Commentary by Scot A. Marciel
In response to East-West Dialogue Issue 2 lead article, How (and Why) the United States Should Help to Build an ASEAN Economic Community, by Michael G. Plummer.
ASEAN-U.S. Cooperation in Building the ASEAN Economic Community
Scot A. Marciel
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Southeast Asia and Ambassador for ASEAN Affairs
Michael Plummer makes a persuasive case for U.S. cooperation and support in building the ASEAN Economic Community. I agree with his comments on the importance of ASEAN and the value of building a stronger U.S.-ASEAN relationship. I would like to reinforce some of his points, by describing what the United States is doing to support the ASEAN Economic Community and adding some comments. But most importantly, I want to describe how much the United States is already doing in cooperation with ASEAN. 
This support from the United States has not been fully recognized outside a fairly small group of officials and others directly working on our cooperative programs, so I am very pleased to be able to describe some of this work here.
The United States has been supporting ASEAN’s current integration programs since 2002, when Secretary Colin Powell announced the ASEAN Cooperation Plan. Under that plan, the Department of State and other agencies undertook a renewed program of cooperation to support ASEAN’s own Initiative for ASEAN Integration and its Vientiane Action Programme. We had valuable programs to address disaster management, health, the environment, and a range of economic issues such as standards and intellectual property rights. In fact, one of those activities was State Department support for work by Michael Plummer and Seiji Naya on the Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative (see “For Further Reading”).
The United States greatly increased its cooperation with ASEAN when, in 2005, President Bush and ASEAN leaders announced their Joint Vision Statement on the ASEAN-U.S. Enhanced Partnership.
An important benchmark under the Enhanced Partnership was the signing of the Plan of Action by Secretary Rice and ASEAN Foreign Ministers in July 2006. The plan called for the development and implementation of 164 actions and programs between ASEAN and the United States, and work has been completed or is ongoing on over a hundred of them. Examples of importance to both ASEAN and the United States include:
- The establishment of the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network, which has provided training to rangers, the judiciary, and policy officials. In May 2008 alone, five major seizures in ASEAN countries of illegal wildlife and forestry products have resulted from this training.
- The first four participants in the ASEAN Fulbright Visiting Scholars Program will begin their work in the United States in September 2008.
- Hundreds of parliamentarians, prosecutors, lawyers, judges, policymakers, regulators, enforcement officers, and business persons from ASEAN have participated in capacity-building and other training activities to improve intellectual property rights administration and enforcement.
- Workshops on industrial standards to increase understanding and cooperation on this issue, which is of growing interest to both the governments and the U.S. private sector.
- Training on disaster management, which will help ASEAN officials respond to natural and artifical disasters throughout the region.
The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have launched a new program of cooperation under the ASEAN-U.S. Enhanced Partnership called ADVANCE (ASEAN Development Vision to Advance National Cooperation and Economic Integration). This program supports ASEAN’s goal of establishing a peaceful, prosperous, and stable community of nations—the ASEAN Community—by 2015, a goal which the United States supports. ADVANCE involves several U.S. government agencies and partners outside government. Funding for fiscal year 2007 was about $7 million from the State Department and USAID. The program is designed to run for eight years to match ASEAN’s time frame for achieving the ASEAN Community. USAID recently launched three regional programs under ADVANCE:
- The ASEAN-U.S. Technical Assistance and Training Facility. This Facility, located in the ASEAN Secretariat, organizes and produces policy studies, assessments, training, technical assistance, and other activities in nine areas defined by ASEAN as priorities.
- The ASEAN Single Window Program. This program supports the development and implementation of a clearance system enabling a single submission and processing of customs data, and a single point of decision making in clearance. This is a major element in the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community. The ASEAN Secretariat notes that intra-ASEAN container shipments can require up to five days to clear customs; ASEAN’s goal is to reduce this to an average of 30 minutes under the Single Window.
- The Regional Supply Chain/Competitiveness Program. This program promotes regional market integration for the development of ASEAN as a unified, competitive market able to attract increased foreign and domestic investment.
We are working with ASEAN now to define areas of future cooperation covering the other two pillars of the ASEAN community—political-security and social-cultural—and also to expand our work together on key regional and global issues. This is a relationship that already is strong, and we see tremendous opportunities to expand it.
Next > Commentary by Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS, and former Singaporean Ambassador to the UN.
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