ABSTRACT
If ASEAN had developed the attributes of a ‘community’ towards the end of the Cold War, then its scope was clearly less than ‘regional’, with membership limited to only one-ideologically ‘like-minded’—segment of Southeast Asia. ASEAN was not identical with Southeast Asia. Its framework for regional order, including a ZOPFAN, was boycotted and vigorously opposed by the Indochinese states notably at the Non-Aligned summit in Sri Lanka in 1976. Moreover, the peaceful relations among the ASEAN members and hence its claim to be a regional security community owed much to common concerns over the domestic threat from communism and to cooperative efforts regionally to balance Vietnamese power. ASEAN functioned more as a subregional alliance than a regional security community. With the settlement of the Cambodia conflict, which removed the principal source of polarisation in Southeast Asia, ASEAN’s role in building a Southeast Asian security community required a fresh appraisal. It had developed as an inward-looking subregional entity, but was faced with the challenge of developing a wider regional security community involving Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.
