ASEAN and Regional Security in East Asia

Introduction
 Established in August 1967
 ASEAN has placed a central role in ensuring peace among its members.

• South Asia has enjoyed a relative period of stability and period. (e.g. Laos & Vietnam and Cambodia & Myanmar)
• Regional cooperation  Interstate Relations  Regional Economics Cooperation and trust
 Strategies and principles employed by ASEAN in regional security.
 Challenges that Challenges that might shake ASEAN’s role as a regional manager.
 Practical measures that ASEAN needs to take note of.

 2 Pillars of Regional Security

1. Multi-lateral institutions (since 1993)
• ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1993
• ASEAN plus three (APT) in 1997
• East Asian Summit (EAS) in 2005

2. Bilateral Alliance System
 Economics
Policy

 The Challenges

1. Development in major geostrategic shift.
2. Development complicates the security challenges in the region

ASEAN AS A MANAGER OF REGIONAL ORDER: STRATEGIES AND PRINCIPLES
 With its achievements in domestic economic development, ASEAN’s confidence grew and began to extend its security role beyond SEA (e.g. ARF, ART, and EAS)
• Positioned itself a s a regional order
 ASEAN
• From a modest sub- regional association to an organization.
• Since 1967, it approached security matters in comprehensive manner.
For SEA countries:
1. Security has always encompassed wide arrays of issues in social, cultural, economic, political, and military fronts.
2. Recently, ASEAN countries tended to see non- traditional security issues as domestic issues by member- states, which required national solutions.
• Both at national and regional levels, ASEAN from the outset undertook 2 interrelated approaches:
a. Threats from non- traditional security problems were left to individual member- states to resolve; and
b. Enabling individual states to