ASEAN’s Crisis of Relevance: Why Southeast Asia’s Premier Bloc Is Struggling To Stay Afloat

In recent months, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as ASEAN, has found itself repeatedly outpaced, outmaneuvered, or outright ignored. At May’s Shangri-La Dialogue, member states failed to form a united response to China’s escalating aggression in the South China Sea, despite repeated incursions into Philippine-claimed waters. In June, Cambodia hosted a Chinese naval delegation at its Ream base, a visit that drew regional concern but did not result in an official rebuke from ASEAN. This event followed years of debate over China’s funding of the base’s expansion and its potential use by the Chinese military. The bloc’s lack of a unified response was again apparent in July, when the military regime in Myanmar conducted airstrikes on civilian areas near the Thai border, displacing thousands. While some individual ASEAN member states voiced concern, the organization as a whole remained conspicuously absent, reflecting its ongoing struggle to enforce its own peace plan and hold the junta accountable.Meanwhile, the growing power of cyber-scamming syndicates operating with impunity in Laos and Myanmar is exploiting ASEAN’s porous enforcement capabilities.The group has fallen short when it comes to producing a coherent joint statement on regional security. Instead, internal rifts — over everything from Chinese investments to responses to Russia’s war in Ukraine — left the 10-member bloc, made up of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, paralyzed.Taken together, these episodes have sharpened the question that has long lingered in diplomatic circles: Is ASEAN still relevant?“ASEAN faces difficult challenges within a dangerous neighborhood — unstable governments, regional security tensions, uneven and unpredictable economic growth — all against the backdrop of an intensified Sino-American rivalry unraveling previous ties,” research analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies China Program, Jack Burnham, tells the New York Sun.ASEAN’s Soft Diplomacy ProblemFounded in 1967 as a political and economic union to promote stability in the region, ASEAN was once hailed as a successful model of multilateralism. But nearly six decades later, the organization’s guiding principle of consensus has become its most significant liability. When even one member state dissents, progress stalls.Nowhere is this more glaring than in Myanmar, where ASEAN’s “Five-Point Consensus”— crafted in April 2021 to halt the junta’s violence — has completely unraveled. The Stimson Center describes ASEAN’s Myanmar policy as “toothless,” with the bloc failing even to halt arms flows or enforce humanitarian access.Despite Myanmar’s exclusion from high-level meetings, the junta continues to operate with near impunity, while millions remain displaced. Meanwhile, frontline ASEAN neighbors like Thailand are grappling with the cross-border consequences but remain reluctant to break from the group’s cautious diplomatic posture.Director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Gregory Poling, tells the Sun that Myanmar’s military receives almost all its arms and financial support from China, directly and indirectly, of which ASEAN has little impact to change.“De-escalation is probably a fool’s errand. The junta will not negotiate until it has no other choice, and that will only happen if the resistance continues to gain ground as it has been consistently for four and a half years,” he said. “Outside parties can try and accelerate that and use diplomatic and economic leverage to facilitate a more unified resistance stance, but outsiders have very limited leverage over what is happening in the country.”Unity on Paper, Paralysis in PracticeAt its heart, ASEAN is struggling with a core contradiction: it seeks to present itself as a unified regional force, while refusing to challenge the sovereignty of its member states — even in the face of atrocities.China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea has further exposed ASEAN’s inability to speak with one voice. Despite years of negotiations, the long-promised Code of Conduct between ASEAN and Beijing remains stalled, mainly due to divisions within the bloc. Member states like Cambodia and Laos, which are heavily dependent on Chinese investment, often serve as spoilers in regional consensus.In a revealing example, ASEAN’s recent joint statements avoided directly naming China, even when addressing maritime incursions. Such omissions reflect the wider diplomatic balancing act — an act that increasingly looks more like appeasement than neutrality.According to Burnham, “ASEAN is struggling to manage both a global economic shock and the U.S.