1.1 The Three Characteristics of ASEAN

Formed in 1967, ASEAN is perhaps the most successful regional organisation outside the European Union. It has endured the Cold War and its ending, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, significant political change within many member-states, expansion of its membership from five to ten, and, at least so far, the rise of China.Footnote ¹ To orient the reader and allow for the coming argument, I highlight three defining features of ASEAN – the preoccupation with sovereignty, the nature of regional reform over the last fifty years, and the issue of non-compliance. Understanding these three characteristics provides a perspective on the nature of ASEAN’s regional order.

1.2 The Academic Debate about ASEAN

ASEAN’s preoccupation with sovereignty, its expanding remit, and the gap between ‘on-paper’ commitments and reality reveal ASEAN’s enigmatic nature. Why do states create commitments that they have no intention of living up to? Why do members continue to invest time and resources into a regional project that seems so slight? What is ASEAN given its track record, and is it a success?

The two leading strands of academic debate about ASEAN were memorably characterised by Reference RavenhillJohn Ravenhill (2009) as either ASEAN sceptics or ASEAN boosters (see also Reference Eaton and StubbsEaton & Stubbs 2006). Sceptical arguments about ASEAN are largely rooted in the realist tradition of International Relations (IR), with its focus on state power, self-interest, and mutual suspicion. Michael Leifer was a key figure in this debate (Reference LeiferLeifer 1974; Reference Emmerson, Liow and EmmersEmmerson 2006). Scepticism about ASEAN today can be characterised as a family of related claims rather than a single position. Some emphasise that contemporary ASEAN remains wedded to state sovereignty and state power, and therefore remains a captive of the ambitions and fears of national capitals (Reference NarineNarine 2009). This line of reasoning emphasises the commitments to sovereignty discussed above and the idea that since ASEAN is a vehicle of state power and freedom, it does not provide effective regional governance. ASEAN is seen as a weak institution, controlled entirely by its member-states who maintain a mutual suspicion of each other and of any commitments that would limit their freedoms. ASEAN’s order is fragile and transitory, predicated on the whims of its most powerful members and, more importantly, of the global powers who play politics in Southeast Asia. This does not mean that ASEAN is useless, but it has little life beyond the utility that member-states see in it. At the most extreme end of the spectrum, the sceptical argument denies ASEAN’s importance (Reference Jones and SmithJones & Smith 2002, Reference Jones and Smith2006).

The booster position is more positive about ASEAN, and has emerged over the last twenty years, led by Amitav Reference AcharyaAcharya (2001). The term ‘security community’, defined as a zone of peace where states share the reliable expectation of peaceful change, is crucial to the booster argument. Security communities produce reliable expectations of peace as states no longer think that armed conflict is an option in their interaction with other members of that community (the classic definition comes from Reference DeutschDeutsch 1957). This ‘unthinking’ peace is the product of norms – inter-subjective beliefs about appropriate behaviour – and it is not surprising that booster arguments tend towards a constructivist framing of the region, emphasising the role of identity in international politics. In this reading, ASEAN is not just an institution created by states and beholden to them. Instead, ASEAN reveals the presence of deep social cooperation between member-states and their leaders, which in turn binds the region together in a thicker and fuller way than sceptics imagine is possible. ASEAN is not the captive of its member-states, and the member-states are not bound together by self-interest alone. Instead, a thick set of norms about appropriate behaviour and Southeast Asia’s identity are commonly held across regional states. Central here are the diplomatic norms around consensus and unanimity, which, instead of signifying ASEAN’s weakness, actually indicate its greatest achievement as they represent inter-subjective beliefs that create a true community. These shared norms bind members together and explain ASEAN’s endurance and successes. In this sense, ASEAN’s order is robust and enduring, resting as it does on a community of true sentiment shared at least by elites and spreading into the regional public.

Following Acharya’s lead, Jürgen Reference HaackeHaacke (2005) identified ‘six norms’ in ASEAN’s diplomatic and security culture that comprised the ‘ASEAN way’ and mediated regional estrangement and insecurity.Footnote ³ Reference BaAlice Ba (2009) focused on ideas about Southeast Asia to explain both regional troubles and unity, invoking constructivism to explore ideas about regional resilience. Reference KatsumataHiro Katsumata (2004) traced shifting ASEAN diplomacy to new shared ideas about appropriate behaviour. Reference AcharyaAcharya (2004, Reference Acharya2005) continued to explore how shared ideas were shaping Southeast Asian regionalism, and was joined by others who focused on these ideas in different areas of ASEAN activity (Reference Kraft and JosephKraft 2001; Reference KatsumataKatsumata 2006; Reference CollinsCollins 2007; Reference StubbsStubbs 2008).

The defining feature of the debate between these two frameworks is that both have generated non-replicable insights into ASEAN whilst at the same time never escaping their own serious explanatory shortcomings. Sceptical work explains why ASEAN is in so many ways a weak institution and why its commitments are so often violated. And yet sceptical arguments are poorly suited to understanding how and why ASEAN has endured for more than fifty years in the face of such turbulent change, and why states, many of whom remain poor in material and social resources, continue to invest effort in ASEAN. If ASEAN does not do anything for its members, why do they bear the costs of the organisation? Why do they pursue more sophisticated regional commitments and processes when states have no intention of realising these commitments? Perhaps most importantly, how can sceptics explain the significant achievement of fifty years of regional peace? Inversely, the booster argument helps illuminate why states persist in bothering about ASEAN, why states wished to join the organisation in the 1990s, why peace has endured in Southeast Asia, and why ASEAN is central to Asia-Pacific regionalism. Yet boosters struggle to explain ASEAN’s obvious limitations – if states are bound by these norms, why do they violate them so often, so openly, and with such impunity (Reference DaviesDavies 2013a)? When looking at the reality of ASEAN member-states’ practices of intervention against the presumed norm of non-intervention, Reference JonesLee Jones (2012: 218) concludes that ‘the constructivist understanding of norms is simply unsustainable’.Footnote ⁴

Despite ASEAN’s long history, and an expansive academic engagement with it, observers of Southeast Asian regionalism remain unsatisfied. Our leading frameworks are unable to grasp ASEAN’s true nature – the boosters radically overstate their case whilst the sceptics radically understate theirs.Footnote ⁵ The argument that I present is intended to step between the optimism of the boosters and the negativity of the sceptics. I do not intend to replace many of the insights of these approaches so much as to situate them within a broader framework. Over its life, ASEAN has been buffeted by shifting power politics, changing notions of legitimacy, and the development of its members; each has a part to play in explaining the evolution and current form of regional governance. My claim that rituals and symbols provide a foundational account of ASEAN on top of which other arguments can be positioned and debated is modest. Rituals and symbols do not explain everything that has happened to ASEAN or that ASEAN has achieved. In the remainder of this section, I develop this new perspective on ASEAN. The sections that follow explore how this approach has developed, endured, and operated during ASEAN’s existence.

1.3 Understanding Rituals and Symbols

The discipline of IR has dealt with rituals and symbols only sporadically.Footnote ⁶ In the study of IR in general and ASEAN in particular, rituals and symbols are mentioned but rarely investigated. Rituals have played a small role in the analysis of norms (Reference KratochwilKratochwil 1989: 123–6) and in the study of peacekeeping (for example Reference RubinsteinRubinstein 2005: 536; Reference SchirchSchirch 2005). The most sustained investigation has emerged from the study of diplomacy. The relationship between diplomacy, symbolism, and ritual is intrinsic in both Western (Reference NeumannNeumann 2011) and non-Western traditions (Reference PhillipsPhillips 2017). Reference FaizullaevFaizullaev (2013) emphasises the way that symbols represent the state and make it apparent to individuals, giving weight to their communicative, normative, and affective functions (see also Reference Sending, Pouliot and NeumannSending, Pouliot & Neumann 2015). Reference YukawaTaku Yukawa (2017) refers to the ‘ASEAN way’ as a symbol of ASEAN but offers no conceptual analysis of this categorisation. Symbols have also been linked to the power of international organisations, especially the way in which they legitimate institutions and their functions (Reference HurdHurd 2002, Reference Hurd2005; Reference ChapmanChapman 2009). It is, however, in the fields of sociology and anthropology that much of the analytical investigation into rituals and symbols has occurred, and so it is these literatures that form the basis of the following discussion.

