Some have achieved stability and economic prosperity
Strong ruling parties in Southeast Asia are an obstacle to the Biden administration
The US Secretary of Defense restricted his tour to only some countries in the region.
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The short democratic experiment in Myanmar failed.
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The administration of President Joe Biden is trying to achieve three goals simultaneously, with regard to its relations with Asia.
It wants to complete the "transition to Asia", which began in the years of former US President Barack Obama, build stronger partnerships, and emphasize shared democratic values.
There is little tension between these three goals in Northeast Asia, where Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan remain US allies, as well as well-established democracies. But in Southeast Asia, where democratic partners are hard to come by, how can these goals be reconciled?
These tensions cannot be eliminated, but they can be overcome, and the starting point should be about humility, as it must be about how much America can hope for change in Southeast Asia, a region historically recalcitrant to pressure, and the accommodation of external democracy. .
Partnership with authoritarian regimes is inevitable if America wants partners in Southeast Asia.
From afar, Southeast Asia may look like ground zero in the 21st century struggle between democracy and dictatorship, and China's footprint in the region is increasing, while America's influence is receding. Southeast Asia appears precisely at the turbulent confluence of the rivalry between the United States and China, and the global competition between democratic and authoritarian rule.
Up close, Southeast Asia looks like nothing like that, and the region is preoccupied with the coronavirus, and mired in authoritarianism, and that makes it hard to find democratic partners to work with, not to mention Biden's argument that democracies will prove their merits for good governance over authoritarian regimes in the coming years. .
In one corner of Southeast Asia, Myanmar's fragile democratic experiment, which began in 2011, a rare democratic advance that coincided with the Obama years, has collapsed into another wave of brutal military rule.
Elsewhere, Southeast Asia's largest democracy is struggling so hard with the coronavirus that neither Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin nor Vice President Kamala Harris have been able to make the pivotal country in their Southeast Asia summer tour.
actors
Frankly, the only two countries that Austin and Harris included in their summer tours are not democratic at all: Singapore and Vietnam.
America does not share much with both countries, where the dominant parties have ruled uninterrupted and virtually unchallenged since the 1950s.
However, some authoritarian regimes make more rational and defensible partners for others.
Singapore and Vietnam are well suited to this, and when they are governed by powerful parties rather than by dominant armies or personal cults, as in both Singapore and Vietnam, authoritarian regimes can often enjoy significant local legitimacy, and can also produce impressive development results, Offer reliable partners to maintain the current peaceful international status quo.
Moreover, authoritarian ruling parties can lay a strong institutional foundation for peaceful and gradual democratic transitions.
Indeed, historically dominant ruling parties have been critical actors in shaping democracy in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.
To be sure, Southeast Asia's dominant parties do not fit Biden's democratic agenda today, but that may change tomorrow.
Unlike Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia was not a fertile democratic land. The democratic setback for the region came from 1976 to 1986, when Southeast Asia had no democracy, and this dark decade of democracy ushered in a brutal coup in Thailand.
History may prove that the recent coup in Myanmar marked the beginning of a similar dark wave in the 1920s.
Southeast Asia is also not inclined to follow the trends of global democracy, and the region's democratic fate was at its worst, a decade ago, when the prospects for global democracy were dramatically improving. Even as the third wave of democratization began spreading around the world, following the Portuguese Carnation Revolution, in 1974, Southeast Asia became more authoritarian across the board. In a sign of Southeast Asia's general resistance to broader democratization trends, the Portuguese Revolution did not bring new winds of liberation to Southeast Asia, but rather brought about the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, after it had been liberated from Portuguese occupation.
Even the end of the Cold War did not bring democratic gains, and there was a coup in Thailand (which was reversed) in 1991, and there was a coup in Cambodia, in 1997. The popular movements to overthrow dictators in the Philippines and Indonesia followed their own national rhythms, not the rhythms of the world.
Founded in 1986, "People Power" in the Philippines.
Reformasi erupted in Indonesia in 1998. These two countries followed a trend of democratic decline and erosion during the first decade of the 21st century.
partial steps
More recently, the darker trend in Southeast Asia, somewhat against the global trend, has been the re-emergence of outright military rule. Myanmar is the most visible example since the February coup. Since the last coup in 2014, the Thai military has taken only patchy and partial steps toward power-sharing with elected civilians. In Indonesia and the Philippines, too, elected civilian chiefs are, more than ever, relying on the military for their power against their opponents. The legacies of military politicization under the old authoritarian regimes loom in both countries.
Southeast Asia is also home to authoritarian regimes in which ruling parties, rather than ruling armies, lead the political scene. Under Hun Sen, Cambodia became more politically closed, after three decades in power. Malaysia appeared to be taking decisive democratic steps in 2018 by voting for its long-ruling party, but the old guard has never been dismissed, and appears poised to return. Then there are Singapore and Vietnam, the two longest-running authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia, the main targets of the Biden administration's regional strategy.
The ruling parties in Singapore and Vietnam are similar in both why and how they are governed, and both are deeply committed to political stability and national economic development, above all, regardless of the cost of political and civil liberties.
Of course, this means securing them for their survival in power, but that is not all it means.
The main reason why Singapore and Vietnam did not face significant internal opposition is not because they were so repressive, as authoritarian regimes do, because they were so successful in bringing peace and development to two countries that they sorely lacked.
The long Vietnam Wars lasted from 1945 to 1975, while Singapore experienced a turbulent period of decolonization, from 1945 to 1965. More than anywhere else in Southeast Asia, the ruling parties in Singapore and Vietnam secured a national monopoly on political legitimacy.
Partnership with the ruling parties
Partnership with ruling parties may seem like a blatant betrayal of the Biden administration's democratization agenda, but that should not be the case.
Asia's history of democratization is the history in which the powerful ruling parties gradually liberalized, because they saw that the risks of democratization were relatively low. If the opening of the political system would not destabilize the system or remove the ruling party from power, democratic reforms would become a reasonable step forward. This was the main story of democratization in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.
More recently, the darker trend in Southeast Asia, somewhat against the global trend, has been the re-emergence of outright military rule.
• Dan Slater... Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute
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