Druckausgleich im außenpolitischen Umfeld der ASEAN: Auf dem Langen Marsch von ASEAN+1 zu ASEAN+6?

The nineties of the last century began as an agreeable time for the three Indochina states, at least as far as foreign policy and the options for joining subregional and regional FTAs were concerned. After China had succeeded in getting leverage on the ASEAN however, they became more and more squeezed into the Chinese corner, particularly after having signed the China-ASEAN FTA (CAFTA) Agreement with Beijing in November 2002. Soon afterwards not only the volume of trade, but also the political two-way-relationship between ASEAN and China began to increase in a much faster pace than those between ASEAN and Japan or South Korea, to say nothing of other competitors like India, Australia, New Zealand or Russia. Multilateral approaches became, in other words, more and more overshadowed by bilateral FTAs and in-group-tendencies. This development was detested not only by outside-countries like Japan, South Korea or India, but even by ASEAN-insiders like Indonesia and Vietnam. The growing uneasiness with China’s way of selfishly embracing ASEAN resulted in the first East Asian Summit (EAS), held in Kuala Lumpur in December 2005, which was enforced by several governments to be dissatisfied with Chinas’s unilaterialism, and which reopened the discussion on the issue of multilateralisation and on extending the number of participants to a ASEAN+6- (including China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand) or even to a ASEAN+7-Community (inclusive Russia). Regarding the future, the participants decided that the EAS should serve as a platform for dialogue on substituting the notorious CAFTA by EAFTA (East Asian FTA) and on laying foundations even for an East Asian Community, which of course is still very far away and embryonic, at least for the time beeing