Reference KertzerDavid Kertzer (1988: 6) provides what has become a standard definition for rituals and symbols. Rituals are defined as ‘symbolic behavior that is socially standardized and repetitive’ (Reference KertzerKertzer 1988: 9). Rituals provide some sort of organisation to social life, and a way to mesh together the regular and the improvised, the repetitive and the varying (Reference Moore, Myerhoff, Moore and MyerhoffMoore & Myerhoff 1977: 4, 5; Reference WalzerWalzer 1967). Kertzer defines symbols as those things that ‘instigate social action and define the individual’s sense of self’, which serve to make sense of the political process with which they are engaged. Rituals and symbols can only exercise importance because they are embodied and performed.Footnote ⁷ Reference Moore, Myerhoff, Moore and MyerhoffMoore and Myerhoff (1977: 6–7) note that rituals require repetition and formalisation, a public acting out of roles, special behavioural activities that exist only as part of the ritual, a clear order and sequence, an evocative presentational style including staging, and a clear collective dimension which binds together participants with each other and the audience with the ritual.Footnote ⁸

The formalism of rituals is enhanced by the deployment of symbols in ceremonial contexts (Reference ChaseChase 2005: 115). Symbols are the content around which ritual action occurs – the national flag at the memorial ceremony, the mortarboard at an academic graduation, the ten ASEAN heads of state linking hands in front of a screen emblazoned with the ASEAN motto. Symbols imbue rituals with meaning. Symbols become tools for the ‘meaningful objectification’ of that which they represent, making that thing ‘sensible’ to participants and audience (Reference FaizullaevFaizullaev 2013: 92). In turn this objectification serves to create bonds, motivate action, confer honour, legitimate authority, and shape political action (Reference CeruloCerulo 1995: 32–3).

Rituals do not emerge fully formed – instead, they are created and strengthened over time. In this sense there is a clear power dimension to the study of ritual (Reference KertzerKertzer 1988: 25; Reference Charlesworth, Larking, Charlesworth and LarkingCharlesworth & Larking 2014: 8). The power of certain individuals helps create rituals (although not all rituals are consciously constituted), and the performance of rituals with a degree of social competence bestows power on others. Rituals articulate the authority of positions and practices beyond the individuals who for a short time perform these roles. Rituals help shape conversations about viable futures and retards heretical futures as unthinkable.

Creation, repetition, and performance indicate the presence of an important temporal dimension to the study of ritual, but rituals do more than simply emerge over time; they link participants and observers to time in a particular way. When engaging in ritual behaviour either as a participant or an observer, we are linked with the past and reassured in the present. In this way, the new and potentially objectionable is rendered traditional and conservative through ritual’s emphasis on continuity. The past is the source of ritual behaviour, the validation of current practices, and the foundation of future thinking. It is widely accepted that rituals can vary in their fidelity to the reality of the material, social, and political worlds and can systematically misrepresent reality. Rituals can hide or reveal, delude or clarify (Reference KertzerKertzer 1988: 87). This opens up a gap between how something is represented and the reality of that thing being represented. In this way rituals help to veil and obscure disorder and its causes by giving the impression of timeless harmony and consensus, and represent a balance between cooperation and competition (Reference SennettSennett 2013: 89).

The next step in understanding the value of an approach that emphasises rituals and symbols is to differentiate it from a constructivist framework as previously described. Realising a difference between a constructivist explanation and a ritual/symbol one (and so laying the groundwork for the greater explanatory power of the latter) requires that we examine the question of whether order is produced by shared meaning. Constructivists are engaged in a project to explore how beliefs shape political behaviour (Reference Kaufmann and PapeKaufmann & Pape 1999). At any given moment an agent possesses internalised beliefs which define his/her identity and delineate his/her preferences over behaviour at that time and in that context (Reference Finnemore and SikkinkFinnemore & Sikkink 1998: 904; Reference Risse, Ropp and SikkinkRisse, Ropp & Sikkink 1999, Reference Risse, Ropp and Sikkink2013). Constructivist theorising commits therefore to the mutual constitution of actors, driven by ideational structures (Reference Price and Reus-SmitPrice & Reus-Smit 1998: 266; Reference WendtWendt 1999). This mutual constitution through shared ideational structures limits constructivist explanatory insights into ASEAN’s order. For constructivists, ideational structures are an expression of inter-subjective belief – i.e., a community of same meaning – and this shared sameness constrains/shapes/constitutes agents (Reference FloriniFlorini 1996: 364). Inter-subjectivity exists as collective knowledge that is shared by all (Reference AdlerAdler 1997: 327) and cannot be reduced to the beliefs of any given individual (Reference Finnemore and SikkinkFinnemore & Sikkink 2001: 393).

The message is clear – inter-subjectivity creates a uniformity of internalised beliefs; the same belief is internalised in the same way and has to mean the same thing to all parties who hold that belief. These beliefs are not static and can change through processes of socialisation and learning (Reference OnufOnuf 1989: 96–7, 111; Reference WendtWendt 1999: 82, 101–2, 123). This framework powers the discussion of security communities in general, and their potential in ASEAN in particular. Claims that Southeast Asian order is predicated on a security community in turn rest upon the existence of peaceful norms that create morally preferable inter-subjective beliefs of practitioners towards peace and non-interference.

Work on rituals, however, makes no assumption about the necessity of shared meaning and in doing so opens up new explanatory opportunities. Rituals can foster common action without requiring common beliefs (Reference KertzerKertzer 1988: 11, 96) or, as Roger Keesing puts it, ‘because meanings depend so heavily on what individuals know, the same ritual sequence … may evoke highly diverse meanings’ (Reference KeesingKeesing 2012: 407).Footnote ⁹ This position has been echoed by those working on regulatory theory. Hilary Charlesworth and Emma Larking’s analysis of ‘human rights ritualism’ with regard to the United Nations system focuses on how and why human rights are so widespread as a particular practice, but with very little shared sense of the importance of these values to individual states (Reference Charlesworth, Larking, Charlesworth and LarkingCharlesworth & Larking 2014; Reference LarkingLarking 2017; Reference CharlesworthCharlesworth 2010). Reference CharlesworthCharlesworth (2010: 12) defines ritualism in this context as a situation where ‘there is no acceptance of particular normative goals, but great deference is paid to the formal institutions that support’ those goals.

As such, a ritual and symbol approach emphasises the physical performance of regionalism and the documents, objects, art, and objectifications that are deployed during that performance. This focus on the practice, doing, and representation of politics shifts the locus of our explanatory accounts. Where constructivist accounts of order examine agreed texts and shared events for evidence of the creation of deeper shared meaning and a hidden inter-subjectivity, an account of order resting on ritual and symbol considers these texts and events as the things that generate order by creating shared experiences, even when those are interpreted in different ways.

1.4 Rituals and Symbols in ASEAN’s Order

The reasoning outlined above provides the basis for the applied understanding of ASEAN developed over the rest of this work. The story of ASEAN’s first thirty years, discussed in Section 2, is about a group of divided and weak states managing, in some way, to hang together. ASEAN’s creation was a pit-stop in a period that began at the end of the Second World War and culminated in the mid-1970s. By 1976 the form of order that ASEAN promoted crystallised around maintaining co-existence, national freedoms, and opt-in regionalism. This was a form of ‘ideal regionalism’ – a vision of regional cooperation that all members could concur in the abstract was a good thing, but who also agreed that no substantive steps were necessary to achieve this vision. The outcome was the emergence of an accepted gap between the reality and rhetoric of the region. This gap was fraught with constant tension – too little regional activity and ASEAN would fall into obsolescence, too much activity and the unwillingness of states to actually agree would be exposed. This tension was managed by the development of ASEAN’s habit of cooperation through an increasingly dense network of summits, meetings, and enduring conversations that, whilst not producing shared norms, developed a reflex to communicate. States would never let conversations trump their ability to act in their own self-interest, but neither would states allow acting in their self-interest signal the end of the conversation.

