Revisiting SEATO and ASA

(By Amen Quizon-Letana, Flordeliz Guilangue Madrid, and Belinda Sales Canlas)

THE Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was formed in September 1954 with the Philippines (PH) and Thailand, 2 Southeast Asian countries, signing. In this era, PH was a fledgling democracy confronted by both internal and external threats.

The SEATO membership of PH and Thailand provided a form of security blanket against external threats, particularly communism. However, this further created the divide between the 2 states and Indonesia. Indonesian President Sukarno was a nationalist who maintained an anti-colonial position. He was a staunch non-alignment advocate.

Moving forward to 1961, the former Federation of Malaya, PH, and Thailand formed the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA). Sukarno, maintaining an anti-colonial position, felt that ASA would just serve the interests of the colonial powers.

As a nationalist, Sukarno labeled ASA as “Western-inspired, anti-communist bloc” (Acharya, 2012). It goes without saying that Sukarno was suspicious of ASA.

By August of the same year, then Malaya Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman broached the idea of a merger that would unify Malaya, Singapore, Borneo, Brunei, and Sarawak (Lee, 2018).

It is interesting to note that ASA was formed on July 31, 1961 but by August 1961, Tunku had already proceeded with another major event that could possibly affect ASA. Malaya knew that PH had a claim on Sabah in North Borneo.

The merger met opposition from Sukarno and broke Malaya’s relations with PH, a co-founder of ASA. – Belinda Sales Canlas

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I agree with Sukarno’s position, and I think we can assume that he saw SEATO in the same way that he saw ASA – a “Western-inspired, anti-communist bloc” – and merely served the interests of the great powers. But wasn’t it a two-way street? President Marcos needed all the military backing he could get, which SEATO can and was ready to provide, as the country was then a state but no nation.

We will remember that the formation of SEATO was just eight years after PH claimed independence from the US, and 9 years after being destroyed to the roots by Imperial Japan.

Even after almost a decade, PH was still weak in many aspects as could be expected from a country under colonial rule for more than 400 years non-stop.

Independence was the dream, but dependence was the only known reality. And although Marcos and Sukarno both established authoritarian governments, there were only two options at the time: the US or the Soviet Union.

We know that Sukarno was one of the organizers of the Bandung Conference (US Department of State, 2019) and the Non-Alignment Movement (Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2021). However, we also know that he chose from the two options as well. – Amen Quizon-Letana

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SEATO was established for economic assistance, counter-insurgency advice, and to create an “alliance response” in case of a communist invasion from Indochina. Unfortunately, SEATO did not work as intended (Buszynski, 1981). It was unable to cope with the threat of subversion which was considered by SEATO members as a communist threat, along with the members’ incompatible views and interests.

Moreover, it can be inferred that the drive to create the organization was not only due to Thailand’s fear of US disengagement from Indochina but also PH’s identification that the US, recognized as a great power, was the stabilizer of regional order.

Thailand and PH also believed that the credibility of the US alliance commitment sustained SEATO (Ibid.), and therefore, marked its presence in the region.

During this era, it was every state’s innate characteristic to depend on “who’s who” in the international system. I can say that more than the aim to “leverage the organization’s capacities and potentials”, the push to retain SEATO was a way for both Thailand and PH to test the waters, to see how far the US can take, in so far as commitment and maintaining their regional presence is concerned. –  Flordeliz Guilangue Madrid

Although ASA did not become successful resulting from Indonesia’s criticism and opposition, the eventual breakdown of relations particularly between Malaya and PH over territorial issues, and ASA’s perceived alignment with the western bloc (Pollard, 1970), one could see that ASA was the first attempt at forming a sub-regional organization aimed at meaningful economic cooperation although its true goal was regional security (Pollard, 1970).

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Writer can be reached at belindabelsales@gmail.com. Twitter @ShilohRuthie./PN