In 1967, ASEAN came about with two clear, interrelated aims: economic development and fight anti-communism. With the Cold War at its peak, leaders from non-communist Southeast Asia banded together to compare notes about jumpstarting their respective economies. After all, as the assumption goes, a growing economy that produces abundant jobs and increasing living standards should lure enough people away from the promises of communist revolution. However, with independence so recently and costly acquired, those leaders also agreed on one rule: no interference in each other’s domestic affairs.
Fast forward 50 years, and ASEAN has both changed and remained the same. At its 50th anniversary summit last week, ASEAN officials dealt with an array of problems that their predecessors could not have imagined, from the irregular emigration of the Rohingya out of Rakhine State to tension with China in the South China Sea. But ASEAN’s modus operandi remains the same, the ASEAN Way.
Starting with the non-interference principle, the ASEAN Way was conceived to ensure ASEAN’s diverse member countries work together and keep any whiff of disagreements contained within ASEAN. As the Philippine Daily Inquirer, whose opinion piece we feature in Spotlight this week, characterized it, the ASEAN Way “has been defined by a marked emphasis on a consensual, quiet, non-confrontational mode of diplomacy between and mind the member countries.”
With so many defects plaguing it, we applaud ASEAN’s effort to think up alternative rules to guide its internal debates and policymaking. Recently, ASEAN announced that it would adopt the ASEAN-X rule for economic policies and other issues deemed not central to the region’s political development. This will mean ASEAN can take positions that don’t necessarily coincide with particular member countries’ if they choose not to subscribe to them.
As Professor Thitinan Pongsudhirak points out in our second Spotlight edition, without a rethinking of the way ASEAN decision making works, “ASEAN will be around but it will not be going many places with any speed as long as it cannot regain its unity for ASEAN centrality.”
