The Asean has evolved slowly but surely into one of the most dynamic regional blocs in its five decades of existence. Some even consider the Asean the most successful supranational grouping in the world today. It comprised 10 countries with total population of 650 million, the world’s third-largest labor force and an economy poised to become the world’s fifth-largest by 2020.
When the five founding members—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand—signed the Bangkok Declaration in 1967, their avowed objective was to ward off the threat of foreign interference looming heavily over the region during the Cold War. A recent South China Morning Post article said, this act changed the region “from a battlefield into a marketplace”.
As Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam became members through the years, the Asean helped maintain peace and stability. That enabled the region to grow into an attractive investment destination through a process that reached a milestone with the formal integration of the Asean Economic Community at the end of 2015.
The ongoing maritime disputes, intensified by China’s island-building activities and militarization of the South China Sea, pose among the most disturbing and disruptive challenges to the Asean’s development in the coming years. Not all members are party to the disputes, but the Asean’s core emphasis on consensus building and cooperation makes it difficult for the bloc to take a decisive stance, beyond calling for a toothless Code of Conduct in the South China Sea.
Several pundits argue such a decision-making process is a weakness in the Asean. But as Edith Terry, an adjunct professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, recently tried to explain, such a “lowest-common-denominator approach” is in fact why the Asean “holds up well amid disappointment with the Bretton Woods institutions”.
In the South China Morning Post, Terry declared: “[The] Asean will never face a Brexit. Its fundamental promise to its members is that it does not challenge their sovereignty. Its Jakarta-based secretariat is the opposite of the bureaucratic Babylons of the European Union [EU], the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund [IMF], the World Trade Organization or the UN and its many offshoots. It has a staff of 300, compared to 100 times that in EU headquarters in Brussels.”
Terry highlighted the fact that unlike the World Bank, IMF or the UN, the Asean does not have an equity structure that gives richer members more say but, instead, calibrates its dues to the paying capacity of its poorest members. By giving even the most hard-up members an equal say, the Asean is able to fully leverage its economic, cultural and political diversity.
The flip side of the above argument is that the requirement for unanimity among the 10 member-countries opens a ready window of opportunity for interference by big outside powers. Exactly nullifying the noninterference objective of the Asean Charter. The Asean will try to achieve a level of economic and political integration probably similar to that of the EU. But that’s not necessarily the ideal. By charting a path different from the EU yet acceptable to all of its members, its longevity and relevance appear to be sustainable.
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