Author: Jayant Menon, ADB
When discussing Laos’ upcoming ASEAN membership with a senior government official in 1995, he insisted the reason his country wanted to join the regional organisation was because Vietnam had just done so.
The response revealed two things. First, Laos, like its neighbouring ASEAN aspirants at the time — Cambodia and Myanmar — did not want to be left behind, and wanted out of the economic wilderness by joining ‘the club’. Second, there was very little appreciation of what membership would entail, let alone what it could evolve into. Read more…
Author: Maria Monica Wihardja, CSIS, Jakarta
The sixth East Asia Summit (EAS) will take place on 19 November in Bali, with its newest members — the US and Russia — breathing new life into the forum.
While the Summit’s original objective of serving as a forum for dialogue on broad strategic, political and economic issues remains important, the US and Russia’s inclusion has now opened an opportunity for greater geopolitical security dialogue. Read more…
Author: Evelyn Goh, University of London
After nearly a year of tensions over conflicting territorial claims, East Asian waters have calmed significantly.
At last month’s ASEAN meetings, China and the ASEAN nations agreed on guidelines for implementing the 2002 Declaration of Conduct to govern their activities in the South China Sea. Read more…
Author: Yang Fang, RSIS
At the 23 July ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Bali, China and ASEAN agreed on a set of guidelines to better implement their 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). This set of guidelines promises to narrow the disputes over territorial sovereignty in the Sea.
This development at the ARF is considered a big step towards the peaceful resolution of the dispute. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, EAF
In East Asia, as elsewhere in the world, the risks that we continue to face in recovery from the global financial crisis, economically and politically, are a consequence not only of failure in national governance but also in the architecture of international governance, including regional architecture.
Failures that frustrated a coherent East Asian and international response to the big problems of the day (including payments imbalances, financial market reform, trade and exchange rate issues) in their global context. Read more…
Author: Wendy Dobson, University of Toronto
With no clear leader and few strong incentives for deep integration, Asian cooperation for the foreseeable future is likely to be intergovernmental, with little pooling of sovereignty to create supranational institutions or agree common rules and disciplines.
As Asia’s weight in the world economy grows, however, its interests will also be served by a strong commitment to global institutions. Read more…
Author: Takashi Terada, Waseda University
ASEAN’s function is often described as being limited to a ‘talk shop’ that merely provides venues where ministers and leaders from larger states join together to exchange views on regional security and economic issues.
So long as the so-called ‘ASEAN Way’ — which informally stipulates non-intervention, non-binding and consensus-based decision-making approaches to regional cooperation — is maintained, ASEAN’s major role will not go beyond hosting the ‘talk shop’. Yet the talk shop’s value could be enhanced if delegates discussed the hard issues, regardless of whether any binding obligations ensued. Read more…
Author: Ernie Bower, CSIS
Elections around Southeast Asia have assumed a new and empowering role in defining the region’s political outlook.
Emanating from Indonesia’s historic transition from autocracy to nascent if chaotic democracy, the people of ASEAN are using the ballot box to send strong messages. Read more…
Author: Andy Yee, Hong Kong
In a speech made at this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue on 4 June, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates disclosed US plans to deploy new littoral combat ships (LCS) to Singapore.
What is notable is that they would be the first US military vessels to be permanently stationed in Singapore. Read more…
Author: Rodolfo C Severino, ISEAS
On 23 July, the ASEAN Regional Forum ministerial meeting will convene for the 18th time.
Like previous gatherings, the ARF foreign ministers (27 of them) will meet a few days after the annual ASEAN Ministerial Meeting. Read more…
Author: Carlyle A. Thayer, UNSW@ADFA
The South China Sea has re-emerged as a front-burner security issue this year as a result of aggressive Chinese assertiveness.
There have been three major reported incidents involving Chinese civilian ships accosting Vietnamese and Filipino oil exploration vessels operating in their Exclusive Economic Zones.
Read more…
Author: Fenna Egberink, the Netherlands
Tensions over the overlapping claims in the South China Sea (SCS) have mounted in the past months, with hostilities accelerating since the beginning of June.
The row between China, Vietnam and the Philippines has urged current ASEAN chair, Indonesia, to step up. Read more…
Author: David Arase, Pomona College
China’s fishing fleet has become a kind of naval militia, attempting to assert China’s sovereignty in disputed areas of the East and South China Seas, stirring a regional crisis in the process.
Recall the incident on 7 November 2010 when a Chinese fishing vessel deliberately rammed a Japanese coast guard cutter before attempting to flee. Read more…
Author: Eko Saputro, Deakin University
The 14th ASEAN+3 Finance Minister’s Meeting (AFMM+3) in Hanoi, Vietnam, has welcomed the establishment of the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO), whose job it will be to maintain surveillance of the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation (CMIM), and support its full operation.
As regional self-help mechanism, the CMIM aims to provide liquidity support arrangement in response to short-term liquidity difficulty during crisis, and also becomes a supplement for the existing international support fund facility. Read more…
Author: Mari Pangestu, Indonesian Minister of Trade
The importance of completing the Doha Development Agenda sooner rather than later goes beyond bringing gains of US$360 billion of additional trade with substantial benefits for industrialised and developing economies.
As a developing country policymaker — and I believe I speak for many other developing countries — I am greatly worried about the costs and opportunity lost of not completing Doha. Read more…
