ASEAN summit is a coup for Turnbull’s diplomatic effort

China is not the be all and end all of the ASEAN summit.Picture: AFP

One of the most important elements in constructing a good China policy is to have a good Asia policy — that is to say, a policy for all those nations in Asia that are not China. In the unfolding great power competition between Beijing and Washington, no region will be more important than Southeast Asia.

These are two considerations worth keeping in mind as we look forward to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit that Malcolm Turnbull will host in Sydney this month. Of course, it goes without saying that Southeast Asia is important to Australia entirely in its own right, regardless of anything involving Beijing or Washington. Nonetheless, it would be absurd to ignore the great power rivalry.

Over the past 25 years, since Paul Keating left office really, Southeast Asia, with the exception of Indonesia and Singapore, has slipped away from Australia’s ­national consciousness. This is both a pity and a mistake. The ASEAN summit, which is Turnbull’s initiative, will make the kind of limited but important contribution to rectifying this that only government can make.

More generally, hosting this summit is extremely good Australian policy and the Turnbull government deserves credit for it. ASEAN combines all 10 Southeast Asian nations: Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, The Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

ASEAN was established in 1967, with half its present membership, as an anti-communist grouping trying to maintain indepen­dence and strategic resilience. It has subsequently embraced the nations it was most worried about — the communist governments of Indochina — and gone from strength to strength.

Nonetheless, ASEAN is a paradox. Observing official ASEAN processes can be like watching paint dry but without the scintillating eventfulness of that process. Yet you cannot deny ASEAN’s historic achievements. In an ­extremely diverse region, it has prevented inter-state conflict and created a region of peace between the Southeast Asian nations. There are some border tensions still, and quite a lot of internal ­insurgency, but no prospect of state-on-state military conflict ­between members.

Second, remarkably, ASEAN has become something of a limited political community and a central player in most regional diplomacy.

Most Australians, if they think of Southeast Asia at all, recognise that it is of central importance to our security. There was a time when our defence white papers would routinely observe that, simply because of geography, any threat to Australia would come through or from the Southeast Asian archipelago.

But Southeast Asia is much more broadly important to us. Consider the following statistics. Australia’s trade with ASEAN is now worth $93 billion. This is bigger than our trade with the US or Japan. Two-way investment ­between ASEAN and Australia in 2016 stood at $225bn. This was greater than the stock of two-way investment with China. It is vastly smaller than the $1.4 trillion two-way investment we have with the US, but a quarter of a trillion dollars is real money in anybody’s language.

Of course there are wrinkles in all these statistics. ASEAN figures aggregate 10 nations and much of the economic relationship is led by Singapore. Nonetheless, the total quantum is very substantial. ASEAN takes 12 per cent of our ­exports and provides 16 per cent of our imports.

People-to-people links are ­important and growing. Almost a million Australians have ASEAN ancestry. These figures can also be confusing because many of them would be people we also count as ethnic Chinese, and a smaller but still considerable number would be people we count as ethnic ­Indian. Nonetheless, a million Australians with Southeast Asian backgrounds is important.

And at any one time 100,000 or so ASEAN students help make our universities and other education institutions much wealthier, and incidentally more interesting, than they would otherwise be.

That you don’t hear much about these communities, either the immigrants or the students, is a telling sign of how successful they are, the populist right’s ­recent hysteria about immigration notwithstanding.

Turnbull’s summit will rightly have both security and economic dimensions.

There are also serious political considerations. Make no mistake, this is an important act of regional diplomacy by the Turnbull government. Our distracted political mess means no one is paying it proper attention.

The summit will bring a lot of ancillary benefits. The Vietnamese have worked hard on intensifying their relationship with Australia. This is partly an element of their hedge against China but it is much broader than that. Their prime minister will come early and have a bilateral visit as well.

The Singaporeans are chairing ASEAN this year and the summit is yet another example of the productive diplomatic partnership ­between Canberra and Singapore.

The summit will be a chance to host ASEAN leaders who don’t routinely visit Australia. Washington, and to a much lesser extent Canberra, made a tremendous strategic error in shunning much high-level contact with the Thai government after the military coup in 2014. This was a catastrophic mistake by the Obama administration. We maintained higher-level contacts than the Americans did but we too needlessly limited contacts. Thailand’s Prime Minister, retired general Prayut Chan-o-cha, has not visited Australia in his time in government. This is a failing by Australia. Thailand is a critically important regional country. If the ASEAN summit helps re-normalise Australia-Thai relations that is a very good thing indeed.

Similarly, it will be beneficial if The Philippines’ President, Rod­rigo Duterte, makes the trip. There is plenty to criticise about ­Duterte’s rule and he has many Australian critics. But he is the President of The Philippines, duly and democratically elected. The Philippines gets to choose its ­president, not us. It is a nation of 106 million people in the heart of Southeast Asia, with huge historical links to Australia and important to us in a multitude of ways. This summit can help in our relations with The Philippines.

Similarly, without the context of the ASEAN summit, it is difficult to imagine Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi visiting Australia just now. Yet these are all vital ­relationships for Australia that ­deserve not only government attention but a higher public profile.

Australia has practised good ­diplomacy with ASEAN. In 1974 we were the first official ASEAN dialogue partner. The only other nation to hold a summit quite like this was the US (though there was a “commemorative” ASEAN summit in India this year).

No doubt democracy is in something like retreat in Southeast Asia. That doesn’t make the region less important to us. We need to find ways to pursue our multiple Southeast Asian agendas. This summit is a big contribution.