Still no substance after 14 years

The Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), initiated by the government of Thaksin Shinawatra through then-foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai, returns to Bangkok with a ministerial meeting today through Thursday. Thailand also wants to host a summit of its leaders later this year.

The inaugural goal of the ACD was to highlight Thailand’s role in bridging relations across Asia, and there is hope, faint though it may be, that the meetings this year will help foster more international cooperation. 

The ACD concept was initially raised when Asian political parties gathered for an unprecedented conference in Manila in 2002. Surakiart, then deputy leader of Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai Party, suggested an ongoing dialogue process and that same year also made a pitch to fellow foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The first ACD meeting took place at a beach resort in Cha-Am in June 2002 and produced a chairman’s statement identifying key areas for mutual effort. These included the alleviation of poverty, the development of human resources, bridging the “digital divide”, and promoting science and technology, Asian culture and tourism. There were nods to small and medium-sized enterprises, infrastructure, resource management, energy security, transportation and communications links, and “non-traditional security” issues.

The ACD initially comprised the 10 members of Asean and eight countries in East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. It has since expanded to enfold 33 nations, covering much of the continent, but that enviable reach also had the unfortunate drawback of rendering it too unwieldy to enable any actual cooperation.

There is now little to be gained from the ACD in terms of common benefit. Its member-countries differ widely in size, level of development, style of government and, of course, local culture. Meanwhile other platforms for cross-border liaisons were being launched and are now flourishing, such as Asean Plus Three, the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation and the Gulf Cooperation Council. When at first no other ACD member wanted to carry on the task at hand, Thailand had to host the second ministerial meeting, in Chiang Mai in 2003.

Enthusiasm for the project improved significantly after China played host for the third session, and the ball has since been passed to Pakistan, Qatar, South Korea, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Iran, Kuwait, Tajikistan and Bahrain. Last year’s meeting took place in Saudi Arabia. Of course, while the Thai-born idea has been “on the road” elsewhere – earning scant coverage in the press back home or anywhere else for that matter – the Thai public has all but lost track of the ACD’s progress. Nor do we hear much from the ACD delegates who meet more often on the sidelines of United Nations General Assembly sessions.

The fact is that there is little to hear. Perhaps adhering too literally to the meaning of the word “dialogue” in its name, the ACD has done nothing but talk. Despite the many physical projects identified for potential cooperation, it has produced no concrete results. 

Thailand’s military-led Cabinet decided to inherit the ACD chair held by Saudi Arabia in a bid to raise the country’s international profile, notwithstanding the rancour with which its views Thaksin, father of the ACD. The Asia dialogue partnership might not be powerful, but Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s regime is perhaps seeking to send the message that, democracy or not, it still has plenty of foreign friends.

At this week’s meeting the government will table its paper “ACD Vision for Asia 2030”, aiming to supply momentum that will carry the forum forward, at least for another decade and a half. The proposal seeks to further institutionalise the ACD by giving it a permanent secretariat and laying out a “Regional Connectivity” plan.

Given the group’s progress thus far, after 14 years, and the level of political repression in the host country making this proposal, the rest of the international community seems unlikely to be impressed.