ABSTRACT
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was created on 8 August 1967 by five Southeast Asian states: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. ASEAN admitted Brunei in 1984, Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999. Assessments of ASEAN as a regional security framework or forum focus on its role in stabilizing intra-Southeast Asian politics, creating regional conditions more conducive to domestic development and regime stability, and mediating ASEAN members’ relations with larger powers. ASEAN has also come to be especially known for its dialogue-driven approach to conflict management and its related aversion to more formal and institutionalized kinds of regionalism. Key political-security initiatives include: ASEAN (1967), the Zone of Peace Freedom and Neutrality (1971), Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (1976), Declaration of ASEAN Concord (1976), The ASEAN Regional Forum (1993/4), Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty (1995), the Declaration of ASEAN Concord II (2003), and the Charter of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (2007). As an organization created for and by Southeast Asian states, ASEAN’s activities until
the late 1980s had been confined to the Southeast Asian region; however, developments coinciding with the ending of the Cold War pushed ASEAN to extend and expand its regional attention. Today ASEAN participates in a number of regional arrangements whose membership notably extends beyond Southeast Asia. These include the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) framework, the East Asia Summit (EAS), as well as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC). Each of these arrangements displays ASEAN’s influence and its characteristic informal, consensusbased regionalism, but ASEAN’s initiative and influence are most evident in the ARF and APT frameworks. While ASEAN’s specific contributions to regional security have been subject to considerable debate, ASEAN’s centrality in these expanded and mixed membership arrangements is nevertheless made notable by the geopolitically disproportionate influence it wields as a coalition of lesser powers.
