Analysis The ARF’s Elusive Pursuit of Preventive Diplomacy Alice D. Ba suggests a re-think of preventive diplomacy in the ARF agenda. -he ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) has come to be closely associated with the challenged pursuit of preventive diplomacy (PD) – so much so that the latter has become a key measure of the ARF’s institutional value and shortcomings. Indeed, for an institution known more for its inability to agree, there appears to be considerable agreement about the ARF’s challenges in implementing and institutionalising the concept and practice. The longstanding challenges associated with PD suggest that it may be well past time to reconsider – indeed, downgrade – the hold that PD has had over the ARF agenda. Doing so would allow a more realistic conceptualisation of where the ARF fits into the larger regional security picture; adjust expectations; and in so doing, also potentially expand avenues by which to pursue a more robust agenda of activities supportive of PD whether it is called PD or not. The Problem with Preventive Diplomacy The ARF’s distinct attributes and politics make its pursuit of PD far more fraught compared to other frameworks. This includes ASEAN which similarly operates by consensus but has been able to advance PD in ways that the ARF has not. Partly, the challenge is a function of the ARF’s large and especially diverse membership. In addition to varying degrees of trust and sensitivity about the prospect of interference, its 27 members also possess different security conceptions and institutional cultures, resulting in defining divisions over PD’s scope, approach, and even what counts as PD: Should PD be inclusive of efforts targeted at the “deeper roots” of conflict and insecurity A panaromic view of the ARF Retreat 8 — ISSUE 5/2018 as reflective of more comprehensive security approaches? Or should it be limited to more operational responses to specific regional security threats? How to advance beyond the most basic agreement about PD’s objectives – to prevent the emergence, escalation, and overflow of conflicts – has been a defining task of the ARF’s 25-year PD agenda. PD’s challenges in the ARF were built-in at the start. First introduced at ARF’s first meeting in 1994 and then given further elaboration in 1995 and 2001, PD was conceived as the second stage between “confidence building” and an “elaboration of approaches to conflicts” in an evolutionary approach to regional security and regional security cooperation. As such, PD offered an important compromise position between the first (confidence building measures) and third (conflict resolution) stages, but this staged approach also institutionalised states’ differences and made PD a highly contested benchmark for security cooperation. In particular, the PD debate has focused on the ARF’s limits in pursuing more “concrete” operational measures as well as the appropriateness of such efforts. Such challenges suggest that it may be time to reassess the particular importance attached to the ARF’s PD agenda. Indeed, absent agreement about both the security challenges and activities PD should prioritise, PD has become a highly unsatisfactory, even impossible, measure of the ARF’s progress and contributions. There is also a particular need to rethink the current conceptualisation of PD as part of a three-stage approach to regional security. ASEAN Secretariat T