BANDUNG'S 1955 ASIA-AFRICA CONFERENCE AND INDONESIA
The Jakarta Post - April 18, 2005Amitav Acharya, Singapore
Fifty years ago, the Asia-Africa Conference held in Bandung represented
the largest ever conclave to date of new states entering the post-war
international system. What were its major implications for
international and Asian regional order?
Six aspects of the legacy of Bandung are especially worth remembering.
First, Bandung helped to contextualize, uphold and in some cases extend
principles of modern international relations. For example,
nonintervention in the European states-system permitted great power
intervention to restore the balance of power. The idea of
nonintervention that gained ground at Bandung permitted no such
exception.
Moreover, several participants at Bandung, such as Ceylon and the PRC,
were not yet members of the UN, hence the experience of regional
norm-setting gave them a sense of belonging to the club of nations and
offered an alternative framework for their socialization into the
system of states.
Bandung also advanced some new principles which clarified and
strengthened the meaning of sovereignty. First, differing political
systems and ideologies should not be the basis for exclusion from
international cooperation. Second, while every nation had a right of
individual or collective self-defense, regional military pacts that
served the narrow or particular interests of the superpowers were an
affront to the principle of equality of states and ought to be
discouraged.
A third normative outcome of Bandung was the recognition of
non-intrusive, informal and consensus-based diplomacy over legalistic
and formal organizations which might constrain state sovereignty, an
important consideration for countries which had just gained sovereign
statehood.
A second major contribution of the Bandung conference was the
introduction of the People's Republic of China to the Asian and African
community. It gave China an Asian platform which could be a potential
alternative to alignment with the Soviet Union. This would sow the
seeds of Sino-Soviet split later. Few today would deny the fundamental
idea that engaging China is likely to yield more benefits in the
long-term than isolating and containing it.
A third outcome of Bandung was the delegitimation of great power-led
military pacts. At the conference, there was a split. On the one hand,
a group of countries comprising India, Indonesia, Ceylon, Burma and
Egypt favored abstention from great power military alliances, such as
the SEATO and CENTO.
This proved quite controversial, with countries such as Thailand, the
Philippines, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Pakistan defending their membership
in such Pacts. The Bandung conference accepted the right of individual
or collective self-defense, while at the same time calling for their
"abstention from the use of arrangements of collective defense to serve
the particular interests of any of the big powers."
To be sure, the principle of collective defense was accepted, but not
great power pacts of the type that legitimized great power dominance.
The Bandung conference exposed the weak legitimacy of SEATO, in terms
of its lack of regional participation and representation.
Indeed, a fourth legacy of Bandung was its indirect contribution to the
rise of ASEAN. It made clear that neither India nor China, the two big
Asian powers, could or should dominate an Asian regional organization.
The aversion to regional groupings under the hegemonic influence of
major Western or Asian powers paved the way for ASEAN, which offered a
successful model for relatively less powerful states getting together
for mutual benefit. While ASEAN was founded as a grouping of
pro-Western governments, it steadfastly refused to be a military bloc.
The norm against multilateral "arrangements for collective defense to
serve the particular interests of any of the big powers" has endured in
Southeast Asia, indeed the whole of Asia, to date.
Fifth, the procedures adopted at the Bandung conference marked the
birth of consensus diplomacy among Asian nations. The agenda of the
conference was kept as flexible as possible, contentious issues that
would divide the conference (such as India-Pakistan) were generally
avoided, and the procedure of consensus, rather than majority voting,
was adopted.
This bears striking similarities with the ASEAN Way, which came to be
known as a preference for informality, avoidance of legalistic
approaches and mechanisms found in Western multilateral groups,
avoidance of contentious bilateral disputes from the multilateral
agenda in the spirit of compromise, the need for saving face, and above
all, the emphasis on consultations and consensus.
Last but not the least, the Bandung Conference would also go down in
history as a remarkable feat of organizational success of a young
independent nation: Indonesia. Participants and observers (including
Westerners), whether speaking privately or publicly, commented
favorably on the logistical and residential facilities provided by the
Indonesian hosts, not to mention the beautiful physical surroundings of
Bandung.
Not only was the idea of the conference proposed by Indonesia (by
Premier Ali Sastromiojojo, who was the chairman of the Conference),
Indonesian officials led all the committees, including Roeslan
Abdulghani who led the five-nation secretariat which organized the
conference. A secrete U.S. State Department assessment praised the
"efficiency and dispatch" with which the Conference could arrive at a
joint communique.
A particularly generous tribute to Indonesia was paid by Jawaharlal
Nehru, who has been seen in Indonesia as somewhat arrogant. But Nehru
was deeply impressed by Indonesian organization. Upon his return from
Bandung, wrote an impression of the Conference to Lady Edwina
Mountbatten: "Although there were five sponsors of this Conference --
Burma, Ceylon, Indonesia, Pakistan and India -- and we shared expenses
and had a Joint Secretariat, still a great burden of organizing it fell
on the Indonesian Government. They discharged this remarkably well. I
doubt if we could have provided the same amenities in Delhi.
Altogether, therefore, the Conference was a remarkable success. I think
all of us who were there came back a little wiser and certainly with a
better understanding of the other."
Amitav Acharya is Deputy Director and Head of Research at the Institute
of Defense and Strategic Studies, Singapore. He is working on a book
about the historical legacy of the Bandung Conference.