GCC and ASEAN: Charting Out the Horizon

Mohammed Al-Sudairi

The GCC-ASEAN relationship, particularly in its bilateral manifestations, has showed significant growth and promise over the last few decades as we have detailed in earlier installments of this series.  Not surprisingly, this growth has been reproduced at the inter-regional level as well. GCC-ASEAN trade alone has jumped from $30 billion in 2003 to $143.7 billion in 2013, with a total 11 percent of GCC exports in 2013 heading to the ASEAN bloc (Singapore and Thailand taking the lion's share as LNG and hydrocarbon consumers) and the GCC emerging as a destination for 6 percent of total ASEAN exports.1 These developments can be accounted for by the inherent structural complementarities - economic and strategic in nature -that are to be found in this inter-regional relationship and which have come to define both its present and potential forms of interaction. The GCC bloc, with a cumulative GDP of $1.7 trillion, has functioned as a vital source of energy, remittances, and FDI for the ASEAN region's growing and energy-hungry economies.2 The ASEAN bloc, by contrast, with a $2.4 trillion GDP, has become a critical "economic frontier" for the GCC given its position as a dependable consumer market (industrializing, urbanizing, and with a population totaling 620 million) with positive long-term prospects based on a sustained GDP growth of 5.7 percent between 2000 and 2014 which shows no signs of abating and a planned unified "ASEAN community" market by the end of 2015. Besides, the ASEAN region is a source for importing primary resources (with ramifications to the objectives of GCC food security) as well as labor (with millions of Filipino and Indonesian expatriates scattered across the Gulf countries), an outlet for "petrodollar" investments and the development of nascent sectors such as Islamic banking (Saudi Arabia and Malaysia between them hold almost $682 billion in Islamic finance assets as of 2014), not to mention its role as a logistical/redistribution center for the GCC towards other markets in the Asia-Pacific.3 A GCC-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is under negotiation and will likely help consolidate many of these economic ties. It will probably be modeled on the GCC-Singapore FTA, signed in 2009, which entered its enforcement stage earlier this year.4

Beyond these economic-strategic variables, there are various linguistic, cultural, and religious transnational links - 40 percent of the ASEAN bloc population professes Islam - between the two regions which strengthen these economic dynamics and offer the GCC considerable soft power and strategic room to maneuver. This can be discerned in the favorable visa policies extended to GCC citizens, the general ease with which Gulf charities and religious organizations function there, bilateral and collective-level cooperation on common ideational issues in international forums such as the OIC, MWL and UN, and even in certain instances, a willingness to enter into "special" security arrangements out of an ideational solidarity (for example, Malaysia's participation in the Saudi coalition against the Houthis in Yemen).5 Likewise, ASEAN - though less in terms of the cultural/religious transnational links - enjoys a degree of soft power among the GCC states through the developmental and institutional models of its member states such as Singapore, the ASEAN organization's relative successes in maintain its coherence and attaining some of its economic-strategic goals despite the diversity and competitiveness of its members, and its potential as a possible "alternative" to both the traditional powers in the West and the rising powers of the East (mostly in relation to Indonesia, one of the world's most populous Muslim states).6

These economic and ideational connectivities - aside from a wider geopolitical context - have laid the groundwork for a more consolidated political relationship between the GCC and ASEAN. Organizational ties were first established in 1990, in part due to Omani initiative but also more or less in tandem with the new global shifts that took place in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse.7 This coincided roughly with the regularization of annual side-meetings between GCC and ASEAN foreign ministers at the UN, a development that also paved the way for more direct secretariat-level ties with the inauguration of permanent mission offices by 2000 of ASEAN in Riyadh and the GCC in Jakarta. This was followed in 2009 with the formalization of the biennial GCC-ASEAN Ministerial Meetings, a mechanism that has attempted to infuse a more "substantive cooperative relationship between the two organizations."8 The creation of these channels were part of a wider effort to gradually institutionalize the GCC-ASEAN relationship, a process that has also been bolstered by the conclusion of various memorandums and action plans, the formation of several sectoral working groups for education, culture and information, food security, energy, tourism and so on, the convening of official roundtables and workshops, and the accreditation of GCC ambassadors to the ASEAN secretariat.9 Other organizational channels have also been utilized by both sides to enhance inter-regional cooperation, including the Asian Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), the Asia-Africa Sub-Regional Organizations Cooperation (AASROC), the Chinese Boao Forum (Hainan), and the Singapore-backed Asia-Middle East Dialogue, among others.10

