lifeline outside of the UN system for the DPRK to clarify its positions and listen to views from other ARF participants on the Korean Peninsula. renamed the Inter-Sessional Support Group on Confidence Building Measures and Preventive Diplomacy (ISG-CMB & PD) in 2005 in recognition of that overlap. Horizontal Expansion This year, the ARF has set up a new Inter-Sessional Meeting on Security of and in the Use of Information and Communication Technologies (ISM-ICT). The other four ISMs deal with disaster relief, maritime security, counterterrorism and transnational crime, and non-proliferation and disarmament. The ARF cannot yet advance into the more sensitive stage of PD because of serious differences among its participants on what PD means and entails. One perspective embraces PD in its fullest sense, including diplomatic, political, military, economic and humanitarian actions undertaken by governments, multilateral organisations (the UN and regional groups) and international agencies (including non-governmental actors) to address disputes and conflicts between states as well as within states. This is exemplified in the operations of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The narrower interpretation of PD excludes from the ARF mandate all domestic political and security issues, and puts more emphasis on strengthening the foundation of peace and security through confidence building first and foremost. Under this more restrictive perspective, the ARF is purely an inter-governmental process, in which non-government actors are excluded. In the current inter-sessional year of 2017-2018, the ARF calendar of events includes 17 training workshops. These activities are in addition to the regular meetings of ARF mechanisms of all the five ISMs, the Inter-Sessional Support Group on Confidence Building Measures and Preventive Diplomatic (ISG-CBM&PD), the ARF Security Policy Conference, the meeting of the ARF Experts and Eminent Persons, the Defence Officials Dialogue, the Heads of Defence Universities/Colleges/Institutions Meeting (HDUCIM), the ARF Senior Officials Meeting, and the annual ARF ministerial conference. From the beginning, ASEAN member states have resisted setting up too many ARF mechanisms. They prefer ad hoc bodies, like the ISMs, and the use of existing ASEAN mechanisms, such as using the ASEAN Secretariat for administrative support. Participation in ARF workshops and ISMs is voluntary on a self-funding basis. Records show that countries with less resources tend to have lower level of participation and rarely volunteer to co-chair ISMs or host ARF workshops, or contribute their inputs to the ARF Annual Security Outlook. Quite expectedly, ARF participants who are ASEAN Dialogue Partners tend to be more active than others, especially in initiating and hosting capacity building activities. Even ASEAN members have difficulties trying to keep up with all ARF meetings and training workshops. On occasions, some ASEAN members cannot afford to send participants from their capitals to attend ARF activities in faraway places, and were represented by their colleagues from the embassy. This has undermined ASEAN leadership in the ARF as well as the quality of ASEAN participation in ARF activities. Moving Forward? According to the ARF Concept Paper which was adopted in 1995, the ARF was envisaged to evolve in three stages: (a) confidence building measures (CBM), (b) preventive diplomacy (PD), and (c) development of conflict resolution mechanisms (CSM). Subsequently, establishing conflict resolution mechanisms was watered down to exploring approaches to conflict resolution. Since the ARF follows the ASEAN Way of making decisions by consultation and consensus “at a pace comfortable to all,” the progress of the ARF against the three-stage benchmark has been slow. After 25 years, ARF participants could merely agree that there is some overlap between Stage I and Stage II, and the ISG-CBM was The slow progress of the ARF has somewhat diminished the shine on ASEAN and undermined its claim of centrality in shepherding the ARF. Now the US, Japan, Australia and India have developed their own respective nascent security arrangement in the form of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) to promote their Free and Open IndoPacific strategy. If this new strategic framework gains traction and produces concrete results, these four major powers may lose interest in the ARF. A more immediate challenge for the ARF comes from the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus (ADMMPlus). Eighteen (10 ASEAN members and eight Dialogue Partners, not including Canada and the EU) of the 27 ARF participants are in the ADMM-Plus. The ADMM-Plus has created seven experts working groups; four of them addresses the same non-traditional security challenges which the ARF has been handling: disaster relief, maritime security, counter-terrorism and transnational crime, and cyber security. Since the ARF is run by foreign affairs officials and foreign ministers, it would do well to harness its expertise towards preventive diplomacy and phase out from cooperation areas that require tangible resources such as disaster relief and non-traditional security challenges, which would fit better with the ADMM-Plus remit. After a quarter of a century, the ARF has served ASEAN and Southeast Asia well, by providing a platform for both regional countries and the major powers to engage in dialogue and cooperation on issues that affect regional peace and security, to forge confidence building and develop awareness and capacity in dealing with security issues among the participants. But its relevance stands to diminish if the ARF does not reinvent itself, first and foremost by sharpening its focus on what it does best. Dr. Termsak Chalermpalanupap is Lead Researcher I (Political-Security Affairs) at the ASEAN Studies Centre, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. 7 — ISSUE 5/2018