It was meant to be a sunny summit. Welcoming ASEAN’s leaders at the Sunnylands estate, President Obama said he had invited them to southern California, not cold and snowy Washington, to reciprocate the warm welcomes he had received in their own countries on his seven presidential trips to Southeast Asia. Appreciative laughter ensued.

Naturally Obama ignored the futility implied by the name of the city where Sunnylands sits: Rancho Mirage. But as a metaphor for ASEAN’s hopes of moderating China’s behavior in the South China Sea, and the summit’s efficacy in that regard, the name of the city is more apt than that of the estate. Rancho Mirage lies in the northern tip of the Sonoran Desert. In the driver’s seat on a desert road in the shimmering heat, ASEAN might be fooled into seeing a geopolitical oasis – a meaningful agreement with China on the South China Sea – finally near and achievable with continuing patience and faith in the “ASEAN Way” of regional diplomacy by consensus and declaration.

The Sunnylands Declaration, released on 16 February at the end of the two-day summit, lays out 17 principles to guide US-ASEAN cooperation going forward. The fifth of these reaffirms “respect and support for ASEAN Centrality and ASEAN-led mechanisms in the evolving regional architecture of the Asia-Pacific.”

On the day the declaration was announced, news broke that China had just deployed surface-to-air missile batteries on a land feature in the South China Sea controlled by China but also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan – Woody Island in the Paracels. So much for the efficacy of the declaration’s eighth principle of “shared commitment” to “non-militarization and self-restraint in the conduct of activities.”

After “activities,” the Sunnyland drafters could not even agree to add “in the South China Sea,” let alone mention China, its encompassing “nine-dash line,” or the dredging, up-building, and runway-laying that Beijing has being doing at a breakneck, unilateral, mind-your-own-business pace on the contested features that it controls. Missile launchers on Woody? Score another point for the “PRC Way” of creating lethal facts while the “ASEAN Way” drafts wishful norms.

To its credit, the summit did convey “shared commitment” to “freedom of navigation and overflight” in and above the South China Sea, and twice endorsed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. But those phrases will not soften China’s refusal to allow international rules to restrain its maritime ambitions.

The notion that announcing principles will change behavior is the main mirage that gained false credibility in Rancho Mirage, at least among Southeast Asians who are disposed to value lowest-common-denominator diplomacy. They hope that China will be influenced by ASEAN-propagated norms to moderate its maritime ambition and behavior.

More than a few of Obama’s guests at Sunnylands retain faith in a single should-be, will-be solution: a Code of Conduct, or COC, in the South China Sea. The declaration does not refer to this illusion. But allegiance to such a code was evident in conversations among participants at the summit and in interviews afterwards.

For well over a decade in Southeast Asia and beyond, diplomats have been discussing the need for a – still non-existent – COC. In 2002 China and the ASEAN governments did sign a Document on Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, or DOC  But its hortatory spirit and provisions were violated almost from the outset by nearly all six claimants – Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. China’s placement of missile launchers on Woody Island, cheekily on the eve of the Sunnylands summit, was but the latest nail in the DOC’s coffin.

China and the ASEAN states undertook in the DOC “to exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability” in the South China Sea. China’s leaders could have observed this principle. Instead they chose to bully Manila and Hanoi, respectively, by seizing Scarborough Shoal and stationing a huge oil rig in waters claimed by Vietnam. They chose to harass and expel Southeast Asians from a vast nine-sided fishing zone unilaterally drawn and appropriated for China’s own priority use. They chose to complicate and escalate disputes, damage peace, and cause instability by unilaterally enlarging, outfitting, and militarizing land features under Beijing’s contested control in a manner that dwarfs in scale and lethality the up-building efforts of other claimants.

It is not in China’s expansionist interest to implement a mere declaration, the DOC. Still less attractive in Beijing’s eyes is a code with teeth – a COC whose enforcing mechanism might actually punish violations. To encourage delay, Beijing insists that the DOC must be implemented first, before a COC can be drawn up and signed. To avoid commitment and to maximize the divide et impera asymmetry of separate bilateral talks between China and each Southeast Asian claimant, Beijing calls the discussions with ASEAN “consultations,” not “negotiations.”

