Today, the Diplomatic Academy of Viet Nam organized a hybrid ASEAN ISIS Network Workshop on “ASEAN at 55: Looking back and Ways Forward” to examine what ASEAN has done right and where ASEAN is heading next. Amb. Pou Sothirak, Executive Director of the Cambodia Institute for Cooperation and Peace contributed his views as follows.
ASEAN celebrates 55 years of its existence this year with a sense of pride and achievements. But pressing old and new challenges remain. Unless these stubborn challenges, which constantly test the bloc’s principles, cohesion, institution, and relevance, are tackled appropriately, ASEAN’s preeminent status as the most successful grouping remains questionable.
The evolving global order and the tense geostrategic landscape in the Indo-Pacific region require ASEAN not to take its future for granted. For the next phase of ASEAN’s existence, the bloc must claim its rightful place as a credible player in the Indo-Pacific region by:
– Fostering greater awareness among all segments of the people so they may be better informed and more involved in the community-building process. ASEAN must make the Community building process be felt by and work well for all the people of ASEAN.
– Implementing the three pillars of ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and ensuring that the ASEAN Community’s Post-2025 Vision contains the necessary foresight to take on the megatrends and the dire geopolitical and socio-economic landscape faced by the region.
– Exhibiting ASEAN’s own ability to manage economic, social, and political issues rather than overly rely on any one major power.
– Redefining its own leadership with foresight and fortitude and prove its credibility at a time when the outlook on issues like the war in Ukraine and Cross-Strait relations remains volatile and when there are serious doubts about ASEAN’s own centrality and unity amidst wider regional and global trends, including Myanmar crisis and the US-China rivalry.
– Reviewing its modus of Operandi and how ASEAN conducts its own affairs. Demonstrating swift actions and focusing on producing concrete results on the ground if the bloc wants to earn more respect internally and externally.
– Firmly stating ASEAN’s common position with regard to the region’s rules-based order by proclaiming that such an order is vital to regional peace and stability.
– ASEAN needs a new raison d’être to spell out what threatens ASEAN’s common aspirations for the region to remain peaceful, stable, and prosperous and redefine the “ASEAN Way” by departing from business as usual to manage and implement effectively all instruments and mechanisms created in the last half of century to enhance regional cooperation and strengthen ASEAN’s institutional presence in engaging the world.
