ABSTRACT
On serious issues such as human rights, outside interference in domestic affairs and co-operative security-building, several Asian nations have held views at odds with, or irreconcilable to, those of the West. Yet the debate over ‘Asian Values’ as a basis of legitimacy for regional standards remains a very limited tug of war. Even before the Asian catastrophe took hold, the Cambodian crisis of July 1997 prompted the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), for the first time in its history, explicitly to interfere in the domestic affairs of a regional state. Following Co-Premier Hun Sen’s ousting of his FUNCINPEC colleague, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, ASEAN called for his reinstatement, and delayed Cambodia’s admission into the Association until April 1999. ASEAN’s stance could be justified by the Paris agreements of 1991, which ended Cambodia’s civil war, and it may have been easier for the Association to intervene in the domestic affairs of a former communist state. Nonetheless, just as agreement had been reached with the West over a policy of constructive pressure on Myanmar, so ASEAN was giving up its non-intervention dogma in response to events in Cambodia.
