“Can we imagine a peaceful and stable Southeast Asia without ASEAN?”

It is tempting to criticise ASEAN because of its shortcomings, but can we imagine a peaceful and stable Southeast Asia without it? Southeast Asia will be less able to manage external influences, less competitive, more expensive to do business in and more dangerous to live in without the regional bloc.

Instead, we might have a region fragmented by religion, ethnicity and geography. Member states might work with external powers to preserve their own interests. There could be increased foreign influence to help maintain peace and stability. Defence budgets could very well soar. Limited exchanges of information might hamper member states tackling terrorism, natural disasters and pandemic outbreaks on their own. (Southeast Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions of the world to natural disasters.) Without ASEAN cooperation and coordination, there would be no network of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and no dialogue partners like America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand to assist in emergency situations.

ASEAN has focused on economic integration, with import and export tariffs reduced or eliminated based on free trade agreements. Without the grouping, restrictive regimes make it more complicated and time-consuming to move professional workers across the region and for multinational companies to set up ASEAN-WIDE production chains. Without the ASEAN Economic Community, regional production bases – such as auto manufacturers producing different motor vehicles and component parts in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam – would no longer be viable. Jobs could vanish. Businesses could no longer access free online information on crossborder customs processes and procedures, and the lack of information and transparency in business activities could affect the private sector, especially small and medium-sized enterprises dependent on ASEAN for survival. For example, the region’s growing café culture may never have sprung up as quickly as it did without ASEAN’S lower tariffs on coffee bean imports. And without ASEAN, Southeast Asia cannot adjust itself expeditiously to the digital, inclusive and sharing community without its regional knowledge of what is transforming industry, trade and world development.

At the beginning, ASEAN was a smaller grouping of five anti-communist countries. It was political ideology and forceful leadership that motivated ASEAN’S diverse member states to work collectively to tackle common challenges. None of them wanted to be alone in dealing with the major powers wanting to dominate Southeast Asia for their own interests. Today, the world’s eyes are on ASEAN because it is a region with a promising future. Geopolitics in the region have shifted with a risen China and a distracted US, and to be sure, ASEAN member states are diverse: Their culture, ethnicity, history and politics are all different. Yet there is an energy to cooperate and collaborate with one another. The bloc has demonstrated its ingenuity by hanging together and keeping peace in the neighbourhood.