ASEAN
ASEAN, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, is a regional intergovernmental organization comprising ten Southeast Asian countries. It aims to promote political and economic cooperation and regional stability. ASEAN member states work together on issues such as trade, security, and cultural exchange, and the organization plays a significant role in shaping the geopolitical landscape of Southeast Asia.
7 Key excerpts on "ASEAN"
eBook - ePubPolitics in Contemporary Southeast Asia
Authority, Democracy and Political Change
- Damien Kingsbury(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...14 Southeast Asian regionalism This chapter considers how the sometimes disparate states of Southeast Asia function collectively, notably through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with its evolving membership. Within this, the character of individual states and their leaders and proposed regional agreements, such as the free trade agreement, influence the character of the region as a bloc (or otherwise) in other international forums and in relation to external challenges. This has particular importance in relation to China’s encroachment in the South China Sea and reassertion of regional power, the ‘pivot’ of the United States back towards the Asia-Pacific region, and the role of other major powers such as Russia and India; and in response to domestic challenges such as Islamist terrorism, unregulated population flows and other regional security issues. Commonalities There has long been a view that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had little meaning after initially being formed in 1967 as a type of peace offering by Indonesia towards its more politically conservative neighbours. The organisation’s membership has since expanded in number, to include its communist or formerly communist neighbours as well as Myanmar, and has started to take on a stronger strategic role as the centrepiece of the development of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). At one level, the ASEAN group of states are disparate, with populations varying from that of Indonesia, at more than 250 million, to Brunei, with less than half a million. GDP, too, varies from just a little under one trillion US dollars for Indonesia to the impoverished Laos with a GDP of $12 billion. Per capita GDP is also enormously varied, from Singapore at over $55,000 to Cambodia at just over $1,000...
eBook - ePub- Shiping Hua, Shiping Hua(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...First, despite the remarkable progress, great variations remain among ASEAN members in their development needs and external anxieties. ASEAN is significant for countries to communicate their respective concerns and enhance mutual understanding and trust. Second, as member states are mostly small to medium in economic size, ASEAN needs to continue to promote international economic integration and reduce its dependence on external markets. Third, as the region forges closer economic ties with economies outside the region, it is most advantageous to act as a group in striking a trade deal, which is especially true when dealing with large economies, such as the United States, EU, China, and Japan. In reality, as a consensus-based institution, ASEAN is relatively weak, for example, in promoting intraregional economic integration. Since being seriously affected by the global economic and financial crisis, the world economy and trade have gradually recovered, but many uncertainties remain. In particular, we have witnessed stronger anti-globalization sentiments and protectionist rhetoric. The success of Southeast Asia has been sustained by economic liberalization and economic opening. It is a huge question how ASEAN can extend its achievement through a liberal and outward-oriented policy setting. Since the 1990s, ASEAN and its members have been involved in numerous trade and investment talks, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The challenge for the region is to form regional groupings that are open, fair, and growth enhancing. Notes 1 In the context of this chapter, Southeast Asia includes the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). They are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Moreover, Brunei as a small, wealthy, and oil-rich country receives comparatively less attention...
eBook - ePubRegional Organisations and Security
Conceptions and practices
- Stephen Aris, Andreas Wenger(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Japan, as the economically most advanced state in the region, also wielded some influence, but primarily through financial assistance. Against this background, Southeast Asia effectively split into a Communist (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and a Western-oriented sub-region (Indonesia after 1965, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand). Externally, members relied substantially on the security umbrella provided by the US. ASEAN was established in 1967 by five Southeast Asian states: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. There had earlier been externally induced attempts to establish region-wide organizations, such as the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) established in 1954 as a functional equivalent to NATO in Europe, as well as the Asia and Pacific Council (ASPAC) established in 1966 and comprising nine Pacific and Southeast Asian member states. These multilateral mechanisms failed in part because of their heterogeneous membership. However, earlier, and more homogenous, attempts among Southeast Asian members to form multilateral institutions were also unsuccessful, like the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA, 1961) or MAPHILINDO, an organization set up by Malaya, the Philippines, and Indonesia in 1963 as an organization between Malay people. ASEAN’s founding document, the Bangkok Declaration – a short document of less than two full pages in length – defined the goal of the regional organization vaguely. The aim was, most importantly, to ‘accelerate economic growth, social progress, and cultural development in the region through joint endeavours in the spirit of equality and partnership in order to strengthen the foundation for a prosperous and peaceful community’ (ASEAN 1967)...
