This chapter will be divided into two parts; issues and challenges relating to ASEAN and those relating to Myanmar's accession to ASEAN.

ISSUES AND CHALLENGES RELATING TO ASEAN

As mentioned in previous sections, ASEAN has had more success in political than in economic cooperation while functional cooperation has become the weakest link. There has been relative peace and stability in the region since 1967 when ASEAN was established. Its credibility is firmly established in international forums. Its economic cooperation in terms of intra-ASEAN total trade as a percentage of its total trade with the world increased from 17 per cent in 1990 to 22.3 per cent in 1996 and 23.2 in 2000, but it fell to 21.2 per cent in 2001 (Table 7). As far as ASEAN's inward FDI is concerned, in the period between 1992 and 1997, it more than doubled — from US$12 to US$26 billion. However, compared with similar free trade areas such as EU, NAFTA and MERCOSUR, ASEAN lags far behind in both political and economic cooperation (Table 2.4). It is also important to note that integration has been slow as it took ASEAN 25 years to agree to establish a free trade area.

Extra-ASEAN trade has been more successful than intra-ASEAN trade since the APEC countries continue to be the most significant trading partners of ASEAN.

Externally, “(b)uilding on its economic and political achievements, ASEAN had considerable success in engaging major powers through sub-groupings as the Asia Pacific Cooperation (APEC), the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM)” (Tay 1999, p. 5). Many analysts attributed this success and that of ASEAN enlargement to the pursuit of an “ASEAN Way”. The ASEAN Way has emphasized, among other things, “the norm of non-interference in other states’ affairs, preferred consensus and non-binding plans to treaties and legalistic rules, and relied on national institutions and actions, rather than creating a strong central bureaucracy” (ibid., p. 5).

Institutionally, because of this ASEAN Way, especially the norm of noninterference and aversion to a strong bureaucracy, ASEAN, in fact, was more an association than an institution. It was only after 1992 with the Singapore Declaration and the establishment of AFTA that ASEAN introduced greater coordination and institutionalization.