades-long, open-ended negotiations over a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea. ASEAN diplomats only agreed on the need to build on the notoriously vague roadmap to achieve the elusive code, for which a draft negotiating text was agreed upon last year. And yet, there was no mention of China’s unlawful, aggressive and unilateral actions against ASEAN member states, which had culminated in the injury of a Philippine naval servicemen just weeks earlier.