In 2004 China did agree with the ASEAN states to establish a Joint Working Group on the Implementation of the DOC. In October 2015 in Chengdu, China, the group met for the 15th time. Afterwards, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman assured listeners that the participants had reaffirmed “their commitment to fully and effectively implementing the DOC” and their readiness “to “work toward the early conclusion of a COC on the basis of consensus” [emphasis added].

In Southeast Asia, views of China’s behavior range from acquiescence (Cambodia, Laos) to antipathy (the Philippines, Vietnam). Manipulating this dissensus helps China ensure that the mirage of a COC remains in sight, motivating ASEAN, but continues to recede, protecting China.

ASEAN’s faith in its own centrality and the validation of that credence in Rancho Mirage reinforce passivity and complacence in Southeast Asia, including the idea that because ASEAN is indispensable, it need not be united, proactive, or original.

Southeast Asian officials and analysts who excuse ASEAN’s inertia argue that the grouping isn’t a government; China’s not that much of a threat; and geography has, after all, put China permanently next door. Coaxing the four Southeast Asian claimants to settle their own overlapping claims, some say, is just too hard to do. Brainstorming alleviations and ameliorations, let alone solutions, for the South China Sea? That’s too daunting as well. Isn’t the problem really a Sino-American struggle for power? Why get involved? Why not prolong the happy combination of American ships for deterrence and Chinese markets for profit? China’s leaders at least say that they want an eventual COC. Why not keep believing in that and them and avoid rocking the boat?

By its actions, China is signaling its intent to dominate some, most, or all of the South China Sea – the heartwater of Southeast Asia. If and when China manages to coopt and cow the ASEAN states into deference and resignation, Beijing will likely “disinvite” the US Navy from accessing what China controls. If this happens, the “Centrality” of ASEAN that was lauded in Rancho Mirage will have merited that city’s name, and China’s centrality will be all too real.

Donald Emmerson is director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

This article was originally carried by YaleGlobal Online on Feb. 23, 2016, and reposted with permission.

Writing recently for the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), Stanford scholar Donald Emmerson analyzed China’s stance on the South China Sea in the context of remarks given by Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi at a bilateral dialogue in Washington, D.C. on June 24.

The rise of China as a global and regional power has created areas where the interests of China and the United States overlap in competition, the senior U.S. military commander in the Pacific told a Stanford audience. But Admiral Samuel Locklear III, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), rejected the traditional realpolitik argument, which predicts inevitable confrontation between the United States, a status quo power, and China, a rising power.

“Historians will say this will lead to conflict,” Locklear said, during an address at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center last Friday. “I don’t believe it has to.”

The United States and China have a “mutual skepticism of each other,” the Pacific Commander acknowledged, but he characterized the relationship as “collaborative, generally.”

He said the dangers of direct military confrontation between the two powers is low, but warned against Chinese tendencies to perceive the United States as engaged in an effort to ‘contain’ the expansion of China’s influence. Instead, Locklear urged China to work with the United States to build new security and economic structures in the region.

Economic interdependence between the countries makes it impossible for the two countries to avoid working together, he told the seminar, co-sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

He said that China has also benefited from the security environment that the United States has helped shape and maintain in the region.

Locklear reminded the audience of the central importance of the vast area under his command, which stretches from the Indian subcontinent across the vast Pacific Ocean. More than nine out of 10 of the largest ports in the world are in the Asia-Pacific region, and over 70 percent of global trade passes through its waters. The U.S. rebalance to Asia, a policy pursued by the Obama administration as early as year 2009, largely happened because of the economic and political importance of that area.

The mutual interest in economic prosperity depends, however, on a stable security environment. Washington has an interest in maintaining the structure of security that has ensured peace for the last few decades. Beijing seeks to change the status quo, to build a regional system that reflects its growth as a power.

Locklear called on China to work with the United States and other nations in the region, such as Japan and Australia, as well as the countries of Southeast Asia, to take the current “patchwork quilt” of bilateral and multilateral alliances and build a basis to maintain economic interdependence and security. He pointed to the U.S.-led effort to form a Trans-Pacific Partnership as a 12-nation economic structure, which could eventually include China.

“We want China to be a net security contributor,” he said, “And my sense is that both the United States and the nations on the periphery of China are willing to allow China to do that – but with circumstances.” He said conditions for the United States included open access to shared domains in sea, air, space and cyberspace.