The combination of ideal regionalism versus immediate self-interest, and of rhetoric, reality, and enduring conversations, were the grounds upon which rituals and symbols grew. ASEAN elites created, sometimes accidentally and sometimes intentionally, a series of rituals and symbols that provided a sense of order to regional affairs. These rituals began in a very minimal way – for much of its early history, a key ritual moment occurred at the meetings of diplomats and politicians who were often in open disagreement with one another. The regular bringing together of these actors quickly developed into a shared set of expressions that were used to present regional politics.

Crucial in the Southeast Asian context was the role of the ‘fathers of their country’ – political leaders of great renown and long duration who occupied positions of significance in their respective country’s history. Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s prime minister (1959–1990, senior minister 1990–2004, and minister mentor until 2011), Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s prime minister (1981–2003 and 2018), and Suharto, Indonesia’s president (1968–1998) are crucial figures. Whilst the political reputation of each varies, each occupied a leading position for an extended period of time and was able to attach their aura not only to ASEAN in general but to a vision of ASEAN in particular. Over time, heads of state and government became increasingly involved in ASEAN and provided a ‘fixity’ to its approach to regional affairs that has proven hard to shake. ASEAN elites presented themselves as bound by common traditions, invoking documents from the past to justify activities in the present, and imbuing them with symbolic importance. The end of the Cold War and ASEAN’s membership expansion were crucial ‘training experiences’ for regional elites in terms of responding to challenges and crises in ‘acceptable’ ways and engaging with problematic issues without threatening ASEAN’s core mission.

Section 3 explores ASEAN’s more recent history, starting with the shock of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The crisis was encountered by regional elites who had long histories of working within ASEAN and a continued commitment to the fundamentals of the regional project just described. The debate was never about how to transform ASEAN into something new; instead it was about how to save the ASEAN that already existed. At a time of intense competition about the needs, nature, and direction of ASEAN, emerging especially from non-elite and extra-regional sources, ASEAN ultimately decided to continue its traditional approach to regional affairs. The number of issues that ASEAN engaged in expanded considerably, and its institutional density increased, but the gap between rhetoric and reality did not close – indeed it widened as ASEAN made commitments in areas such as human rights and democracy which were far removed from the domestic realities of states. These reforms came about as responses to the crisis and to pressure from civil society and dialogue partners, and because of a fair degree of path dependency. ASEAN shifted from presenting an ideal regionalism to which all could agree, to a phantom regionalism where commitments to human rights and democracy, amongst others, did not even enjoy ‘idealised’ support. Phantom regionalism not only possessed the quality of the ‘not yet real’; it had within it strong overtones of the unreal – something not only incongruous with the extant situation but shockingly unimaginable. This phantom regionalism was undergirded by a dizzying set of agreements, declarations, vision statements, and work plans produced in greater quantity, as if the unrealism of the project required greater ‘pinning down’ in words if not deeds.

As ASEAN developed in this way, rituals and symbols came to the fore to hold the regional grouping together and provided the foundation and justification for ASEAN’s expansion into new and contentious issue-areas of governance. ASEAN developed a particular physical performance of regionalism that created sophisticated ceremonies, as seen in the Guide. The meetings of ASEAN officials are choreographed performances in which elites participate, represent to others, and experience for themselves the unity of the region. A crucial additional dimension of this performance of regionalism emerges in the written record, which reveals how ASEAN elites sought to present themselves. Here again we see repetition with the same phrases emerging. We also see the growing importance of ‘historical invocation’. Key documents of ASEAN, such as the Declaration of the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN), the Bangkok Declaration, and TAC over time became symbols of what it means to be ASEAN and are now invoked repeatedly as subsequent generations grapple with reforming ASEAN. These are the ‘sacred texts’ of ASEAN regionalism which convey symbolic importance and are markers of legitimacy and continuity. It is no accident that the Bali Accords of 1976 remain widely invoked and quoted in contexts beyond the intentions of their original framers – key symbols of ASEAN regionalism played a central role in permitting and shaping the ongoing processes of reform as they became ways to traditionalise apparently radical ideas into the regional body. Rituals were also expanded to strengthen the presentation of unity in its substantive absence.

This work concludes in Section 4 which serves as both a conclusion for the discussion and an opportunity to look forwards, identifying potential risks that emerge from the intersection of ASEAN’s approach to regional cooperation and ongoing power shifts in the Asia Pacific region. This final discussion emphasises that cooperation through ASEAN is not an automatic or unchangeable decision and that regional cooperation has always been, and shall continue to be, a choice for member states.

Adopting a rituals and symbols framework to understand ASEAN provides new perspectives on old debates. It explains the juxtaposition of ever more sophisticated regional commitments on paper with enduring violation of those commitments in practice. Rituals and symbols were not creating shared values; they gave the impression of shared values, which has created ASEAN’s peculiar order – members can cooperate when they want and disagree, even interfere, when they wish. Rituals and symbols themselves were and are the things that constitute regional order, they were not representative of deeper values and identities which explained Southeast Asian politics. Regional elites assemble very frequently and perform unity with each other and to the wider public. Through their performance and the invocation of ritual and symbol, these states and their leaders pay great deference to ASEAN, whilst at the same time the values it is committed to realising are, in practice, sidelined over and over. Deference is paid to the symbols of the region and everyone stands as ASEAN’s anthem is played. With the ceremonies complete, elites go back to arguing, disagreeing, and ignoring regional commitments.

ASEAN has helped avoid the most negative consequences of power politics in the region, and thus has escaped open and widespread military conflict, but not because of the institutionalisation of widely and deeply shared normative allegiance to values in the way that constructivists suggest. Instead, ASEAN has been successful because through it, states in the region have created a shared ritual and symbolic framework that allowed these goals to remain central, agreed, and safeguarded even when members’ behaviour deviated from these goals. In this sense, ASEAN is a reassurance mechanism that limits spill-over. It does not matter that non-intervention is not deeply held across the region. What matters is that ASEAN displays the impression that these norms are deeply held, and as such serves as a blanket that occludes violation. In the absence of shared and deeply held norms, and despite the power politics that otherwise would have torn ASEAN apart, rituals and symbols have become the glue that holds ASEAN together. ASEAN is successful, but not in the way or for the reasons that the boosters would claim or, indeed, that sceptics would dismiss. This approach is, therefore, successful if viewed from the perspective of maintaining ASEAN itself and a particular form of inter-state peace. From a rival perspective, for example, from eliminating threats to regional peace, it is less successful. Indeed, the paradox of ASEAN is that in its creation of various ways to cover up activities that go against its stated principles, it plays a very real role in permitting those same activities to occur.

2.1 Establishing Regionalism: Southeast Asia from Decolonisation to the Bali I Accords

The term Southeast Asia was well-used by the time the foreign ministers of ASEAN’s founding members met in Bangkok in 1967. It had originated in the Second World War to delineate the British-led Southeast Asia Command from other, American-led, theatres of war. What we now term Southeast Asia had no unified history prior to the experience of Japanese imperialism. Historically, multiple centres of civilisation and political order jostled for primacy in a region where geography, culture, religion, and economics blunted the quest for unity (for a historical overview, see Reference Cribb, Ba and BeesonCribb 2018). Yet this absence of a unified history was not so much an impediment to regionalism as an opportunity for a particular approach to regional governance. The very artificiality of the term ‘Southeast Asia’ meant that it was a blank slate. It was, then, an organising principle that leaders could fill with their own meaning. The period from the mid-1950s to the 1976 Bali Accords represents a struggle to answer the questions: what was Southeast Asia, what was it for, and how would those goals be achieved?

