On October 10th, 2022, the Centre on Asia and Globalisation hosted the festival of ideas and held a session on Making and Maintaining the International Order: What Asians want. Guest speakers included Kanti Bajpai, Evan Laksmana, Dylan Loh and Sarah Teo.
This panel spoke on the Centre on Asia and Globalisation’s project on “Asian Conceptions and Practices of International Order.”
Dr. Bajpai spoke on the Asian conception of order and brought perspectives from India, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore. He argued how the liberal international order (LIO) was neither liberal nor international and had a gap in theory and practice. In theory, the LIO vouched for territorial sovereignty, universal rules, multilateralism and post-1945 organisations. In practice, however, it had conditional sovereignty and guided multilateralism and organisations to benefit the US and its allies. He argued that what Asians wanted was a return to the original ILO, which matches with practice.
Dr. Loh covered the rules-based international order and Singapore. The term rules-based international order was used in 2016. He argued that Singapore’s elite-driven process involved bridge-building practices wherein Singapore was positioned as a bridge between East and West, i.e. a neutral ground for mediation. Further, it emphasised ASEAN’s role in the regional order and de-emphasised the liberal aspects to adapt to the domestic context. He also covered alternative readings of the Liberal International Order in Singapore through former officials, public intellectuals, political parties and foreign influence.
Dr. Laksmana spoke on joint military exercises and the regional order in Asia. He covered the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the same. Within the former, he argued that it was more developed with the United States and Australia and with Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia becoming regional hubs. His qualitative findings included domestic drivers and resources, capacity building, benchmarking and signalling. According to Dr Laksmana, the implications of the same include certain membership benefits and network quality as well as multiple pathways to developing a regional order.
Dr. Teo covered ASEAN’s vision of the regional order. She spoke on ASEAN’s joint military exercises and the functional and practical turn it took in the 2000s.
She argued that ASEAN’s preferred regional order included maintaining ASEAN’s centrality, prioritising norms and confidence-building, fostering inclusive cooperation among regional states and emphasising non-traditional security cooperation.
This event summary is prepared by Kanika Kaur, Master's candidate in International Affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and currently working with the Centre on Asia and Globalisation under the Research Attachment Programme.