• 
• 

Published on November 12, 2007

Asean has responded to these "comprehensive security" threats through a commitment to establish an Asean community with its own political, economic, and sociocultural identity. To assess the project's feasibility, two separate surveys were conducted throughout the region; the first survey was tailored towards the region's elite (including scholars and government officers) and involved 100 participants while the second asked more general questions in seven languages and involved 819 participants from all the capital cities except Rangoon. Despite having covered several issues in the surveys, this commentary focuses on "trust" and how it is influenced by regional knowledge and interaction. The relationship between these two factors is important, as it is difficult to imagine the existence of an "Asean community" without trust.

In the context of Asean's project, trust remains a major problem. While 37.5 per cent of the grass-roots respondents said that they could trust all the countries in Southeast Asia to be "good neighbours", 36.1 per cent were "unsure" and 26.4 per cent answered "no" to the question. The three most distrusting countries were Burma, Singapore and Indonesia. Nonetheless, the responses from the region's elite were the most disconcerting. When forced to provide only a "yes" or "no" answer to the question of trust, 59.8 per cent of elite said they could not trust other countries in Southeast Asia to be "good neighbours". Furthermore, when the sample was split between government officers and academics it was the academics that were the most cynical: 66.7 per cent of them answered "no" to the question of trust while 55.3 per cent of government respondents answered "no" to the same question.

The elite survey contained a further question associated with trust. It asked the survey participants if there were any circumstances where they could envisage armed conflict between two or more Asean states. While half the participants (50 per cent) responded "no", 22.3 per cent responded "yes" and a further 26.7 per cent were "unsure". It is interesting to note that respondents from Cambodia (28.6 per cent), Thailand (41.7 per cent), and Singapore (46.7 per cent) perceived the highest risk of conflict.

To better understand the potential variables influencing "expressions" of trust in Southeast Asia, the grass-roots survey also sought to investigate the level of regional knowledge and interaction. Consequently, one question examined the participant's knowledge of Asean. Positively, 52.1 per cent of respondents believed they either held a "very good" or "reasonable" knowledge of Asean. Meanwhile, 38.4 per cent indicated that they did not really know what Asean does and 8.3 per cent stated that they had never heard of the association prior to participating in the survey.

To another set of questions, 51.2 per cent of the grass-roots respondents indicated that they had family in other Asean countries and 49.6 per cent indicated they had friends in other Asean countries. Again, there was little correlation with "trust". For example, despite some of the highest "yes" response rates coming from both the Filipinos and Singaporeans, the Singaporeans were among the most distrusting, with nearly half the elite believing that armed conflict was possible, while only 21.1 per cent of Filipino elite imagined such a possibility. Further, only 7.7 per cent of the Filipino respondents distrusted their Asean neighbours. Thus, despite similarly high levels of interaction, each of the two groups held very different perceptions on trust.

Another question examined international travel, with 49.3 per cent indicating previous travel to other Asean counties. Of the respondents who had travelled internationally, 37.8 per cent (18.63 per cent of the total sample) indicated that they would usually conduct such travel at least annually. Nonetheless, for those who had only conducted international travel "one to five times" in their life, the most infrequent travellers were from Malaysia (66 per cent), Cambodia (68 per cent), Indonesia (69 per cent), Thailand (72 per cent) and Vietnam (76 per cent). Again, there appears to be an inconsistent correlation between the indicators of "trust" and the current frequency of international travel.  

An initial examination of the data seemingly negates the notion that increased interaction and knowledge within Southeast Asia should positively affect the level of regional trust and thus reinforce the creation of a region-wide identity. In other words, it is not necessarily true that the more you interact, or the more you know about the region, the greater the level of trust will be and the stronger the regional identity. However, it is important to note that this analysis has been limited to the "frequency" of interaction with little regard to the "quality" of interaction.

In reality, the region's media and political elite continue to sensationalise and scapegoat the behaviour and activities of communities and governments in other Asean states. The impact of such practices have been witnessed on a regular basis, with examples including the destruction of the Thai embassy in Cambodia, anti-Chinese riots during the economic crisis in Indonesia, and popular reactions to the Sulawesi Sea dispute in 2005. Because of the nature of this "negative interaction", it becomes possible to understand why the period of each country's membership in Asean has not always positively affected perceptions of trust.

Despite the aforementioned problems, two interpretations of the data remain possible. Relative to Asean's humble beginnings, the level of trust revealed by the surveys is a significant achievement. However, relative to the "Asean community" proposal, the level of trust and perceptions of conflict in some states will, for the foreseeable future, continue to negate the potential emergence of a fully-fledged "community". To build more trust in the region both policy-makers and the media need to undertake - in rhetoric and in practice - a more significant transition towards the behaviour of a "community". Such behaviour would be manifested through greater displays of affinity, kinship, and reciprocity.

Christopher B Roberts

Special to The Nation

singapore

Christopher Roberts is an associate researcher at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.