2.2 Stasis or Stability? ASEAN between 1976 and 1991

The period from 1976 to the 1990s offers valuable insights into ASEAN’s emerging approach to regional governance. The most important issue that ASEAN faced throughout the 1980s was the ongoing situation in mainland Southeast Asia. After assuring ASEAN members in late 1978 that it would respect the principles of sovereignty and non-intervention, Vietnam invaded Cambodia (known as Kampuchea under the Khmer Rouge government). The invasion threatened regional security – the Soviet Union publicly backed Vietnam and China invaded Vietnam in 1979, albeit with little success. Vietnam also directly threatened Thailand, and there was a series of skirmishes between Thai and Vietnamese forces as the latter operated inside Cambodia. As such the situation in mainland Southeast Asia throughout much of the 1980s directly challenged ASEAN’s desire to bring peace and security to the region and, through the direct involvement of external powers, tested Southeast Asia’s nominal autonomy and its right to determine its own destiny.

ASEAN took a leading role in responding to the crisis. The Vietnamese had expected that overthrowing the Khmer Rouge regime would meet with international approval. Instead, outside of the Soviet Union and its allies, the reaction was one of broad condemnation. ASEAN led calls to isolate Vietnam and the Hanoi-backed government of Kampuchea. ASEAN further called for the withdrawal of Vietnam from Cambodia and for fresh elections to create a national government. ASEAN’s position was not one of neutrality and non-intervention. Instead, it pursued a policy of confrontation with, and ultimate reversal of, Vietnam’s actions. ASEAN’s position, however, and its ability to pursue it reasonably coherently over the 1980s could not be attributed to a natural harmony of interest between ASEAN members. Thailand led the anti-Vietnamese position, but Bangkok’s concern was just as much about the geopolitical consequences of a Vietnamese-dominated Indochina as it was a defence of principles of sovereignty and non-intervention, a concern shared by Singapore and Malaysia. Indonesia, by contrast, viewed China as the largest threat and was worried that a weakened Vietnam would be unable to act as a buffer between ASEAN and China (Reference AlagappaAlagappa 1993: 452–3). Indonesia was especially concerned lest ASEAN’s pointed approach make the realisation of ZOPFAN more unlikely by further entrenching great power competition in the region (Reference LeiferLeifer 1989: 155).

These diverging views illustrate the very real limits of ASEAN’s cohesion with respect to the norms that are sometimes assumed to characterise that region. Calculations of self-interest were more prevalent than any strict adherence to non-intervention. Yet the coexistence of this divergence with ASEAN’s action also illustrates that member-states were willing to work together even when their narrow national interests pulled in different directions. A byproduct of this decade of focus on a single pressing issue was, as Carlyle Reference Thayer and BroinowskiThayer (1990: 157) remarked, the development of a ‘close-knit pattern of consultation and co-ordination’ amongst ASEAN members that might not otherwise have occurred. This consultation was a vital part of regionalism – the continued agreement to consult during and after disagreements was a crucial ingredient in habitualising regionalism. The juxtaposition of habit and norm violation can be seen in the Manila Summit of 1987, which made direct reference to the internal affairs of the Philippines, calling for a peaceful resolution of disputes between President Ferdinand Marcos and opposition leader Corazon Aquino. The joint statement of the five other ASEAN members was explicit: ‘[w]e call on all parties to restore national unity and solidarity so as to maintain national resilience’ (Singapore Government 1986). This ‘egregious example’ (Reference HaackeHaacke 1999: 583) of interference again illustrates the extent to which ASEAN’s norms and written frameworks did not limit the activities of the states who had so solemnly written them into supposedly binding treaties. Such activities clearly showed the paradoxical nature of ASEAN’s order – the defence of national freedom resulted in the protection of a state’s freedom to interfere in the affairs of other members when it was deemed appropriate to do so. Through TAC especially, ASEAN allowed such activities as it ensured they were both controlled and ultimately received in a way that retarded their escalation into crisis.

Beyond politics, the period after 1976 was one of considerable economic growth in Southeast Asia, as countries moved towards export-led and market-oriented growth strategies. ASEAN’s focus on regional economic coordination had been restated in Bali in 1976, and activities proceeded across trade, industry, finance, food/agriculture/forestry, minerals, transport, and tourism (Reference Colbert, Jackson, Paribatra and DjiwandonoColbert 1986: 197). Various ASEAN committees, centres, and corporations were established building upon the earlier institutional forms developed, with the increasing engagement of economics ministers who now met directly to coordinate efforts. During the 1980s little, if any, progress was made in developing the complementarity of regional economics, and so they continued to be largely competitive in nature. ASEAN’s economic achievements are thought of as ‘modest’ in general, and shortcomings ‘particularly glaring’ in the areas of industry and trade where most ink had been expended in prompting cooperation (Reference Chatterjee and BroinowskiChatterjee 1990: 78). Whilst there was a move forward in the creation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), the devil was in the detail.

The ‘flexible conditions’ of these PTAs meant that states were free to exclude products from them as they saw fit, enabling those goods excluded to be subject to import taxes. Thailand excluded some 63 per cent of its imported goods in this manner (Reference WhiteWhite III 2000: 184). The result was that where free trade was agreed, it would often be in peripheral areas; one preferential trade agreement was reached to free up the trade of snowploughs in Southeast Asia, a rather unlikely market. Humorous as this may be, it illustrates the conundrum that ASEAN faced – real integration required real and deep changes to national economies, something which states were not willing to do. The alternative was the emerging preference for pursuing integration where costs were low. In turn this suggested a very limited willingness to pay political costs, or use political capital, on ASEAN where resistance could be expected. The third ASEAN Summit, held in Manila in 1987, saw some relatively minor efforts to promote trade through expanding preferential trade agreements, but it represented ‘more of the same’ rather than any great steps forward. So tightly controlled was the summit that leaders were only on the ground for twenty-four hours and there were just sixty-five minutes dedicated to actual deliberation (Reference Frost and BroinowskiFrost 1990: 23). It would be hard, however, to attribute national economic success to regional economic planning, and Srikanta Reference Chatterjee and BroinowskiChatterjee (1990: 58) said it best of ASEAN’s economic performance in this period when he noted that the strength of the region came ‘more from the rapid growth and development performance of some of its [ASEAN’s] member economies than the collective strength and cohesion of the association itself’.

2.3 ASEAN into the 1990s: The End of the Cold War and Expansion

The Cold War had, in two interrelated ways, supported the ASEAN that had developed since 1967. First, it had provided the broad geostrategic predictability in which ASEAN had been able to find a role. Regardless of ZOPFAN, there was a consistent alignment with the United States, unsurprising given the capitalist economies that were booming across the region. Second, in line with perceived Cold War imperatives, the US had downplayed the need for liberal democracy on ‘its’ side of the competition. Strong authoritarian states, if broadly capitalist in economic outlook, were either welcomed by the US in its struggle against communism or, at the least, not openly criticised. With the Cold War at an end, the US, its allies, and the emerging global civil society became much more strident in their promotion of liberal democracy and, as a result, more critical of capitalist authoritarians. The period immediately after the Cold War was thus a moment of increased uncertainty for Southeast Asia. ASEAN responded to this uncertainty through the invocation of history, mobilising the oft-violated TAC as a way to understand and control the future of the region.Footnote ¹⁶ Deeper than that, ASEAN survived, and thrived, because its distinguishing between the emerging rituals of unity and the reality of it gave it great flexibility, as shown in its expansionist drive to ‘complete’ Southeast Asian regionalism. Both of these were crucial learning experiences for elites who would face the much greater challenge of the financial crisis in the late 1990s. Underpinning all of this was a fair degree of luck as economics across the region continued to thrive.