The Pacific Commander cautioned against the danger, however, of unintended conflict, fueled by territorial disputes and Chinese assertiveness that worries its neighbors. Locklear stressed the need for more dialogue, including among the militaries in the region, an effort that the U.S. Pacific Command is currently carrying out.

“There’s a trust deficit in Asia among the nations, as it relates in particular to China,” he said.

Relations have been so icy that the top political leaders of Japan and China didn’t meet for nearly two years, only breaking the divide for a 20-minute meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit (APEC) in Beijing last month.

Refusing to engage at the highest level has made it difficult for countries to work on solutions to shared problems. The region now sees a confluence of old and new challenges that could threaten global stability if ill-managed, said Locklear, who has led the U.S. military command in the Pacific since 2012.                 

For decades, China and Japan have been at odds about sovereignty claims over islands in the East China Sea. In the past, during the time of Deng Xiaoping’s rule in China, the two countries agreed to, as Deng reportedly put it, ‘kick the issue into the tall grass’ for future generations to deal with it. These disputes have resurfaced in recent years, threatening to trigger armed conflict between the air and naval forces of the two countries.

Locklear said he believed that China and Japan would avoid inadvertent escalation, thanks to improved communications and tight command and control over their forces. But he also warned  that at least seven nations have conflicting claims in the South China Sea, which could easily escalate into direct conflict.

These situations, paired with an upsurge in Chinese military spending and the growing belief that the United States is a declining power, raise doubts about China’s intentions in the region. China’s Asian neighbors increasingly question the intensions of the world’s most populous nation, and second largest economy.

“Is it a return to the old days where you had basic tributary states? Is that the model that China is looking for? Or is it a 21^st century model?”

Locklear said China and other nations in the Asia-Pacific, as well as the United States, need to work harder to form shared views and consensus, particularly among those who “own the guns.”

Dialogue and interactions among the militaries are crucial, especially those who are called upon to make quick decisions during a possible flashpoint, for instance an accidental clash of boats or planes.

“Trust really does fall in many ways to military leaders to get it right and to lead, to some degree, the politicians and the diplomats,” he said. Locklear spoke of a tangible example of collaboration in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise, also known as RIMPAC, hosted by USPACOM. Twenty-two countries participate in the world’s largest maritime warfare exercise in Hawaii, which this year included naval forces from China.

“Does it fix those friction points? No, it doesn’t.” But, Locklear concluded, “We hope that this kind of thing opens the door for future interaction.”

The audio file and transcript from the event can be accessed by clicking here. 

Eyes remain focused on Indonesia as votes for candidates Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto are counted in the country’s landmark presidential election.

On Wednesday, the polls reflected a precariously even divide between Widodo, also referred to as "Jowoki," the governor of Jakarta, and Prabowo, an ex-general and son-in-law of the country’s former dictator Suharto. Initial polls show Jowoki holds a slight lead, but the government has yet to declare an outright winner, with neither side conceding at the moment. 

Donald Emmerson, director of the Southeast Asia Forum at Shorenstein APARC, answers a few questions about the election and what it could mean for Indonesia’s fledging democracy.

This election will transfer power from incumbent president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the first to lead the country since its democratic transition. Is this election a turning point for Indonesia?

It is. It is only the third direct presidential election in the history of Indonesia. The first two, in 2004 and 2009, yielded landslide victories for Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), giving him two consecutive presidential terms as president. His large margins of victory were, in effect, incontestable. In contrast, the presidential election on 9 July is being sharply contested, based on various "quick count" estimates of who won and by how much. Some of those estimates say that Joko Widodo ("Jokowi") has won. A smaller number of estimates assign victory to his opponent, Prabowo Subianto. These estimated margins of "quick count" success by one candidate over the other are typically small: the differences run between 1 and 5 percent.

These small margins asserted on behalf of contradictory outcomes have politicized the voting-and-counting procedure and stimulated fears of fraud. Prabowo in particular appears to be challenging the legitimacy of a possible win by Jokowi when the official result is announced. That announcement is scheduled to be made by the General Elections Commission on 22 July.

