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In his article "The Geography of Peace", Robert Ross postulates that a bipolar regional power balance has emerged in East Asia. This theory is premised on the assumption that smaller Asian states will seek to compensate for their own vulnerability by clearly aligning with either China or the United States. In the case of Southeast Asia, however, stable but competitive Sino-U.S. relations have provided ASEAN states with considerable strategic leverage. Although these states maintain a close relationship with their respective geopolitically dominant great power, this leverage allows them to manoeuvre between and to strengthen their autonomy vis-à-vis China and the United States. Closer examination of the 1998 addendum to the 1990 U.S.-Singapore Memorandum of Understanding, the 1999 U.S.-Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement and the 1999 Sino-Thai Plan of Action for the 21st Century demonstrates these trends.
Introduction
Throughout much of the post-Cold War period, the dynamics of the Sino-U.S. relationship have been a critical factor in Southeast Asian states' foreign policies. Southeast Asia has traditionally been a site of great power competition for regional dominance, due to its strategic location as a bridge between continental and maritime East Asia. To manage this competition and to enhance their own subregional autonomy, the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) engaged in a number of regional institution building initiatives during the early 1990s. This "institutionalist" agenda led to speculation that ASEAN could become the hub of a nascent regional security community.1
Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, however, the prospect that ASEAN could act as an autonomous entity to mitigate Sino-U.S. geopolitical pressures seemed increasingly tenuous. Weakened by political and economic instability, intra-regional disputes and a simultaneous expansion of its membership, ASEAN has come to question its own identity. This has only further undermined ASEAN-led regional security initiatives such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). More frequently, Southeast Asian states have favoured bilateralism and have looked to external powers to realize their security interests.2
These changing subregional dynamics have, in turn, prompted renewed efforts by China and the United States to cultivate influence within Southeast Asia. China's attempts to gain support for its "new security concept" and US efforts to secure additional access and infrastructure agreements along the "East Asian littoral" are illustrative. To...