Ukraine invasion: Singapore’s condemnation aside, rest of Asean’s ambivalence is ‘shocking’
- Singapore, Indonesia condemn Russia’s assault; Malaysia ‘sad’; Vietnam wants diplomacy; Philippines, Thailand focus on their nationals; Myanmar’s junta backs Putin
- Southeast Asia, which has long called for big nations to respect international law, now seems largely silent. Oil and the South China Sea partly explain why. But silence has a cost too
Diplomatic observers say despite Russia’s shallow trade and investment exposure in the region, governments are exercising caution in condemning the aggression as they mull the long-term costs of their response.
The Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jnr on Friday tweeted that he would travel to Ukraine’s border with Poland to ensure the safety of Filipinos fleeing the Eastern European country.
The National Unity Government, which is challenging the legitimacy of junta rule, condemned Russia’s actions for undermining the United Nations charter and international law.
Timidity ‘hurts national interests’
Those calls rang hollow if countries did not expressly condemn Russia’s current aggression, Southeast Asia security expert Zachary Abuza suggested.
Russia’s actions, Abuza said, violated the foundations of international law, peace and security – the inviolability of state sovereignty.
“Putin’s ‘doctrine of limited sovereignty’ gives him the authority to stage a full-scale invasion against a sovereign state to install a malleable government, based on very flimsy historical claims and assertions of cultural affinity,” Abuza said.
Ian Storey, a veteran scholar of Southeast Asian diplomacy, suggested countries probably had an eye on issues of national importance for which they needed to remain in Russia’s good books.
Vietnam, for instance, faced an increasingly assertive China in the disputed South China Sea and needed to keep Russia “on side”, said Storey, a senior fellow with the Iseas-Yusof Ishak think tank.
“It’s not surprising, therefore, that Vietnam has not condemned the invasion but only called for a diplomatic solution to resolve the crisis,” Storey said.
Storey said Hun Sen was unlikely to “criticise a fellow autocrat like Putin”.
Firmer stance by Indonesia, Singapore
Analysts were far less scathing of Indonesia, which along with Singapore chastised the attack as unacceptable. Jakarta’s considered response was underscored by its decision not to name Russia in its statement.
“The attack on Ukraine is unacceptable. Moreover, the attack puts the people’s lives in grave danger and threatens regional as well as global peace and stability,” the foreign ministry said.
In Singapore, officials were quick to highlight the invasion as a cautionary tale for the island republic, which gained independence from Malaysia in 1965 and has endured tensions with Indonesia in the past.
In its statement on Thursday, the Singaporean foreign ministry said it was “gravely concerned” by Russia’s actions and that it “strongly condemns any unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country under any pretext”.
Also offering tough language was the defence minister Ng Eng Hen, who wrote on Facebook that it was “hard to reconcile this aggression after experiencing nearly 80 years of relative peace”.
Dylan Loh, a Singapore foreign policy scholar, said the republic’s vocal stance – in contrast with its neighbours – was consistent with its past diplomatic conduct as a small state.
“Small powers that are primarily reliant on diplomacy, international laws and norms rather than might for its foreign policy must speak out whenever territorial aggression happens to register how ‘might’ cannot make ‘right’,” said Loh, an assistant professor at the Nanyang Technological University.
The US magazine Foreign Policy this week reported that Washington had received support from Singapore, Japan and Taiwan to implement “restrictive export controls” on Moscow. The Singapore government has not commented on the matter.
But apart from the city state, Storey said he did not envisage other Southeast Asian countries joining the West in imposing economic sanctions on Russia. “Regional states generally eschew economic sanctions unless they are UN-mandated, and in this case that won’t happen as Russia has a veto,” he said.
Loh agreed, saying he believed that if countries were to back the Western sanctions, it was unlikely to “amount to much but the moral and normative signals would be clear and perhaps that is the more important point”.