If the official margin of victory is very slender, whether for Jokowi or for Prabowo, the losing campaign could request a ruling on the matter by the Constitutional Court. If the request is taken up by the court, another month could elapse before a legal judgment is issued. Under this alarming if hypothetical scenario, Indonesia's political future could remain in a prolonged limbo conducive to major unrest. 

Given that the polls reflect a tightly contested race, will the losing party accept defeat?

Who knows? It will depend on what happens. That said, there are powerful reasons to believe that the loser, whoever he is, will think twice before taking his case to the streets. The onus on such vengeance as endangering Indonesia's fledgling democracy would be great. We also need to remember that if, as many expect, the election commission (and perhaps, later, the Constitutional Court) validates Jokowi as the next president, he is likely to face a parliamentary majority that supported Prabowo. Indeed, only 37 percent of the seats in the main national legislature are occupied by members of parties that endorsed Jokowi. If Prabowo is declared the loser, and the evidence of electoral malfeasance is absent or minor, Prabowo may accept having lost if he knows he can retain substantial influence over national policy while preparing for another presidential run in 2019. 

Both candidates campaigned on widespread platforms that called for reform in many areas ­– from energy to anti-corruption. What issues are Indonesians most concerned about?

Basically, poverty and corruption. But many Indonesians allocate their votes based less on policy distinctions than on the personalities of the candidates. Prabowo's ability to catch up with Jokowi in popularity during the campaign reflects in no small measure his more charismatic and commanding personality in contrast to Jokowi's relatively lackluster performance.

What steps can the next administration take to keep Indonesia from slipping back to its authoritarian past?

The two candidates are very different in this regard. Prabowo is a former general. He has been implicated in major violations of human rights. He is linked to the autocratic regime that preceded Indonesia's current democratic experiment. One can imagine many steps that Prabowo could take as president to nudge Indonesia back onto its former authoritarian track. He has already said that direct elections are not good for Indonesia.  

As for Jokowi, were he to become president, his task would be to achieve a level of probity and progress in Indonesia sufficient to convince the country that democracy can be effective not just in theory but in practice as well.

Emmerson also spoke about the election with Deutsche Welle on 16 July, and the Voice of America on 9 July.

Over 215 million Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region, but despite their number and proximity to record growth and opportunity in greater Asia, their experience has been one of persistent, widespread socioeconomic and political decline. 

A new book, Modes of Engagement: Muslim Minorities in Asia, published by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and distributed through The Brookings Institution, offers leading research on this topic and places it in a geographic perspective. Edited by Rafiq Dossani, a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation and Professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School of Public Policy, the book paves new paths to understanding the paradox of Muslim minorities in Asia. 

Dossani was at Stanford University for nearly fifteen years as a senior research scholar at Shorenstein APARC and as the executive director of the South Asia Initiative, studying the plight of Muslims and higher education in India, among other topics. The book is a result of a seminar series with the book’s contributors.

“Since the 1970s, especially in China, Asia’s growth rate has been unprecedented within Asia’s own history,” Dossani says. Mainstream Asia has seen a rise in job opportunities and income levels, and as a result, an individual ability to accumulate wealth and commit resources to long-term investments, such as education and innovation activities.

However, not all people have found benefit from this modern, economic transformation. Most notably, Muslims have seen a severe decline in their social and political space, as well as a narrowing of their identity.

Analysts find this surprising because history reflects a narrative that says Muslims should have profited along with the rest. “It wasn’t expected that Muslims would lose out in the countries in which they were minorities,” he says.

The volume investigates this puzzle through three case studies: the Philippines, India, and China. In each country, Muslims are at least 5 percent of the population, the largest number being in India. Dossani weaves together common threads that define the Muslim minority experience. Similarities include the impact of state-led ethnic nationalism and forced assimilation. He also writes that Muslims have been unable to use protest to secure any significant, long-term gains.

Given this dire reality, what prospects lie ahead for Muslim minorities? In conversation, Dossani suggests a few policy priorities gathered from the case studies featured in the volume.

Democracy is not the answer

Democracy, a form of governance that is often championed for its equal civic participation, has not facilitated a level playing field for Muslims when theory dictates it should.

“Democracy is not the answer to handling these problems,” says Dossani, emphasizing, “it is a most inadequate answer.”

