The Third Indochina War and the Rise of ASEAN's Diplomatic Coherence, 1979-1991

This thesis focuses on ASEAN’s response to the Third Indochina War from 1979 to 1991. ASEAN came up with a comprehensive political solution to the conflict which involved a Vietnamese withdrawal via negotiations and UN supervised elections to restore the self-determination of the Cambodian people and acted with a newfound cohesiveness to achieve this. ASEAN’s concerns were motivated by several factors including sovereignty violation, fear of Soviet/Communist expansionism, self-determination and the internal security of its member states of the time, which were the original five members, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Brunei which joined after gaining independence in 1984.

Whereas before, ASEAN existed merely as a “talking shop” without a coherent aim, its decision to respond to the Third Indochina War and the Vietnamese Occupation of Cambodia, ultimately resulted in ASEAN becoming a more coherent group by the war’s end in 1991. This was because ASEAN became the driving force to keep the Khmer Rouge seated as Cambodia’s representative government at the United Nations. This later included non-Communist Cambodian factions when it became the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, though the inclusion of the Khmer Rouge remained an obstacle in the peace process. ASEAN also played a leading role in organizing several important meetings and conferences to solve the war such as the 1981 International Conference on Kampuchea and the Jakarta Informal Meetings. At the same time, divisions between the ASEAN members became obvious during some of these meetings. While this meant that these initiatives were not sufficient to end the war, they were nevertheless beneficial in helping ASEAN establish itself on the international stage. Cold War studies regarding ASEAN have been few and far between and this study, with its unique usage of Bruneian and ASEAN Secretariat sources aims to fill in that gap.