Identity at Fifty

Throughout the years, ASEAN has shown that it is capable of unifying member states around cooperation.

ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) has come quite a distance since its inception in 1967. Today, it stands as one of the world’s oldest regional organizations. From five founding members, it has expanded to 10 member-states, each with its own culture, languages, history, and form of government. To many people, ASEAN is almost defined by its diversity — a diversity that both contextualizes its successes and underpins its challenges in carving out a stronger sense of shared identity.

On Aug. 3-4, the Stratbase ADR Institute, the Carlos P. Romulo Foundation, and the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies network are hosting a conference entitled “ASEAN at Fifty: The Way Forward.” The conference will feature insights from distinguished ministers, ambassadors, and leading voices from all across Southeast Asia. On the agenda are the international strategic landscape, the economic environment, challenges to peace, security, and stability, resilience to the threats of climate change and an agenda for the digital economy, and ASEAN’s sense of community.

COMMON CHALLENGE

Originally established as a mechanism to quell tensions in the region, the regional body was designed to take a collective approach to solving inter- and extra-regional political and security concerns. ASEAN has since shifted its focus to strengthening economic cooperation. As a recent Special Study published by Stratbase ADR Institute points out, despite the slowdown in global economic growth, ASEAN economies remain as some of the most dynamic in the world. Combined, ASEAN members’ gross domestic product is the 6th largest in the world. Its population is also growing rapidly, totaling an estimated 625 million people or almost 10% of the global population.

Throughout the years, ASEAN has shown that it is capable of unifying member states around cooperation. While effecting reforms might have come at a glacial pace, the “ASEAN way,” grounded on values such as noninterference, consensus- building, and non- confrontational negotiations, has still culminated in landmark achievements for the bloc: these include establishment of the ASEAN Free Trade Area in 1992 and the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015.

However, the demands of our time require a different approach. The challenge for ASEAN is to ensure its continued relevance as the geopolitical tides turn.

As Richard Heydarian laments in a recent Occasional Paper for our institute, China’s increasing assertiveness is not only disturbing the region’s security architecture, but is also “undermining ASEAN’s internal cohesion and quest for centrality in East Asian affairs.”

With the increasing dominance of China in the region, ASEAN member states must take on a region-centered approach in their diplomacy. However, doing so would require a stronger sense of ASEAN identity, which should be rooted on deep linkages among its member states and a stronger sense of community among Southeast Asians.

IDENTITY

A 2017 Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) study entitled, “What does ASEASEAN