This situation is evident in the case of India where Muslims have probably done the worst, compared to the Philippines, which also shares a legacy of colonial rule and transition to democracy.

Muslims in India, who have attempted to elevate their interests on the national stage, are stopped by coalition politics. Larger interests of the group can subsume their own, encroached upon further by caste issues, language barriers and other dividing factors. China’s Hui have found a significantly better experience than the Uyghurs, who were separated from mainland China early on and excluded from opportunities afforded there (the Uyghurs reside in a northwest region, Xinjiang). In the case of India, Muslims make up only ten to fifteen percent of the population in almost every state, thus their voice fails to find leverage in the political sphere, and effectively lose out.

Furthermore, democracy is not a panacea when states are vulnerable.

“When you have very weak and fragile states, where intuitions are subject to capture easily, democracy doesn’t work,” Dossani explains. Muslim minorities are unable to gain clout because the majorities, and elites attempting to fill a power vacuum, crowd them out.

Thus, collective interest and concerted efforts on the part of governmental and non-governmental organizations – a larger nexus of individuals working toward common goals – are essential to create momentum and staying power behind Muslim issues.

“You need civil society where it explicitly deals with the issues of minority populations and tries to convince the national government and state governments that improving the lots of minorities should be a national project with commitment to their improvement,” he says.

Development as a way forward

Some national projects were developed to openly address Muslim issues, but this led other internal ethnic and religious groups to ask, “Why are you appeasing the Muslims?”

Especially since 9/11, governments have increasingly come under pressure. Stigmas that narrow Muslim identity into “extremists” and “terrorists” are more progressively shared, making it near impossible for governments to explicitly offer a helping hand to Muslims without domestic backlash. 

But even with the odds against them, Muslim minorities still have a way forward.

In the three countries studied, Muslims have found traces of success, and in other Asian nations such as Sri Lanka and Nepal, there has been considerable accommodation of Muslims. Across all circumstances, “Muslims have done best in countries where the state has focused on education for all,” Dossani says.

Instead of providing ethnic-based aid, governments should focus on resource availability as a main qualifier for assistance. State-sponsored education and health care initiatives that capture the poorest populations help Muslims who inherently fall into this category. 

“Any wise government would say ‘look we want to connect education to development and focus on the poorest, no matter who they are.’ If they do that, Muslims will automatically get their fair share,” he says. The Philippines has already recognized this reality, and begun to implement development projects that naturally include Muslims.

Regime change can also motivate Muslim accommodation, either directly or indirectly, as is likely in the case of India.

Newly appointed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, although said to have an anti-Islamic stance in the past with the Bharatiya Janata Party, may in fact create policies that favor Muslims because it fits in with a grander vision of national growth. 

Referring to Prime Minister Modi, Dossani says, “It’s not clear that he cares about Muslims, but in some ways, he cares about development.

“At some point, any development-conscious person will realize that no country can progress if 15 percent of the country hangs behind.”

Diaspora matters

The swell of migration in the globalized era has made the formation of diaspora communities, dispersed populations outside of country of origin, a common phenomenon. Muslim minorities are a large part of this movement, seeking opportunity and using their ethnic or religious connections to establish a new life elsewhere.

Muslims of Asian origin are located beyond Asia – in the Middle East, North Africa and Southern Europe, among other areas. But despite being removed from their native soil, an allegiance and interest in the homeland typically remains.

“Diaspora exists in a very big way,” Dossani explains. Their influence should not be underestimated, both financially and politically. The Muslim diaspora provides an important channel of support that helps struggling Muslim populations.

Remittances from relatives overseas can bring in substantial transfers of money and support to populations that may not otherwise have enough resources, or be supported by the government. For several years now, one of the single largest inflows of money into the Philippines has been from these outside sources. India’s Muslim diaspora has a strong diasporan foundation with codified institutions set-up to organize relations. China’s experience is less documented, Dossani says, although he conjectures that some diasporan support exists, whether formally or informally.

Diaspora organizations, often led and supported by expatriates, appear to be growing worldwide, and can play a crucial role in the formation of Muslims’ global identity and network of support. Neighboring countries with Muslim majorities, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, have also offered themselves as diplomatic partners in resolving conflicts over Muslims’ conditions, given their own long histories of addressing them internally.