We see crucial evidence for how ASEAN was responding to the end of the Cold War in its schedule of meetings. Across both the regular AMMs and ASEAN Summits, held only in 1976, 1977, and 1987, but which now became increasingly regular, meeting three times between the end of the Cold War and the onset of the financial crisis (1992, 1995, and 1996 at an ‘informal’ summit), we see reference to TAC after a decade when it had not been mentioned at all. The 1992 Summit in Singapore noted that ASEAN would ‘seek the cognizance of the United Nations for the Treaty [of Amity and Cooperation] through such means as an appropriate Resolution’. Whilst the heads of state claimed that this would ‘signify ASEAN’s commitment to the centrality of the UN role in the maintenance of international peace and security’ (ASEAN 1992b: article 3), it also served as a process to recommit regional states to the symbolic importance of TAC to regional politics, especially coming off the 1980s where the document was largely ignored. This trend continued even more clearly at the AMMs. After 1976, the AMMs of ASEAN Foreign Ministers had not mentioned TAC in any of their joint communiqués. Yet from 1991, TAC was invoked in every AMM through to 1997. In 1991 TAC (and ZOPFAN) were referenced as ‘appropriate bases for addressing the regional peace and security issues in the nineties’ (ASEAN 1991: article 12). In 1992, alongside welcoming the accession of Vietnam and Laos to TAC, ASEAN Foreign Ministers invoked TAC as a guide for all parties to follow in the emerging issues in the South China Sea (ASEAN 1992a: article 17). The year 1993 saw the welcoming of the UN resolution on TAC, which was held to be ‘significant in that it establishes a code of conduct and provides a mechanism for peaceful resolution of disputes’ (ASEAN 1993: article 5). The following year again saw the reaffirmation of regional commitment to ‘ASEAN’s principles and objectives on regional peace and security’ as articulated in ZOPFAN and TAC (ASEAN 1994). The significance of TAC was expanded through the desire to ‘facilitate association with the Treaty but non-regional states’ (ASEAN 1994). The following year, 1995, saw both Cambodia and Myanmar accede to TAC, and continued work on the best way to allow extra-regional states to accede to it (ASEAN 1995b: article 6), a conversation which was still ongoing in 1996 (ASEAN 1996).

ASEAN’s summits also gave impetus to regionalism in Southeast Asia, although again the follow-through on commitments was weak. The 1992 Singapore Summit Declaration was split broadly into four – politics and security, economics, functional cooperation, and institutional matters. There was little sign of much substantive agreement, with ASEAN committing to ‘seek to realise ZOPFAN’ (now over thirty years after its original agreement and seemingly with no irony), and noting that it ‘could use established fora’ to promote dialogue (ASEAN 1992b). Economics was more developed, with a commitment to establish an ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) by 2008 via a Common Effective Preferential Tariff. The importance of AFTA was emphasised in the institutional revisions to ASEAN, which saw the merger of various ASEAN economics committees into a single process, with a ministerial-level council being established to drive AFTA forward. In part to ensure ongoing leadership of ASEAN, leaders also agreed to now hold the ASEAN Summit every three years. Economics remained in the vanguard in 1995 in the Bangkok Summit Declaration, where finalisation of AFTA was brought forward to 2003 (ASEAN 1995a). We shall discuss the limits of economic integration in Section 3, but here it suffices to say that once again commitments to ideal regionalism continued apace, far outstripping the reality of the situation.

Another part of the strengthening of ASEAN’s approach to regional affairs came from the realisation of the long-held goal of expansion. The mid-1990s witnessed Vietnam (1995), Laos and Myanmar (1997), and Cambodia (1999) join ASEAN. Expansion served many purposes for ASEAN; it turned previous enemies into close colleagues, expanded ASEAN’s economic base, and hedged against Chinese expansion into the region. Expansion also served to demonstrate the ‘Southeast Asia for Southeast Asians’ pledge that had always been core to ASEAN’s mission. The mechanism by which this expansion unfolded for each state was similar – an agreement on the part of the applicant state to accede to and respect all the treaties, declarations, and agreements of ASEAN. TAC held particular importance as it was acceded to before the date of application – Laos and Vietnam (1992), Cambodia and Myanmar (1995) – and was positioned as a prerequisite for ASEAN membership. The four states of mainland Southeast Asia had each experienced the workings of ASEAN prior to membership, enjoying observer status prior to membership being granted.

The behaviour of ASEAN’s existing members and new members both before and after membership was granted suggests that their conduct rarely reached accordance with the principles to which they were agreeing. This was most egregiously the case in the mixture of attitudes and actions displayed relative to the question of Myanmar’s membership in ASEAN. ASEAN followed a policy of ‘constructive engagement’ from 1991 in relation to Myanmar, itself an outgrowth of Thai policy towards their troublesome neighbour (Reference BuszynskiBuszynski 1998). Two trends can be discerned, the first the attempt to get Myanmar to live up to TAC, especially important to Thailand given Myanmar’s frequent military incursions across their mutual border. Here, non-intervention was something to be prioritised. The second trend, which cut across the first, was the interest on the part of some that constructive engagement be a way to change the behaviour of Myanmar’s military junta, both because its domestic repression was so egregious and because this repression was pushing leading Western powers to pressure ASEAN to ‘do something’ about the issue. Whilst this did not reach the level of intervention that ASEAN engaged in with Myanmar in the 2000s (as discussed in Section 3), it clearly violated a strict interpretation of TAC. Lee Reference JonesJones (2008: 274) quotes a source from Indonesia who said ‘“We are telling them very quietly, in a Southeast Asian way, without any fanfare, without any public statements: ‘Look, you are in trouble, let us help you. But you have to change, you cannot continue like this’”’. This statement is worth unpacking because it illustrates the reality of a region quite at ease (‘in a Southeast Asian way’) with discussing domestic affairs whilst not letting that colour either broader relations or the ritualised presentation of things like TAC as a behaviour-defining document.

2.4 ASEAN’s Regional Mission

ASEAN’s story is not limited to what it does within Southeast Asia. ASEAN has, since the 1970s, played a role in the wider relations of the Asia-Pacific and beyond. This took the form of a series of partnership agreements, the first being with Australia in 1974.Footnote ¹⁷ These agreements served to link ASEAN to the world around it, bring importance to the regional level as a node for activity, and augment the capacity of states in the region to engage with other powers as equals.

More central to ASEAN’s ambitions in the wider world was institutional creation, most notably in this period the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) established at the 26th AMM held in Singapore in July 1993, and first meeting in 1994. The ARF was tasked with addressing the endemic security challenges facing states in the Asia-Pacific through a three-stage approach, intended to be gradual and evolutionary rather than simultaneous – confidence-building, developing preventive diplomacy, and developing conflict resolution mechanisms (ASEAN Secretariat no date d). ASEAN was central to the workings of the ARF. The ASEAN Chair led the ARF and meetings occurred within ASEAN countries – most notably, the ARF meeting occurred immediately after the ASEAN summits. The first ARF meeting brought together ASEAN states (then six), its Dialogue Partners (Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and the US), its consultative partners (China and Russia), and its observers (Laos, Papua New Guinea, and Vietnam), creating a very wide membership. In one dimension the ARF, despite its gradualist approach, denotes ASEAN’s ambitions at this time. In the post-Cold War, ASEAN was setting itself as central to the peace and security not only of Southeast Asia but the wider Asia-Pacific. TAC was specifically referenced in the Chairman’s statement of the first ARF meeting as ‘a unique diplomatic instrument for regional confidence-building, preventive diplomacy, and political and security cooperation’ (ASEAN Secretariat 1994). The activities of the ARF before 1997 tacked closely to building confidence amongst participants through increasing dialogue on shared challenges, enhancing contact between defence staff, and increased information sharing (ASEAN Secretariat 1996).

Why did ASEAN create the ARF? Reference KatsumataKatsumata (2006) identifies three potential reasons – ASEAN sought to maintain US engagement with the region in the post-Cold War world, was seeking to enhance cooperation with China, and was driven to socialise its norms to the region. Katsumata prefers the third of these arguments, claiming that the norms of Southeast Asia were viewed as a preferable solution to broader Asia-Pacific problems. The focus on rituals and symbols allows for a fourth interpretation, one that offers new insights into the shortcomings of the ARF, and ASEAN’s other external engagements, as we shall encounter in Section 3. As we have seen, ASEAN’s approach to securing inter-state security had less to do with substantive norms shaping actor’s social identity and more to do with performing a unity that was absent in reality. A crucial part of this was the knowingness of participants – that performing unity was something that allowed for acts of disunity. A similar interpretation can be applied to the ARF – that it was not intended to socialise those norms across such a diverse group of states, however desirable that might have been, but instead it was intended to expand the audience of ASEAN’s rituals and, in so doing, enhance peace and security through increasing the performance of that peace and security.

2.5 ASEAN at Thirty

On the eve of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, ASEAN had developed into a successful regional organisation. For thirty years there had been no significant conflict in Southeast Asia. In the context of the regional situation in the early and mid-1960s, and with global competition through the prism of the Cold War, this was no small achievement. I have argued in this section that ASEAN achieved regional peace not through processes of embedding shared normative allegiances between members – the actions of these states make such claims implausible. Instead, ASEAN played a different role. ASEAN came to represent a stated ‘ideal state’ for regional affairs that, in turn, acted as a blanket under which violations of its principles could be bounded and so regional affairs inoculated against the contagion of insecurity. This ideal regionalism was not unknown to those working within ASEAN. Referring back to the pre-crisis ASEAN, ASEAN Secretary-General Rudolph C. Severino claimed that:

In the absence of thick shared values, the increasing number of meetings and consultations, the shared language to describe ASEAN, and the ‘discovery’ that ASEAN’s history could be invoked to frame the present provide evidence of the emergence of a ritualised and symbolic form of regionalism that filled the gap between rhetoric and reality and, in so doing, held in check the centrifugal tendencies of power politics. This was the nature of ASEAN’s order.

The end of the Cold War was not only a historical moment – it was a vital learning experience for how to respond to crisis. Rather than responding to external and internal challenges through the fundamental alteration of regional activity, intensification and expansion of agreed practice was the preferred approach. ASEAN overcame not by alteration but by intensification of the ritual and symbolic framework and the drawing in of heads of government to that web of display and representation. The crisis was an opportunity to demonstrate both the value of ASEAN and its ability to master challenges, both of which were ultimately achieved. The importance of the learning experience that the early 1990s represented is evidenced through examining the response of regional leaders to the much greater challenges posed by the 1997 financial crisis. This is the task of the following section.

3.1 Phantom Regionalism: Crisis, Contestation, and Symbols in Practice

The 1997 financial crisis started in Thailand with currency speculation against the baht in mid-May. The crisis had many causes, the most important being the structural weakness of poorly regulated capitalism in the region, the bursting of economic bubbles in key countries, and the resulting uncontrolled panic in financial markets (Reference Radelet and SachsRadelet & Sachs 1998; Reference RülandRüland 2000: 425). The previously booming economies of the ‘Asian Tigers’ ground to a halt amidst spiking unemployment, a collapse in trade, currency devaluation, and precipitous stock market declines. The inevitable consequence was social and economic distress on a larger scale than any other economic crisis in ASEAN’s history, hitting the populations of members hard. These challenges, in turn, undid the smug complacency that had developed around ASEAN’s regionalism. ASEAN and its leaders were framed as elitist, out of touch, and unable to deal with the challenges that the crisis had posed to the region.

3.2 Holding It All Together: Ritualised Unity as Public Performance

Given the shift towards phantom regionalism, what kept ASEAN together? Two factors are important in explaining ASEAN’s endurance. First is the ‘public face’ that the organisation has tried to create through fostering an ASEAN identity and the development of ASEAN’s symbols, and second is the increasing sophistication of ASEAN’s ritual life.

ASEAN has increased its efforts to present itself to the regional public by developing symbols. Before 1997, ASEAN was already engaged in developing a greater sense of belonging to the regional project for its member-state populations. After 1997, this activity sharpened as ASEAN sought to protect itself from public criticism. In VAP, a section is dedicated to promoting an ASEAN identity, noting that amidst the diversity of the region there were also unifying experiences of history, geography, and aspiration (ASEAN 2004: paragraph 3.4). The EPG report on the ASEAN Charter, true to its status as one of ASEAN’s most progressive documents, spoke of improving the ASEAN identity as a way to shed ASEAN’s ‘image of being an elitist organisation comprising exclusively diplomats and government officials’ (ASEAN 2006b). The report recommended ongoing consultation with civil society, business, and academic institutions as a way to provide substance to ASEAN’s people-oriented regionalism. It recommended activities to cement the commemoration of ASEAN into people’s daily lives, suggesting such things as emphasising ASEAN Day (8 August), as well as enhanced regional activity in the spheres of culture, sports, art, heritage, museums, exhibitions, and youth activities. The report also recommended that ASEAN clearly represent itself through the traditional symbols of politics – ‘ASEAN shall have a flag, emblem, anthem and motto’ (ASEAN 2006b: paragraph 48).

These symbols were endorsed in Chapter XI of the ASEAN Charter. Although Chapter XI is rarely spoken about, given our focus on ritualised regionalism, it is worthy of attention. ASEAN’s motto was established as ‘One Vision, One Identity, One Community’, which now emblazons the front page of most ASEAN documentation and is projected on screens and backdrops at ASEAN’s public events. Although the above discussion indicates strongly that there were multiple visions of ASEAN, very little common identity, and a great reluctance to act as a community, this reality matters little in the face of the creative representation of regionalism. The ASEAN emblem, ten stalks of rice bound together, has a very clear set of symbolic meanings (see Image 3.1). The emblem ‘represents a stable, peaceful, united and dynamic ASEAN’, and the colours – blue, red, white, and yellow – represent ‘the main colours of the state crests of all the ASEAN Member States … The blue represents peace and stability. Red depicts courage and dynamism, white shows purity and yellow symbolises prosperity’ (ASEAN no date b). The bound rice stalks ‘represent the dream of ASEAN’s Founding Fathers for an ASEAN comprising all the countries in Southeast Asia, bound together in friendship and solidarity’ (ASEAN no date b). The enclosing circle ‘represents the unity of ASEAN’ (ASEAN no date b). The emblem is to be used in all ASEAN official activities, with member-states encouraged to use the emblem in any function that relates to ASEAN. Interestingly, the emblem is ‘not to be used for political purposes’ (ASEAN no date b). However, symbols are quintessentially political objects – their purpose is to project a particular image and generate a particular sentiment. De-politicisation in this context is evidence of its political role as it stands as an attempt to place the emblem and its messages above debate.

The ASEAN anthem, ‘an expression of ASEAN unity’, should be played at ASEAN formal meetings and related events, and to commemorate special occasions:

It is easy to be flippant about the wording, but in its repeated public usage, like all anthems it can also be seen as an effort to bind together the people and the institution. A similar situation occurs with the flag, which is ASEAN’s emblem centred on a blue background. ASEAN has created strict guidelines for the usage of the flag, revealing its symbolic importance (ASEAN no date c).

The creation of these symbols of unity, and the construction of ritual around their usage, mark both an increase in the sophistication of ASEAN’s self-representation and an effort to expand that representation to the wider ASEAN public in line with the goal of people-centred regionalism.Footnote ²³ Given this is ASEAN, the representation of ASEAN as people-centred was not accompanied by the reality of people-centricity. The EPG report on the ASEAN Charter had called for the full integration of civil society actors into ASEAN’s framework. Yet this has not come to pass. ASEAN elites have been comfortable using civil society as a conduit through which to make ASEAN better known, but have proven largely unwilling to actually allow civil society substantive input into the creation and running of ASEAN commitments and institutions (Reference CollinsCollins 2008: 328). Civil society actors, unable to engage with ASEAN directly, have focused their efforts on ‘created spaces’ alongside ASEAN’s formal structures as a way to influence the region (Reference GerardGerard 2014, Reference Gerard2015). There are two sides to this engagement with civil society actors. Gerard is sceptical of their ability to influence ASEAN, highlighting the ineffectiveness of their strategies of organising parallel conferences alongside ASEAN official events and protests to attract opinion (2014: 282), and that as a result ASEAN’s ‘people-centredness’ was lacking. Alternately, the growth and endurance of regional civil society even in created spaces suggests that ASEAN’s rhetorical focus on people-centricity created the permissive conditions for some sort of regional activity to develop where previously there were none. If we step away from assuming that ASEAN is synonymous with Southeast Asia and, instead, is part of a broader array of actors and processes within the region, such civil society activity supports the claim that the region, as a whole, is making progress towards people-centredness even if ASEAN itself is moving more slowly in that direction.

The increasing number of ASEAN symbols are embedded in the sophistication and standardisation of ASEAN’s ritual life, culminating in the strict Guide to ASEAN Practices and Protocol. To illustrate this trend towards standardisation and repetition, I focus on one dimension where rituals and symbols come together – the photographic representation of ASEAN meetings. ASEAN’s guidelines for photography at all events are carefully scripted in the Guide, which outlines the approach for photography at ASEAN Summits, meetings with Dialogue Partners, ASEAN+3, the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Coordinating Council, Opening Ceremonies, Senior Officials Meetings, External Partners, Sectoral Partners, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and for the presentation of credentials by Ambassadors to ASEAN (ASEAN 2015). For each, the arrangement of participants and the location of national and ASEAN flags are specified. Elsewhere in the Guide, each of these events has its backdrop specified. For example, every ASEAN Summit has the same format:

This standardisation has replaced what was a more varied and haphazard approach. Early summits showed a wide variety of arrangements of leaders, with different backgrounds and ways in which those leaders stood and related to one another in the space (see ASEAN 2012b for photographic representation of early ASEAN Summits). At the 6th Summit in Ha Noi in 1998, leaders grasp hands above their heads. At the 7th Summit in Brunei Seri Begawan, some leaders are linking arms across their bodies whilst others are interlocking their elbows, resulting in a rather disharmonious presentation. At the 9th and 10th Summits (Bali and Vientiane respectively) leaders stand face-on to the camera with their arms by their sides. By the 13th ASEAN Summit, held in Singapore, all heads of state lined up holding hands with those standing next to them, with their arms crossed in front of their bodies. This approach has now become standard for all ASEAN-led meetings.Footnote ²⁴

Standardisation and repetition serves two crucial purposes in today’s ASEAN. First, it locks the participants into a performance of unity. Twice a year, heads of state and government come together and perform a highly choreographed ritual where symbols of unity and harmony are reified, and where the participants partake in a demonstration of respect for those symbols and one another. ASEAN unity, harmony, and control are directly experienced by political elites, before the moment passes, the cameras are turned off, and they return to arguing about their national interests. These moments are sacred ASEAN spaces and experiences. The second purpose is presentational – the beatific smiles of elites in front of a fixed and familiar backdrop convey to audiences the sense of control and continuity. Not only do ASEAN leaders participate in these ritual moments directly, but also the reproduction of these images in newspapers and online exposes these moments to a wider audience. In this way, ASEAN demonstrates its utility and relevance, as well as its own peculiar form of people-centricity.

3.3 ASEAN in the Asia-Pacific

ASEAN continued to develop its engagement with the wider Asia-Pacific, through the ARF and by developing other mechanisms. These mechanisms have followed similar paths inasmuch as each has expanded from narrow discussions of political and security issues into wider discussions about economic, social, and political goals. Each mechanism is also accompanied by significant scepticism.

The ARF continued in its gradualist approach, although as noted above, it remains stuck in its first phase of confidence-building, without progressing to a substantive preventative diplomacy agenda.Footnote ²⁵ The ARF has excelled in offering an enduring forum for an ever-wider range of conversations involving the majority of leading states and actors in global politics. ASEAN+3 was launched in December 1997 with an informal meeting of leaders of ASEAN and Japan, China, and South Korea. The grouping, smaller than the ARF which preceded it and the East Asia Summit process which came later, was exclusively East Asian, and excluded the United States. ASEAN+3 was framed as ‘the main vehicle towards the long-term goal of building an East Asian Community, with ASEAN as the driving force’ (ASEAN 2017b). ASEAN+3 has become rapidly institutionalised and now includes meetings of heads of state, senior ministers, and senior officials to discuss issues as diverse as health, labour, tourism, energy, drug trafficking, agriculture, and communication (Reference BaBa 2009: 214–16). The East Asia Summit, launched in 2005 with ASEAN nominally in the lead, was smaller than the ARF and brought together the heads of state and government of leading Asia-Pacific states.Footnote ²⁶ Hopes were high that the East Asia Summit would provide new impetus to Asia-Pacific regionalism (Reference MalikMalik 2006: 207). However, the reality has been less impressive, and the region’s tensions have continued to worsen as China rises, the US falters, and North Korea festers. The scale and complexity of these trends and challenges is daunting. ASEAN’s failure is less damning than it might otherwise be, but it is hard to argue that the East Asia Summit, or any of ASEAN’s other external activities, have transformed the region.

The emerging theme with which ASEAN chose to label its external relations was centrality – ASEAN would be central to the provision of Asia-Pacific security. ‘Centrality’ did not appear in Vision 2020, the Hanoi Plan of Action, Bali II, or VAP, but does appear in the 2006 EPG report on the ASEAN Charter, and from then with regularity. ASEAN centrality appears repeatedly in the AMM joint communiqués from 2006, and in the ASEAN Summits from 2007. It emerged, however, fully formed, as ASEAN was not aiming to establish its centrality so much as to ‘retain its centrality’ (ASEAN 2006b: article 51), uphold its centrality (ASEAN 2007a), or ‘maintain [it] on the context of ASEAN related regional architectures’ (ASEAN 2006a). ‘Centrality’ denoted a return to the optimism of the late 1990s and was not a new concept (Reference AcharyaAcharya 2017: 273), but it spoke of ASEAN’s permanence, success, and leadership in the Asia-Pacific. Yet centrality, and its repeated usage and presentation as something that already exists, did not represent reality. The ARF continued to flounder, stuck in its initial phase of confidence-building without ever having progressed to preventative diplomacy (Reference Emmers, Tan and EmmersEmmers & Tang 2012: 89).

ASEAN’s external efforts have, just like ASEAN itself, a chimerical quality. On paper, ASEAN presents itself as driving Asia-Pacific security, yet in reality as a collection of small powers or in the case of Indonesia a potential great power of the future, ASEAN has very limited ability to directly shape the interests of China or the United States. ASEAN’s efforts at centrality can easily be framed as the product of the great powers and their own interests in using ASEAN centrality as a convenient façade rather than ASEAN’s ability to lead (Reference AcharyaAcharya 2017: 273–4). Those who value enduring conversations and believe that at the very least states should continue to talk to each other tend to value ASEAN’s external engagements, and those who hunt for real-world examples of ASEAN ‘providing measurable benefit’ to Asia-Pacific peace and security tend to question it. Viewed together, ASEAN’s external activities have helped bring states together in discussion, but have led to very little substantive progress beyond that, with the power tensions and alliance politics playing out within these institutions rather than being resolved by them (Reference Goh, Rozman and LiowGoh 2018).

It is worth asking why ASEAN as an institution, and as member-states individually, bothers with these activities? There is nothing pre-ordained or required of them. We should be suspicious of claims that all ASEAN members sought to socialise norms of non-interference/intervention widely given their own internal approach to those values. More persuasively, ASEAN’s external engagement is a product of ASEAN’s weakness. Throughout its history, ASEAN’s successes or failures have been the product of the situation beyond Southeast Asia – US policy in the 1960s, the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s, the end of the Cold War in the 1990s and Western democratic triumphalism, the travails of the global economy, and most recently a rising China. ASEAN’s ability to perform and represent unity in Southeast Asia is predicated on a broadly conducive international setting – when external challenges mount, and when great powers jostle, ASEAN is well aware that it loses out. Most importantly, external tensions exacerbate internal tensions which make the plausibility of ASEAN’s theatre all the more difficult. We have seen this in the tensions generated by Cambodia’s close relationship with China which, for the first time, led to an inability to release a joint communiqué for the AMM held in Phnom Penh in 2012. Cambodia refused to allow language in the document that was strongly critical of China’s position in the South China Sea. The situation was nearly repeated in 2016 when Cambodia again came close to blocking the Vientiane AMM’s joint communiqué. The situation was only resolved following a considerable backdown by other ASEAN members (Reference ParameswaranParameswaran 2016).

