IS ASEAN STILL RELEVANT?

I think the timely question should perhaps be, “how  to make ASEAN more relevant”.ASEAN may have no choice now but to move to the driver’s seat. It has been on the back seat for too long. It is high time that it plays a more pro-active role to determine its own future as the traditional role players - the USA and EU are now struggling to regain their composure !Even the U.S.A has long recognizes the impending shift of the global economic epic centre to the East and the vital role that China and India play.

ASEAN has over the last two decades made significant inroads through its political and economic ties with all the key economic players in Asia and Malaysia especially should take the opportunity to tap into the huge potential available out there, be it in China,India, Middle East or Japan.With its resourcefulness and entrepreneurial spirit, ASEAN can be the catalyst for political stability and economic growth. What is lacking is only its collective political will to act which has over the years been hampered as the U.S.A and E.U. (World Bank & I.M.F.) have been the ones calling all the shots !It is also time that ASEAN fast track its plans to consolidate into a single zone like the E.U, which has been on a back burner. The main issue of concern is of course Burma , Laos and possibly Cambodia (Khmer Rep.) The possibilities in Burma is tremendous, she has the potential to be the”China” of ASEAN .
The challenge is on how to convince the military junta to unclench its grip to adopt a more active transitional policy.
But ASEAN has to be very careful as it does not want Burma to implode through its transition as experienced by Yugoslavia and U.S.S.R. and worse, to end up like Iraq.
In fact, the main reason why Burma has not gone down that path is because she has not been isolated as she is in ASEAN.
I am sure there are a lot of bolts and nuts to be tightened and put in place before ASEAN can be more pro-active to be more relevant but it is not an impossible aspiration .

On a more positive note - who would have imagined and believed that China will be where she is today when three decades ago, Deng Tsao Ping decided to modernize China.
China did not make it on political will alone but because the main players - the World Bank and the I.M.F. being persuaded of the huge potential , had a huge stake in its development. So, there may be hope yet for ASEAN !
ASEAN has served its founding objectives but to be more relevant it has to evolve.

The motivations for the birth of ASEAN were the desire for a stable external environment (so that its members’ governing elite could concentrate on nation building), the common fear of communism, reduced faith in or mistrust of external powers in the 1960s, as well as the aspiration for national economic development; not to mention Indonesia’s ambition to become a regional hegemon through regional cooperation and the hope on the part of Malaysia and Singapore to constrain Indonesia and bring it into a more cooperative framework. Unlike the European Union, ASEAN was designed to serve nationalism.

During the 1990s, the bloc experienced an increase in both membership as well as in the drive for further integration. In 1990, Malaysia proposed the creation of an East Asia Economic Caucus composing the then-members of ASEAN as well as the People’s Republic of China, Japan, and South Korea, with the intention of counterbalancing the growing influence of the United States in the APEC as well as in the Asian region as a whole. This proposal, however, failed since it faced heavy opposition from Japan and the United States. Despite this failure, member states continued to work for further integration. In 1992, the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) scheme was signed as a schedule for phasing tariffs and as a goal to increase the region’s competitive advantage as a production base geared for the world market. This law would act as the framework for the ASEAN Free Trade Area. After the East Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, a revival of the Malaysian proposal was established in Chiang Mai, known as the Chiang Mai Initiative, which calls for better integration between the economies of ASEAN as well as the +3 countries (China, Japan, and South Korea).

Aside from improving each member state’s economies, the bloc also focused on peace and stability in the region. On 15 December 1995, the Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty was signed with the intention of turning Southeast Asia into a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone. The treaty took effect on 28 March 1997 after all but one of the member states have ratified it. It became fully effective on 21 June 2001, after the Philippines ratified it, effectively banning all nuclear weapons in the region.
Granted, there are too many differences to be ironed out and still a lot of nuts and bolts to be put in place but the benefits will be tremendous and the advantages will out weigh the disadvantages.
The differences will always remain. Even in the E.U., they are still grappling to introduce the European Constiution which was first rejected by the British and the Danes because they fear that the E.U will become too centralized at the expense of democracy.
It was revived by the Nice Treaty which was again rejected, this time by the French and Dutch voters . The last was the 2008 Lisbon Treaty which was rejected by the Irish for fear of losing its autonomy, which is ironic, because without the E.U.there would have been no Celtic Tiger. But the prevailing economic condition in E.U. is so bad even the tiger is seeking protection!
But it cannot be denied that all the European states benefit from the Union.
Similarly, if ASEAN can evolve ,along the lines of the E.U., and fast track the introduction of the single market and the single currency in ASEAN. The benefits are tremendous - free mobility of labour and capital . Also ,with an evolved ASEAN, the policy of non intervention will be replaced by a more centralized and pre-set conditions involving Legal System, Fundamental /Human Rights,Accountability and Good Governance ( I know the latter seem like a joke now, but we have to start somewhere).
And countries like Burma and Malaysia will be forced to improve their dismal track records if they are to meet the pre-conditions to access all the benefits.
At the moment, it is a catch-22 situation, ASEAN needs to move fast to be more relevant and at the same time it also has to put more muscle into ASEAN Plus Three and ASEAN-CER and its link with other trade blocs like GAFTA and MERCOSUR to look for new markets.

However,there are two factors working against ASEAN's shine. Primarily, it is the lack of strong leadership. Secondly, it is the present world economic doldrums. Gone are the leaders of the previous era , like Tunku, Lee Kuan Yew, Mahathir, Adam Malik and other ASEAN leaders - men of tenacious determination, vision and strong leadership. The present world economic situation should not be a reason for ASEAN's malaise but sadly, it is. At the moment, it is every man/country for itself. It is sad because the present crop of ASEAN leaders seem to have missed the big picture - that the threat facing the region at the moment may have taken a new form but it is here ! The region and the previous leaders faced a similar and more perilous situation during the formative years of individual nationalism but had managed to stay united and forged ahead, armed only with the spirit of co-operation, compromise and comradeship . That founding spirit which is now lacking has to be rekindled if ASEAN is to remain relevant to handle the spin off effects of the current U.S. and E.U. Financial and Economic Crises as its full impact is about to/already hitting our shores with impending major job losses, hardships and very possible political, social and economic unrest. With courage,dynamism and purity missing from the equation we (ASEAN) are about to lose our peace,stability and prosperity as well.