-China rivalry.”“Bloc economies such as Vietnam, which have built their success on maintaining ties with Washington and Beijing while pursuing a path of export-dependent industrialization, are finding both their politics and their policies scrambled by changes on both sides of the Pacific,” he explained. “The bloc’s policy of non-interference, while limiting its reach, has provided enough flexibility to maintain the grouping as an avenue for discussion, if not always direct action.”From Mr. Burnham’s purview, without the pledge of non-interference, “the bloc would likely fracture, without any regional grouping left to take its place.”As geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China intensifies, ASEAN’s equivocation threatens to render it irrelevant. A recent piece in The Hill argues that if ASEAN cannot adapt to the demands of the current security environment, it risks being bypassed altogether in favor of smaller, interest-driven coalitions like the Quad or AUKUS.Economic Fragility and the Rise of “Scam States”Beyond diplomacy, ASEAN faces internal economic fractures that further challenge its cohesion. While Indonesia and Vietnam are emerging as tech and manufacturing hubs, countries like Laos and Myanmar are slipping into what Asia Financial recently described as “scamming states”— economies increasingly fueled by illicit cyber operations, human trafficking, and state-sanctioned fraud.The explosive growth of online scam syndicates — many operating from criminal enclaves in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos — has become a major regional crisis. Yet ASEAN has done little beyond issuing communiqués. The bloc lacks mechanisms to coordinate law enforcement or impose punitive measures. As a result, transnational crime networks are flourishing under the cracks of ASEAN’s disunity.Is the Problem ASEAN— or Expectations?Some scholars argue that ASEAN is being unfairly judged. As some analysts point out, ASEAN was never meant to be a supranational authority like the European Union. Its strength has always been its informal, flexible diplomacy— what’s often dubbed the “ASEAN Way.”Yet within those modest ambitions, some see space for ASEAN to contribute in more minor but significant ways.Director of Asia Engagement at Defense Priorities, Lyle Goldstein, tells the Sun that while he believes ASEAN “has always been a weak organization and this will continue for the foreseeable future,” it can serve minor purposes. “ASEAN has played a modestly helpful role in reminding both superpowers (the United States and China) that neither one can dominate the region,” he said. “Insofar as Washington and Beijing seem to need a mediator, ASEAN can step into that role, possibly.”Mr. Goldstein also observed that the group could and should “reform in the direction of promoting neutrality as a valuable concept.”“This is not necessarily easy in various contexts, such as the Philippines and Singapore, but I think it is critically important to the future of peace in the region and the wider world,” he continued. In other words, ASEAN’s neutrality is critical to preserving peace in the region and beyond. However, that neutrality can be difficult for ASEAN members such as the Philippines, which has a mutual defense treaty and close military ties with the United States, and Singapore, which maintains strong security cooperation with Washington alongside deep trade relations with China.A Fork in the RoadAs the region faces growing challenges — from Chinese expansionism to internal authoritarianism and economic inequality — ASEAN must make a choice: evolve or erode.Indonesia and Singapore have pushed for limited institutional reforms, including crisis response protocols and joint cybercrime task forces. But without buy-in from less developed or more authoritarian members, progress remains slow.For now, ASEAN continues to convene, issue statements, and uphold the rituals of regional diplomacy. But without a meaningful mechanism for accountability, its summitry risks becoming theater — symbolic rather than strategic.“ASEAN continues to feel the pull of great power politics from both sides of the Pacific — particularly as Washington looks to reshore manufacturing and Beijing looks to maintain market access,” Mr. Burnham added. “Maintaining the bloc’s centrality will be more of a test of endurance, as leaders across the region look to wait out buffeting trade winds while making short-term arrangements.”Without the ability — or the will — to act, ASEAN risks becoming not the center of the Indo-Pacific order, but a bystander to it.

ASEAN’s Crisis of Relevance: Why Southeast Asia’s Premier Bloc Is Struggling To Stay Afloat

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