ASEAN Cooperative Security in Addressing Piracy and Armed Robbery in the Sulu–Sulawesi Sea
Southeast Asia possesses vital international shipping lanes for world trade, including the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Singapore, and the Sulu–Sulawesi Sea. While the openness of these sea lanes has driven regional economic growth, it has also created opportunities for maritime crime, particularly piracy and armed robbery that have proliferated in the Sulu–Sulawesi Sea since the mid-2010s, driven in part by the activities of the Abu Sayyaf Group. This article aims to analyze how the cooperative security approach has been applied by ASEAN in maritime security cooperation to address this threat. Using a descriptive-qualitative method based on library research and secondary data, this study finds that responses to the threat in the Sulu–Sulawesi Sea operate at two complementary levels: trilateral sub-regional cooperation (the Trilateral Cooperative Arrangement and the Trilateral Maritime Patrol Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines) and the broader ASEAN maritime security cooperation framework under the ASEAN Political-Security Community (ADMM, ADMM-Plus, AMMTC, ARF, and AMF). This cooperative practice reflects the five principles of cooperative security: inclusivity, confidence-building measures, a cooperative approach, comprehensive security, and indivisibility. However, the principle of state sovereignty constrains actor involvement. This study offers two findings that enrich the discussion: the need to strengthen coast guard cooperation through the ASEAN Coast Guard Forum (ACGF), and the importance of a social development approach to complement a security approach that has thus far been dominated by law-enforcement and military methods.
Keywords: Maritime security, Cooperative security, Piracy, Sulu–Sulawesi Sea, ASEAN
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