ABSTRACT
Of amity and enmity Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have been referred to as Southeast Asia’s security (Emmerson, 1996: 82), economic and intellectual core that are critical to the resilience of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Alagappa (1991: 17-22) and Andrew Tan (2004) purport that as security perspectives in the Malay World are intertwined, they cannot be analysed without reference to these states. The strong economic links between Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore reinforces the concept of a core within ASEAN (Stubbs, 1992).
