However, faced with an obdurate leadership in Naypyidaw today and hobbled by disunity within its own ranks, ASEAN has failed to bring the current ruling junta in line with the Five-Point Consensus agreed upon by ASEAN and junta leader Min Aung Hlaing back in April 2021.
Externally, despite assurances given at the ASEAN Summit from United States Vice President Kamala Harris and Chinese Premier Li Qiang about their respective countries’ support for ASEAN, the US-China rivalry has intensified to a point where Southeast Asian nations feel compelled to choose sides – something they would rather avoid.
Furthermore, ASEAN has been at pains to argue its relevance to the Indo-Pacific, the lens through which foreign policymakers now view Asia.
In recent years, policy frameworks like China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the US-backed Quad, AUKUS and Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity have proliferated. These arrangements are seen by some as rival architectures to ASEAN-led ones, which threaten to diminish ASEAN’s vaunted “centrality” in regional affairs.
TIME TO STEP UP
Against that difficult backdrop, ASEAN needs to step up or risk losing it all. As a region in flux, the Indo-Pacific offers opportunities that ASEAN could seize.
Granted, US-China relations are likely to worsen. China also angered the region anew with its latest national map, which lays claims from the Himalayas to the South China Sea. The offending map has elicited objections from India, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam – all of which have territorial disputes with China.
Yet it remains uncertain whether, given its current economic woes, a weaker China will continue bossing the ASEAN region with its divide-and-rule tactics. Nor is it clear whether China’s slowdown, which is expected to negatively impact Southeast Asia, may relax Beijing’s economic hold on the region enough to encourage countries like Cambodia and Laos to ease up on their strong pro-China stances.
