Southeast Asia in 2008: Challenges Within and Without

Summary

In 2008 ASEAN intensified its longstanding search for identity. In the final quarter of the year the Association was transformed from a consultative group into a legal entity when the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand became the last member states to ratify the ASEAN Charter. However, the translation of the group's new status into policies remains an open question. ASEAN continues to be the bedrock of Asian regional architecture, but signs are emerging that the Northeast Asia members of the ASEAN+3 may not need Southeast Asian training wheels much longer. At the same time, ASEAN was pulled closer into Northeast Asian conundrums — and potential conflicts — with new overtures from North Korea and Taiwan.

However, more tangible challenges to Southeast Asian unity in 2008 came from developments within and between the member states themselves. The protracted multi-party process to forge a peace agreement between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Philippine government failed, assuring continued instability in Mindanao and calling into question the efficacy of ad hoc regional diplomacy. A dispute over an historic border temple sparked a brief military clash between Thailand and Cambodia, with each side accusing the other of provoking conflict for domestic political gain. At the end of the year international attention was drawn to Thailand's complicated political crisis when anti-government protestors seized the international airport in Bangkok, disrupting regional air routes and forcing Bangkok to postpone the annual ASEAN Summit.

But arguably the greatest challenge to ASEAN coherence posed by a member state in 2008 was the response — or lack of — by the government of Myanmar to Cyclone Nargis and to offers of humanitarian relief from the international community. Less than a year after the government's crackdown of the “Saffron Revolution”, the disaster became a diagnostic for Myanmar's regional relations. ASEAN emerged as the interlocutor of choice, but the limits of the Association's influence on its isolated and isolationist member were obvious.

ASEAN Charter: Back-and-Fill Institutional Development?