How internal and external factors hamstring ASEAN when it comes to the South China Sea.

Part 1 of this three-part series argued that the South China Sea Dispute poses an existential threat to ASEAN as a regional organization. The South China Sea Dispute challenges ASEAN’s ability to deal with regional militarization, guarantee member states’ economic benefits, ensure ASEAN citizens’ safety when fishing, and protect Southeast Asia’s marine environment. Part 2, as follows, considers the question of why ASEAN has failed to mediate the South China Sea dispute.

While analysts around the world have criticized ASEAN’s disunity in the confrontation with China, most fail to pay attention to the greater picture of ASEAN crisis as a regional organization. The South China Sea disputes reveal a more basic dilemma, between further integration and preservation of national sovereignty. As such, ASEAN’s failure is not simply the result of Chinese efforts to divide ASEAN members. Multiple factors coexisting at three levels – the state level, international level, and organizational level – simultaneously play a role in hindering ASEAN unity.

State Level Factors

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Because ASEAN is an intergovernmental organization, the most enduring problem lies at the state level. That is each and every member state of ASEAN pursues its own national interests and is reluctant to delegate sovereignty to ASEAN’s decision-making mechanism. Because of historical inter-state conflicts between ASEAN members, the existing diversity in political, economic, and social contexts, as well as variations in their cooperation with China, ASEAN states are unwilling to commit to a united position toward China.

Each country has their own interests in the South China Sea. One important point is that the status of the sovereignty of the Paracel and Spratly Islands has never been clear since the dispute first emerged many decades ago. Several ASEAN members have overlapping claims to the islands in the South China Sea, making the conflict intractable. Since 1970, the Philippines has claimed the western portion of the Spratly Islands. After China, Vietnam has the most ambitious claim over all the Spratly and Paracel Islands. Even though Malaysia has been maintaining a low-profile position in the conflict, the country has also occupied a number of features since the 1980s. Brunei, meanwhile, claims rights over the islands lying within their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) as defined by UNCLOS.

http://thediplomat.com/2016/12/the-asean-crisis-part-2-why-cant-asean-agree-on-the-south-china-sea/