How Can ASEAN Navigate Through Geopolitical Rivalries / Chheang VANNARITH

Asia’s Post-Pandemic Order and Integration: Outlook of ASEAN and the Indo-Pacific at Crossroads

How Can ASEAN Navigate Through Geopolitical Rivalries
Chheang VANNARITH, Asian Vision Institute and Invest in Cambodia

The evolving US-China power rivalry causes significant threats to regional peace and stability and put constraints on the foreign policy options for the small states. Maintain agency is the matter of survival for small states. ASEAN is widely perceived as the shield to protect the interests of small states and middle powers in Southeast Asia. By exercising collective agency, ASEAN could enhance its relevance and leverage. The ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) is one of the key regional initiatives to navigate ASEAN through US-China rivalry by strengthening ASEAN centrality and engagement in the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean regions, connecting ASEAN with other regional mechanisms in both regions. Therefore, operationalizing the AOIP is critical to enhancing the collective agency of ASEAN. First, ASEAN needs to further build strong consensus on ASEAN centrality- what are the core principle and values constituting ASEAN centrality. Second, ASEAN needs to deliver concrete results on the key cooperation areas, including maritime cooperation, connectivity, UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030, and economic and other possible areas of cooperation. Third, ASEAN needs to proactively engage non-state actors in regional integration and community building process, including political parties, private corporations, and civil society groups.

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Session 3 / The Indo-Pacific from Southeast Asian Perspectives : Centrality and Multilateralism in Uncertain Times
Chair : Prof. Suthiphand CHIRATHIVAT, Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok)

The Indo-Pacific considered as a maritime “super-region” acknowledge the fact that the Indian Ocean has replaced the Atlantic as the globe’s busiest and most strategically significant trade corridor, whose geographical center in Southeast Asia. The “ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific” in 2019 asserted the “ASEAN Centrality” and its willingness to weigh as a significant player in the Indo-Pacific changing landscape, at the heart of new regional dynamics. These last years, ASEAN has defended an alternative position of “dialogue and cooperation, and not rivalry with China” in the context of Trump’s trade disputes and conflicts between US and China. This session questions the Southeast Asia countries and ASEAN multilateral strategy, in the recent changing context with the new Biden administration’s commitment in the Indo-Pacific. And to what extent will ASEAN countries and institutions be able to defend a stable multipolar world order in the Indo-Pacific region without isolating China, and avoid, as during the Cold War, being the center theatre of conflicts ?

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“Asia’s Post-Pandemic Order and Integration : Outlook of ASEAN and the Indo-Pacific at Crossroads” is an international conference organized by The Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC-CNRS) with the ASEAN Studies Center (Chulalongkorn University) in Bangkok, and the ASEAN-India Centre (AIC), RIS in New Delhi.
8-9 July 2021 - Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok