ASEAN at 40: Mid-Life Rejuvenation?

The current state of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) evokes both pessimism and hope. Skeptics see the organization -- founded in Bangkok on August 8, 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore -- as increasingly irrelevant in the post-Cold War milieu and unable to confront the new enemies of a globalized world: currency speculators, pandemic viruses, and shadowy terrorist groups. To its harshest critics, ASEAN is little more than a quarrelsome bunch of peripheral nations too beholden to a nineteenth century view of national sovereignty to effectively cooperate and build a regional identity.

Yet ASEAN has been one of the most durable examples of regional multilateralism, one that commands attention and respect from regional organizations in other parts of the developing world. It acts as the hub, if not the leader, of regional multilateral forums for East Asia. The fact that the region's most powerful players -- including China, India, and the United States -- show deference to ASEAN by participating in these forums demonstrates that ASEAN still matters.

ASEAN's positive image was built around four areas of accomplishment in its first three decades. First, it was able to survive as Asia's only multipurpose regional organization after China and India failed in their attempts at regional institution building. Second, since 1967 no ASEAN member has engaged a fellow ASEAN member in major armed confrontation, in spite of occasional border skirmishes (notably between Thailand and Myanmar in 2001) and bilateral territorial disputes and political tensions (particularly between Singapore and Malaysia). Third, ASEAN was instrumental in bringing the decade-long Vietnamese-Cambodian conflict to the negotiating table in 1989 and in reaching a peace agreement in 1991. Vietnam, then seen as an obstacle to regional stability, is now a valued member of the organization. Finally, as the Cold War ended, it was ASEAN which provided the platform for building broader regional institutions that would engage a rising China and other major players in East Asia. Without ASEAN's neutral facilitating role, China might not have joined the ASEAN Regional Forum, established in 1994 as East Asia's only official multilateral security forum.

But the Asian financial crisis of 1997 triggered a series of setbacks. It severely crippled the economies of three of ASEAN's founding members: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. It also led to the downfall of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, until then ASEAN's de facto leader and guiding hand. The financial turmoil also dashed the hopes of the organization's new members -- Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam -- who had looked forward to reaping the economic benefits of membership. Beyond failing to respond to the crisis effectively and giving each other a helping hand, ASEAN members such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore made matters worse by quarreling over seemingly trivial territorial and political issues.

THE ASEAN WAY

Although the regional economies have recovered from the crisis, today ASEAN faces new challenges. It can hardly match the immense economic dynamism of China and India. Its policy of "constructive engagement" with Myanmar has failed to persuade the junta there to loosen its draconian hold on power. ASEAN seems powerless in the face of severe air pollution in Southeast Asian skies caused by Indonesia's annual forest fires and has allowed members' bilateral disputes to simmer. It is telling that Indonesia and Malaysia settled their maritime territorial dispute through adjudication by the International Court of Justice rather than through ASEAN's own High Council of Foreign Ministers, a body that was designed to play such a role. The Spratly Islands dispute with China has been set aside, but this is mainly because Beijing is focusing on economic self-empowerment and its problems with Taiwan and hence needs to keep its quarrels with ASEAN to a minimum as part of its new "charm offensive."

The "ASEAN way" of informal networking has thus far trumped efforts to institutionalize cooperation. Even old ASEAN hands, such as the Eminent Persons' Group (EPG), which is helping formulate an ASEAN Charter, acknowledge that members often do not comply with their multilateral commitments or implement collective decisions.

The vision of an ASEAN Security Community, proposed in 2002 by newly democratic Indonesia and officially adopted by ASEAN a year later, is promising in that it endorsed "a just, democratic and harmonious environment" for Southeast Asia. But there is still no policy instrument in place, such as the the Organization of American States' Inter-American Democratic Charter, to discourage democratic backsliding or coups. This became all too evident last year when the ASEAN nations remained silent in the face of a military coup that ousted Thailand's elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.