These economic, cultural, and political developments - have come to shape the course of the GCC-ASEAN relationship over the last two decades and have fed into optimistic readings about its future trajectory. Although considerable progress has been made, it is worth highlighting some of the persistent challenges and hurdles that have limited both sides from realizing the full potential of the GCC-ASEAN relationship. These debilitating elements are diverse in nature and, in some instances, beyond the ability of concerned policymakers to address. Global structural changes, for example, are impacting the traditional logic of complementarity in GCC-ASEAN economic ties in so far as an energy "buyer's market" predominates, global growth is decelerating with recent developments in China, and falling hydrocarbon revenues translate into a declining capacity to invest in "economic frontiers" such as ASEAN. In addition, localized political turbulence can and does "distract" the two parties from devoting further capital into these nascent regional ties. The GCC's growing security challenges in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal and its involvement in various military campaigns across the Middle East (coalitions against the Houthis in Yemen and ISIS to the north) have forced it to re-direct its diplomatic energy towards other areas, although these security issues have also offered new opportunities for some countries like Malaysia and Indonesia to develop closer military-strategic ties with the GCC.11 Political upheaval in ASEAN member states such as Thailand and the growing maritime confrontation with China have side-tracked the bloc in terms of its organizational focus. Yet there are certain issues that are within the capacity of GCC political elites to resolve beyond particular matters of contention like that between Saudi Arabia and Thailand.

To begin with, despite considerable efforts at institutionalization and formalization, little effort has been allotted towards developing and creating a GCC-based knowledge producing infrastructure. That is to say, there are no universities or think tanks in the Gulf dedicated to studying and formulating policy with regard to ASEAN or, for that matter, the states of the wider Asia-Pacific region. This was noted by Michael Hudson a few years ago and remains a persistent problem that continues to undermine the quality and depth of GCC engagement in the region, and circumscribes the ability of its member states to capture the available opportunities on the ground effectively.12 Arguably, this characterizes nearly all forms of GCC inter-regional diplomacy, but its interaction with the West, for instance, is alleviated somewhat by the considerable cultural and political familiarity the Gulf's elite posses with regard to the United States and Europe. None of this exists in relation to ASEAN, leading to superficial analysis, miscommunication, and an inability to construct operative strategies there that serve GCC interests. There is thus a pressing need to professionalize and transform traditional Gulf approaches, and a key component toward achieving this is by building a knowledge producing infrastructure. Given that this is a process which would take considerable lengths of time to realize, one potential - but certainly temporary - solution is to emphasize regional specializations and region-specific language skills within GCC diplomatic establishments.

Coupled with this is the need to adopt a more public-oriented approach by the GCC that stresses cooperation and engagement with local ASEAN civil society, academia, and political groups. This does exist to a degree but remains limited to a leveraging of religious soft power that is increasingly becoming problematic in nature. Saudi Arabia's links with Salafi groups as well as its promotion of both anti-Shia (mostly with Iran in mind) and anti-Ahmadi discourses have had a damaging effect on local societies and have contributed to a slow erosion of its traditional soft power there.13 This is not to suggest that the GCC should refrain from utilization of religious links, but rather that it must refine it by abjuring sectarian approaches and expanding the radius of groups and individuals it is willing to engage with. Engagement with civil society, moreover, cannot be understated: ASEAN member states are largely democratic polities with considerable popular participation from their populations which can - and do - exercise pressures on GCC-ASEAN relations. Indonesia's recent decision to impose a ban on sending domestic workers to the GCC states (among 21 Middle Eastern countries) comes as a response to popular outcry over Saudi Arabia's execution of several Indonesian maidservants.14 This could have been avoided if there was far more sensitivity and responsiveness on the part of GCC elites to the political realities in ASEAN as well as public sentiment and media. In this context, the need for greater communication with local NGOs, promoting scholarly and non-government exchanges between the two regions, and establishing long-term ties with local think tanks and research institutions must be emphasized. This should not be misconstrued as simply a call for the GCC to pursue public relations campaigns with the sole purpose of "damage control"; rather, there is a pressing need to engage and address public concerns in the ASEAN countries as opposed to simply dismissing them as unimportant or, more problematically, taking them for granted. Moreover, this should be connected to reform platforms back in the Gulf wherein this type of engagement - in relation to the state of laborers for example - can help create new, more egalitarian and protective structures that end the systemic legal abuses of expatriate workers and ensure the continuation of mutually beneficial relations.15   

(Mohammed Al-Sudairi is Researcher, Gulf Research Center)