“An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted,” Arthur Miller once observed. In the same vein, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), a once promising regional organisation, is confronting its own moment of truth.
The raging civil war in Myanmar, and the festering disputes in the South China Sea, are cruelly exhausting the basic illusions of supposed Asean “centrality” in shaping the post-Cold-War order in Asia. Unless Asean rethinks its woefully dysfunctional decision-making structures, and develops decisive leaders in its ranks, the regional organisation will fade into irrelevance.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Without a robust and coherent Asean, the whole Indo-Pacific region could sleepwalk towards a new cold war, with dire consequences for Southeast Asian nations.
Two flashpoints underscore Asean’s existential crisis. One, following a decade of “constructive engagement” with Myanmar’s junta, the regional body is now confronting the prospect of a full-blown civil war in a member country. And it’s partly responsible for it.
Time and again, the regional organisation has unwittingly served as a legitimisation platform for Myanmar’s brutal generals. In the late 2000s, Asean enthusiastically endorsed cosmetic political reforms by the junta, which temporarily empowered a more reform-minded civilian leadership without stripping away the prerogatives of the military.