Even in today’s geopolitically contested environment, few could disagree with the goal advocated by Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong: conflict prevention.
As Wong put it in a speech this month in Malaysia on the sidelines of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meetings, “our objective is to prevent conflict, preserve peace and maintain the agency of all countries in our region.”
Wong has a longstanding interest in the theme of conflict prevention, but as a more fleshed out diplomatic agenda, this work has crystallised over the past 18 months through a series of speeches. A branch within DFAT’s Defence and National Security Policy Division now also supports this effort.
Reading Wong’s speeches, the following points stand out:
- The conflict prevention agenda is not framed as focused on any single potential conflict, but Wong’s elaboration of conflict prevention from last week is embedded in a discussion about intensifying great power competition. She has also urged the United States and China to develop guardrails for their competition and maintain communication.
- Conflict prevention is about deterrence as well as reassurance, and so provides a conceptual underpinning for Australia’s efforts to provide transparency about the investment it is making through AUKUS (a point made by Wong in her April 2024 speech to the National Security College).
- The early practical focus of the initiative appears to be on ASEAN and Southeast Asian countries (at the 2024 ASEAN-Australia Summit in Melbourne, Wong said “we want to support ASEAN member states to ensure, collectively, we all have the practical tools we need to be able to rapidly and effectively deescalate tensions and crises”).
- The initiative does not aim to establish new architecture of new institutions, but to encourage ASEAN to look at how existing mechanisms such as the ASEAN Regional Forum or the East Asia Summit can be more effective. In this sense, it is focused on preventing conflict between countries, rather than addressing internal conflicts, like that in Myanmar.
- Activities funded or pursued under this agenda aim to move from non-government discussions (for example, a Track 2 ASEAN-Australia workshop in January 2024) towards more officials-level talks. A Track 1.5 (meaning officials and non-government experts) discussion was held in December 2024 and a Track 1 workshop (meaning officials only) with representation from East Asia Summit countries is planned for September, to be co-hosted with Malaysia and Indonesia.
An insightful paper published by three Australian experts (Rory Medcalf, Huong Le Thu and Bec Strating) titled “Preventing conflict in our region: Options for Australian statecraft” aims to inject momentum to this agenda. It focuses on using existing ASEAN-centred mechanisms and recommends a mix of 1.5 and 2 track dialogues, as well as cooperation with important partners including Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Japan and Indonesia.
Neither ASEAN, nor its members, have any ability to prevent major power conflict.
A reading of recent summit outcomes documents suggests that Australia diplomatic spadework in support of Wong’s agenda has been effective. It’s notable that recent chair statements, from last year’s leaders’ summit in Laos, and this year’s East Asia Summit in Malaysia, have positively referenced Australia’s conflict prevention work. More importantly, last week’s ASEAN foreign ministers’ joint communiqué (a negotiated statement requiring consensus among all members) flagged that Australia and ASEAN would issue a joint leaders’ statement on conflict prevention and crisis management later this year. This is a strong signal that Australia’s agenda is gaining traction in ASEAN, although support from the wider East Asia Summit, which includes China and Russia would be much harder. Given the importance of partnership with Indonesia on this topic, it is also noteworthy that the recent leaders’ statement from Albanese’s visit to Jakarta positively referenced Australia’s ongoing work with ASEAN on conflict prevention and Indonesia has agreed to co-host a workshop in September.
Australia’s achievement in gaining traction on the conflict prevention agenda in ASEAN should not be underestimated. But it also raises a conceptual question. If the most pressing risk we are worried about is conflict between the United States and China, then why develop an agenda targeted at Southeast Asia, particularly one that appears to emphasise ASEAN?
ASEAN remains a valuable platform for diplomatic engagement, and certainly better than any alternative that would replace it. It can also play a role in setting norms (its recent strong statement against protectionism being one example). And the history of ASEAN is rooted in the idea of building trust between neighbours, including between those with complex historical tensions. But neither ASEAN, nor its members, have any ability to prevent major power conflict.
Nor do they think they do. In a landmark 2019 speech, then Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong set out his country’s concerns about the risk of US-China conflict. “Small states like Singapore,” Lee said, “can do little to influence the big powers, but we are not entirely without agency.” Tellingly, his speech directed the focus away from admonishing or encouraging the major powers and towards the more practical cooperation, and neutral convening space, for example on trade and economic cooperation, that ASEAN is well-suited to providing.
But even if the initiative doesn’t contribute greatly to the hugely ambitious goal of lowering the risk of catastrophic conflict in Asia, it could still be judged a success by other measures. Wong is encouraging Southeast Asian countries to exercise their “agency”, meaning to speak more robustly about their expectations of the major powers, and to inject new life into existing ASEAN mechanisms. Australia’s diplomacy in this context could be seen as a kind of “pep talk” to shape the political culture of the region, supporting the Philippines, and encouraging against the type of fatalistic thinking that is common elsewhere in Southeast Asia (proverbs about elephants trampling mice are popular).
The conflict prevention agenda can also be understood as a new conceptual framing for Australia’s current security cooperation with Southeast Asian countries. It’s notable that Wong’s recent speech referred to various examples of Australia’s current security cooperation with Southeast Asia in the context of conflict prevention. If this gets traction with ASEAN, conflict prevention could be a useful brand for Australia, providing a clear and positive articulation of its approach to the region’s current geopolitical challenges.