3.4 ASEAN at Fifty

ASEAN’s experiences of crisis and reform have changed the expression of regionalism in Southeast Asia. The remit of regionalism expanded across new areas of governance and the institutional sophistication of ASEAN increased as a result – there were now more meetings, more often, about a greater number of things. This evolution had come about as ASEAN came to specify the meaning of caring communities and the regional role in that process. This process was characterised by deep disagreement between member-states and a sense of confusion about what to do. Into this confusion, norm entrepreneurs and more liberal ASEAN members proposed certain solutions that moved ASEAN towards democracy and good governance. These commitments were accepted only after being traditionalised and de-radicalised through the invoking of ASEAN’s symbols. Past treaties, declarations, and statements were imported wholesale into new situations. This act of importation both reassured member-states as to the maintenance of the traditional approach to regional affairs, and defused the potential radicalism of engaging with ‘people-centricity’. The result was an increase in the incoherence of ASEAN as a regional organisation, where its aims increasingly conflicted with each other, and where its approach to regional governance retarded the realisation of many of its own goals. In turn, this reform shifted the regional project towards a ‘phantom regionalism’ where the region as presented in the treaties, declarations, and work plans of ASEAN was no longer something that all member-states wished to see come to pass.

This shift, at least to date, has not imperilled ASEAN’s existence. The continued relevance of ASEAN comes from the continuity of ASEAN’s overarching purpose. There remained a consistent prioritisation of ASEAN as a reassurance vehicle of national freedom through the defence of domestic sovereign prerogatives. These freedoms continued to include the right to violate regional norms of non-interference. Because the intention did not change, the truth of ASEAN also remained constant – there were no deeply shared norms outlining common views of legitimate behaviour that bound together the ten members. This incoherence, and the threats it posed to member-state freedom, was kept in check not through being confronted and reconciled, but in the stoic refusal to officially acknowledge its existence. As ASEAN changed, and yet did not change, ritual became ever more important to demonstrating ASEAN unity in the absence of any unifying principles beyond independence. It is no coincidence that ASEAN has come to possess a robust set of symbols, and that its public events became more numerous and more ritualised. These oft-overlooked dimensions of ASEAN regionalism were vital acts of reassurance and representation of regional unity; reassuring ASEAN elites and extending ASEAN into a people-oriented but still elitist institution.

4.1 ASEAN’s New Challenges

The challenges that ASEAN faces today are the consequences of its approach to regional affairs and the diversity amongst its members. With a rising China, a declining US, and its own members re-evaluating both their foreign policy goals and mutual relationships, questions about the value of ASEAN for its members are pressing. Four key challenges stand out. The first challenge is internal. As Bilahari Reference KausikanKausikan (2017), Singapore’s Ambassador at Large, remarked at a 2017 Roundtable on ASEAN at 50 organised by the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute: ‘the domestic political environments of several ASEAN members have become more complicated … not every new member has internalised the need for balance between national and regional interests as did the original members’. Kausikan focused on how countries such as Cambodia have, in placing their own national interest ahead of the regional, imperilled ASEAN’s unity. Kausikan’s take is particularly interesting as he is not pining for a lost ASEAN golden age of unity and agreement. He notes that national interests are always important, that consensus is not always achieved, and that the diversity of ASEAN’s members means that ASEAN members will always have diverging national interests. Kausikan’s concern, instead, is that many new members see no value in the regional dimension of their external relations when it conflicts with their own national interests. This is the real internal challenge, because if members refuse to see any value in ASEAN regionalism relative to their own desires, then there is no space for ASEAN’s approach to regionalism to operate. The viability of the ritualised approach to regionalism rests on the constant balancing of national interests – the national interest was served by working through a region whose displays of unity permitted and managed diverging national interest.

Simultaneous with the potential for ‘disengagement’ with ASEAN by its members is the second challenge, that of the threat of ASEAN being misunderstood, either by its members or other actors, be they dialogue partners, civil society players, or even individuals. The ‘on-paper’ ASEAN conveys the impression of a regional organisation very different from its reality. This mismatch, in turn, raises expectations that are unlikely to be met. The scorn with which the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration was met by civil society within Southeast Asia (see Human Rights Watch 2012) exposed ASEAN to more pointed criticism because its failure could now be judged against its expressed commitments, not those of a third party. A very similar story can be told regarding the plight of the Rohingya people who, if ASEAN wants to be people-centred, need to be helped. Yet because of Myanmar’s dual role as a full member of ASEAN and the very cause of the Rohingya refugees’ plight, ASEAN is unable to assist. ASEAN is trapped and judged against standards which it created but cannot enforce. Whether ASEAN will work towards living up to its commitments or retain its traditional disinterest in compliance will shape how it is perceived and valued.

The alignment of national interests between some ASEAN members is a third challenge to the region. The above discussion has shown how in realms as diverse as economics, human rights, trade, security, and defence policy, ASEAN members may have little in common, but they often have a lot in common with a few of their ASEAN peers. There is no automatic reason why regional cooperation can only be expressed through ASEAN – it is simply the case that until now, ASEAN has been the only expression of regionalism in Southeast Asia. Fraying engagement with ASEAN because of disappointment in its defence of democracy (or concern that there is too much of a commitment), or disinterest in its economic plans and agreements, or the obstinacy of newer members, all threaten the emergence of sub-regional initiatives. To date, these have focused on sub-regional cooperation in areas such as piracy and security of the Malacca Strait, but there is no reason why this sub-regionalism should not expand. Whilst there is nothing necessarily problematic about the coexistence of more formalised sub-regional groupings alongside ASEAN, they at the very least problematise claims to ASEAN centrality and, inherently, undercut claims to ASEAN unity in a very public way.

The final challenge is external. ASEAN was and remains a collection of comparatively less powerful states. Even Indonesia is a long way from great power status. ASEAN has always faced external challenges; even during the broad predictability of the Cold War there were constant if shifting threats. Now the broader Indo-Pacific security order is under unprecedented challenge. A rising China has called into question the role of the US and its underpinning of the security architecture of the region, exacerbated by the election of President Donald J. Trump. In turn, this rise is exposing the fault lines within ASEAN – its inability to coherently defend member-state sovereign claims in the South China Sea, Cambodia’s role as a Chinese proxy within ASEAN, and diverging responses to a declining US. ASEAN is entering a period where past certainties are being replaced by an endemic ambiguity. These ambiguities undercut ASEAN’s already weak leadership role in the Asia-Pacific institutional architecture (Reference Cook and BisleyCook & Bisley 2016).

4.2 Final Words

In 1967, five states chose Southeast Asia as a meaningful conduit for the expression of their national interest. Their choice was wise. Learning from previous mistakes, ASEAN began as little more than a statement of intent. Through fifty turbulent years, it has developed from, and remained true to, its founding vision – a region of states defending their sovereignty and independence through joint action. Regional reform, whether driven by security concerns, norm contestation, or crises, has changed the expression of regionalism, making it both more sophisticated and more expansive. Yet none of these reforms have shaped a deep and enduring regional identity. ASEAN’s acceptance and management of this absence is its greatest success whilst also, simultaneously, the cause of its enduring weakness. ASEAN’s endurance over the last fifty years and the peace it has helped achieve means it is worthy of praise. Yet this praise must be qualified. ASEAN has failed to socialise many of the norms that are needed to fulfil its ‘on-paper’ vision. This failure is the inevitable consequence of its design and history.

Ultimately, regionalism is always a choice, and in Southeast Asia with its enduring diversities, it is especially so. In 1967, elites consciously chose to launch ASEAN, and at crucial times in its history elites have re-affirmed that choice with renewed attention to the regional project and the underlying decision that ASEAN was important to national goals. As regional and extra-regional tensions grow, new generations of political leaders, and the wider circle of public opinion, will need to again choose ASEAN. ASEAN’s ritualised approach to regionalism has helped it endure and, in many ways, prosper. Yet inherent in ritualism is the threat that it degenerates into something that becomes hollowed out as generations change and priorities shift. The challenge of managing competing national priorities and external great power politics, and maintaining an audience where ritual and symbol remain meaningful, is great. The challenge, however, is no less great than those that faced the region when five foreign ministers met in Bangkok and launched Southeast Asia on such an improbable journey.