eBook - ePub- Michael Antolik(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...1 The Meanings of ASEAN Will the real ASEAN please stand up? Is it the meek, inward-looking grouping that hangs together without real cohesion, that has achieved all too little in its internal arrangements, or the dynamic, confident, solid front that fears no one, can face the world with confidence and is even now becoming a pacesetter and former of world opinion? —Singapore Monitor T HE Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—a group founded in 1967, comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and since 1985 Brunei—has impressed observers with its members’ ability both to maintain good relations and to coordinate their foreign policies. It has disappointed them with little or no progress toward its declared economic goals. There is little wonder, then, that the real ASEAN is asked to stand up. ASEAN ’s own statesmen admit that it has several faces or dimensions; Foreign Minister Dhanabalan of Singapore reminds that “we should not lose sight of the fact that ASEAN is not exclusively an economic organization, but a more rounded collectivity encompassing political, cultural and social dimensions. It is a collective instrument to meet common external problems.… But ASEAN is more than the sum total of its projects. ASEAN is also an emerging regional consciousness.” 1 The Philippines’ Carlos P. Romulo addressed the point this way: “Though the ASEAN is not a political bloc, it has to fulfill its role as an element for peace and balance in the area.” 2 Malaysia’s Ghazalie Shafie adds that ASEAN “has become more than just a regional intergovernmental organization but a habit of mind among its citizenries. It is an entente of a special kind which transcends boundaries, governments and peoples...
eBook - ePub- Robert Dayley(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...While 142 member states voted in favor of the resolution, Myanmar’s non-Muslim ASEAN partners where among the few in the world’s top body who did not (i.e., Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam; as well as applicant Timor-Leste). Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia, joined its partners in the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) in support of international action. With the world watching, ASEAN demonstrated again and again its inability to manage regional political crises due to its commitment to noninterference. ASEAN-led Multilateral Institutions ASEAN’s capacity to create multilateral fora exceeds its capacity to satisfactorily address the region’s political challenges in security, human rights, and democracy. When the new international era arrived, ASEAN doubled down on the ASEAN Way by adding four authoritarian regimes as members and beginning to re-evaluate post–Cold War possibilities for institutionalizing regional trade and security. Motivated by both hope and fear, ASEAN sought opportunities to make Southeast Asia relevant in a post-Cold War world. A host of ASEAN-led multilateral arrangements now contribute to Asia’s current trade networks and security architecture. ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) The 1990s proved to be a formative period for ASEAN. With the Cold War over, and Vietnam’s withdrawal from Cambodia complete, Southeast Asian governments began to focus on business. Lack of progress in the Uruguay Round of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) led leaders in the Americas and Asia to form a nonbinding trade liberalization group of their own in 1989: the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC. Comprising one-half of APEC’s 12 founding members were the six countries in ASEAN at the time...
eBook - ePub- Marc Frey, Ronald W. Pruessen, Tai Yong Tan, Tan Tai Yong(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...ASEAN was founded in Bangkok on August 8, 1967, by Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. 85 The Bangkok Declaration, the founding document of ASEAN, represents a careful melding of purposes and statements of ASA and Maphilindo. In the preamble to the declaration, the five signatory parties declared “that the countries of South-East Asia share a primary responsibility for strengthening the economic and social stability of the region and ensuring their peaceful and progressive national development, and that they are determined to ensure their stability and security from external interference in any form or manifestation in order to preserve their national identities in accordance with the ideals and aspirations of their peoples.” They also confirmed “that all foreign bases are temporary and remain only with the expressed concurrence of the countries concerned and are not intended to be used directly or indirectly to subvert the national independence and freedom of States in the area or prejudice the orderly processes of their national development.” 86 It is interesting to note the distinctive correspondence of these phrases within the text of the Manila Accord and the Manila Declaration, the basic documents of Maphilindo. 87 This has to be seen as a concession to Indonesia, whose basic foreign policy principles of neutrality and autonomy in security affairs had not changed in spite of the overthrow of Sukarno. 88 On the other hand, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines pressed for the representation of ASA’s principles in the ASEAN Declaration...
eBook - ePubEnvironmental Cooperation in Southeast Asia
ASEAN's Regime for Trans-boundary Haze Pollution
- Paruedee Nguitragool(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Environmental Cooperation in Southeast Asia One of the most challenging environmental threats to the ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been the haze, the sickening and deadly cloud of smoky pollution caused by widespread burning of land and forests in Indonesia. This book examines both the threat and response to it by analysing environmental cooperation in Southeast Asia from an international regime perspective. Tracing the development of regional cooperation on the haze and evaluating the effectiveness of the cooperation, the author argues that the haze crisis, combined with the economic crisis of 1997, has profoundly challenged the ASEAN modus operandi, and resulted in ASEAN’s efforts to establish an environmental regime to cope with environmental challenges. The emerging ASEAN haze regime is a unique case study of a regional environmental institution in multi-levelled global environmental governance. Based on in-depth original research, this case study is integrated into international relations, political science and comparative political analysis literatures and contributes to a better understanding of processes within the regional organisation. Paruedee Nguitragool is a Research Associate in the Political Science Department at Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg, Germany....
