ASEAN Secretariat The ASEAN Regional Forum Foreign Ministers at the ARF Retreat held in Singapore The “timeline” approach associated with PD is misleading in at least two respects. First, it transforms PD into a benchmark of regional security, and in so doing, confuses a method for the objective. As per the ARF’s 1995 concept paper, the ARF’s “goals and expectations” are to “develop a more predictable and constructive pattern of relations” in support of the region’s “peace, prosperity and stability.” In service of that objective, PD is but one piece of a larger “method and approach”; it is not the end in and of itself. links, and to probe possible avenues for cooperation. This includes non-traditional security, which has offered a promising area for cooperation with traditional security implications. To be clear, the operational dimensions of PD remain critical to the management of security challenges, small and large. Still, abandoning the paradigmatic preoccupation with PD might help reduce some of its politicisation that has hindered acknowledgement and expansion of activities that serve the larger PD agenda. Second, the conceptualisation of PD as a distinct and higher stage of security cooperation suggests a progression that belies the mix of security approaches that most challenges require, the situational differences that often will call for different kinds of approaches at different times, and also the fluidity of security measures and their effects. This latter point was in fact acknowledged as early as the 1995 ARF which noted the “overlap” between CBMs and PD. This grey zone additionally challenges the conceptualisation of PD as a measure of the ARF’s progress. Conclusion In short, for much of its institutional life, the ARF’s pursuit of PD has been challenged and an important source of dissatisfaction among key stakeholders. For ASEAN, the stakes and the challenges are especially large – and moreover, larger than they were 25 years ago. Closely associated with ASEAN itself, the ARF’s challenged pursuit of PD raises questions about the appropriateness of “ASEAN centrality” as a principle of regional security. How to prove ASEAN’s relevance to a range of security challenges is additionally compounded by the region’s heightened major power tensions and dissatisfactions that make both unilateral action and competing proposals today a recurrent threat to Southeast Asian interests and voice. Just as important, the preoccupation with the definitional benchmarks tends to detract from the areas that the ARF is arguably best equipped to contribute – namely, confidence building and the introduction, familiarisation, experimentation, and development of shared security management practices. Put another way, especially given the region’s major power politics and composition, as well as the varied actor sets associated with different security challenges, the ARF may not be well positioned to coordinate PD – at least, not of the operational variety that many would like to see. Instead, it may be better to accept that the ARF’s strengths are in playing a supporting, even if still very important, role in pursuit of PD. Indeed, while the ARF has been compared unfavorably to more technical and operational frameworks like the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting-Plus, as well as maritime operations pursued by Southeast Asian states and in collaboration with partners, it was also through the ARF framework that many of these actors were first given the opportunity to familiarise themselves with counterparts in other countries and their approaches, establish new Reconceiving the PD agenda, especially its staged approach, would not completely solve the dissatisfactions with the ARF that have developed and solidified over the last 25 years, but it might at least begin the process of adjusting expectations, lessening the politics of PD, and in so doing, expand alternative pathways to PD. It might also allow for a more realistic picture of the ARF – what it is able to do, where it fits into the larger security picture. And to the extent that satisfaction is also linked to expectations, having a clear-eyed view about where the ARF is best able to contribute would also address some, even if not all, of the questions about the ARF’s relevance, including ASEAN’s particular role in it. Dr. Alice D. Ba is Professor at the Political Science & International Relations Department, University of Delaware, USA. 9 — ISSUE 5/2018