ASEAN’s Indispensable Paradox: One Region, Multiple Fault Lines
Speaker
Chair
To the extent that Southeast Asia has no other institution or organisation that can plausibly represent, convene and provide agency for the region as a whole, ASEAN remains indispensable. Yet the 11-member bloc is also increasingly divided and impaired at a time when intensifying great-power rivalry, geoeconomic fragmentation and the erosion of the international order make regional cohesion and ASEAN centrality more necessary.
Ahead of the year-end ASEAN summit season and beyond, this seminar examines the widening gap between ASEAN’s centrality and its capacity. Three fault lines are particularly instructive as ASEAN moves forward. Myanmar has exposed the limits of consensus and ASEAN’s inability to enforce political commitments. The Thai-Cambodian border tensions demonstrate how nationalism and bilateral conflict can cut across regional solidarity from within. In the South China Sea, divergent interests, threat perceptions and relationships with Beijing continue to impede a common ASEAN position amid mounting US-China competition. These are not ASEAN’s only faultlines but indicators of a bigger challenge in maintaining regional agency without strategic unity. While ASEAN is unlikely to become a cohesive geopolitical actor, Southeast Asian states and societies need ASEAN more, not less, as a buffer, bridge and broker among the great powers as the international system becomes more contested and oriented towards self-help.
Speaker & chair biographies
Prof. Thitinan Pongsudhirak is Professor of International Relations at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science and Senior Fellow at its Institute of Security and International Studies (ISIS Thailand), where he served as Director from 2006 to 2022. He is also an LSE alumnus and an Associate of the LSE’s Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. A specialist on the comparative politics, geopolitics and geoeconomics of Thailand, ASEAN and Southeast Asia, Professor Pongsudhirak has more than three decades of experience spanning journalism, academia and think-tank research. He has written extensively on Thai politics, ASEAN, regional security and international affairs for publications such as The Bangkok Post, Project Syndicate, Nikkei Asia, The Straits Times, and The South China Morning Post. His analysis is regularly featured in international media including the BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, and Deutsche Welle.
Prof. John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
*Banner photo by bady abbas on Unsplash
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