Since the end of the Cold War, ASEAN has incorporated nations into its ranks that come from a wider range of ideologies and regime types to form the 10-state organization that it is today. This ideological diversity, combined with ASEAN’s unique standard for consensus and non-coercion as core values of the ‘ASEAN Way,’ has led the bloc to develop a reputation as a passive and indecisive intergovernmental organization—at least relative to its far more centralized counterparts like the European Union. However, ASEAN’s decision not to invite a representative from Myanmar to its summits following the February 2021 coup in Naypyidaw suggest that these principles are evolving away from complete non-interference. 

Nevertheless, ASEAN has mostly sidestepped the political sphere, holding its greatest successes in the realm of regional economic integration. The bloc was the driving force behind negotiating two of the largest trade blocs in history, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in the 1980s and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in the 2010s. The latter free trade agreement even covers 45% of the world’s population and almost a third of global GDP.

Recent Events

From May 12-13, 2022, President Biden hosted the first in-person U.S.-ASEAN Special Summit since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With this meeting in Washington, D.C., the U.S. hoped to solidify a commitment made last November to upgrade U.S.-ASEAN ties from a strategic partnership to the level of “comprehensive strategic partnership.” There is a lot of ground to cover to bring about this transition, though, as former President Donald Trump only attended one ASEAN summit and left the position of ambassador to ASEAN vacant. On the first day of the summit, Biden unveiled a $150 million aid package to ASEAN countries targeting infrastructure, security, pandemic preparedness, and clean energy. Biden also announced the nomination of ​​Yohannes Abraham, the chief of staff of the National Security Council, to be U.S. Ambassador to ASEAN. 

The final day of the summit in Washington yielded a 28-point joint vision statement. Notably, the statement reiterated the U.S. commitment to “ASEAN centrality” as a key to regional stability. ASEAN and the U.S. affirmed the compatibility of the ‘ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific’ with the ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’ of the United States. The two sides also proclaimed the need to maintain regional maritime peace and stability through adhering to the principles of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The statement referred to the South China Sea in particular as “a sea of peace, stability, and prosperity” where nations should pursue “the peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law.” These points in the statement were bolstered by an announcement that a U.S. Coast Guard vessel will be permanently deployed in Southeast Asia “for security cooperation and to operate as a training platform.”

After the Special Summit, representatives from ASEAN countries were also present at the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) in Tokyo, Japan on May 23 and the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore from June 10-12. With economic development as a key concern for ASEAN, U.S. overtures to the bloc led seven of its ten members to join the U.S. as initial IPEF members. It remains to be seen how ASEAN member states will influence the negotiation of IPEF’s various pillars, but the new initiative features overlaps greatly with (infrastructure, clean energy, trade facilitation) with extant U.S. efforts in the region. On the security front, ASEAN’s participation in the Shangri-La Dialogue was overshadowed by some of the ‘heavier hitters’ in the region like the U.S. and China. However, comments made by ASEAN leaders there suggest that there is pressure within the bloc to take a stronger collective stance on the South China Sea issue. After the Philippines’ Secretary of National Defense Delfin Lorenzana took aim at China’s maritime claims during a panel discussion, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein called for ASEAN to stick together on the matter, saying “our bloc of 10 countries must stand united.”

Keep In Mind

ASEAN will continue to be an important factor in Southeast Asian maritime affairs. The U.S. and China are both deeply engaged bilaterally with ASEAN member states economically, and there is international consensus on the need for ‘ASEAN centrality’ in Southeast Asia as a means to avoid ‘salami-slicing’ in the region by superpowers. While the ‘ASEAN way’ has led the bloc to traditionally avoid getting embroiled in the political disputes of its member-states, increasing geopolitical polarization is causing splits in the bloc and recalibrations of several of its fundamental principles. Two key areas to watch out for in the coming months include how ASEAN members will collectively approach their disputes with China in the South China Sea, and how U.S. and Chinese regional initiatives in turn could widen existing cleavages in the bloc. 

The position of ASEAN, a primarily economic and social bloc, towards the South China Sea has traditionally been strategically ambiguous. Several ASEAN states—Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam—have maritime claims at odds with China’s. Nevertheless, ASEAN has historically avoided staunch opposition to the Chinese position to preserve diplomacy as an avenue for dispute resolution. As Defense Minister Hussein put it at the Shangri-La Dialogue, ASEAN member states are “more than aware of what is at stake, which is why we have consistently advocated that diplomacy takes precedence in approaching this dispute.” In this spirit, an ASEAN-China ‘Code of Conduct’ (CoC) for the South China Sea has been sporadically in development since 2002, but no substantive progress has been made on it since preliminary guidelines were agreed to in 2012. With ASEAN-China South China Sea CoC negotiations stalled under Cambodia’s chairmanship this year, Indonesia’s liaisons within ASEAN over the past year are an effort to construct an alternative, comparatively uncompromising ‘coalition of the willing’ on maritime security with ​​Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. 

These divisions within ASEAN may get even larger over the year as a result of U.S. and Chinese regional démarches. On the security front, Cambodia began expanding its Ream Naval Base on China’s dime earlier this month. As one of China’s strongest partners in the region, Cambodia’s chairmanship of ASEAN in 2022 has been a thorn in the side of the bloc’s more China-skeptical members. While China and Cambodia both deny that the joint project will harbor a Chinese naval presence, U.S. and Australian officials have stated that the expanded portion of the base is intended for “exclusive” use by the Chinese PLAN. A Chinese installation there would be the first of its kind in the Gulf of Thailand and would invariably expand China’s ability to project power in the South China Sea. 

If Cambodia’s recent actions are pulling one side of ASEAN more towards China, the concurrent decisions of other members to sign on to IPEF are pulling the bloc in the direction of the U.S. While IPEF is a fundamentally economic arrangement, as a U.S.-led initiative, it is bound to propagate U.S. economic interests throughout the region. In particular, its ‘supply chain resilience’ pillar may seek to reduce China’s footprint in Southeast Asian markets and reorient trans-Pacific shipping patterns. With the majority of ASEAN members involved in IPEF from the ground floor, this initiative could further deepen divisions in ASEAN on how best to engage with the U.S. without provoking China.

This issue’s Spotlight was written by Alec Caruana, ICAS Research Assistant Intern