Framing ASEAN's Cooperation with India and China on the Myanmar Post-coup Crisis

Abstract

The ASEAN-led Five-Point Consensus (5PC) framework calls for an immediate end to violence, dialogue among all parties and the provision of humanitarian assistance to address the post-coup political crisis in Myanmar. Such endeavours have yet to deliver concrete outcomes. However, this article argues that there is an opportunity for ASEAN to work with India and China through a framework of “strategic resourcing” to break the impasse. Strategic resourcing does not seek to foster a trilateral framework between ASEAN, India and China but seeks to take advantage of the comparative strengths of the two states across two thematic domains, both of which are critical for the implementation of the 5PC: (1) using Indian and Chinese borderlands to establish humanitarian corridors to deliver aid, and (2) using the economic, political and normative leverage that India and China possess over different political constituencies in Myanmar to bring an immediate end to the violence and to foster dialogue for a long-term solution. This article explores the prospects of that process as well as the institutional mechanisms that ASEAN could wield to cooperate with India and China through the strategic resourcing framework. It also explains some of the framework’s limitations. Conceptually, “strategic resourcing” adds to and differentiates from the dominant framework of “hedging”, which has been mooted as an explanation for ASEAN’s international security cooperation. Practically, the article charts policy options to strengthen and reform the current 5PC format, notably on the framework of the proposed dialogue process.