Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss 
Nicholas Farrelly and Kishore Mahbubani on the organisation’s past, present and future.
Next year the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) turns 50.
In its almost five decades the regional organisation has achieved much, not least peace and stability in a socially, culturally and a politically dynamic and sprawling part of the globe.
On the other hand, critics would argue it is a talk shop lacking in substance on substantial issues.
Today ASEAN is presented with major opportunities and key challenges — including deeper economic integration as well as increased rivalry between China and the United States. Some commentators are even concerned that territorial disputes in the South China Sea could tear ASEAN apart.
In this video, recorded on the sidelines of the Crawford Australian Leadership Forum, New Mandala co-founder Dr Nicholas Farrelly discusses ASEAN’s future and the central role of Singapore in the region with Singaporean foreign policy expert Kishore Mahbubani.
Watch the full interview in the player below.
Interview filmed and produced by Jamie Kidston and Jack Fox, ANU TV.
ASEAN was founded by only five countries in Bangkok in 1967. It turns fifty in 2017, not sixty. Four of its ten members joined only two decades ago, after the Cold War. For most of its existence it operated without legal personality.
Also, Kishore Mahbubani is promoting: “clearly the second most successful regional body behind the EU.” Really? Many observers would make the case the African Union has been more successful of late than ASEAN, especially in terms of acting collectively on human rights and regional peacekeeping. Although the AU still lacks, its current direction is more admirable than ASEAN’s. ASEAN integration has been economic oriented in the service of business and growth, not political life or human security. Any regional defense of human rights, democratic institutions, and civil liberties remains anemic. The “ASEAN Way” values non-interference of its governments far more than the civil and political liberties of everyday Southeast Asians.
ASEAN has much to learn from the AU in terms of articulating the case for basic democratic norms and seeing the region from the perspective of its people, not just diplomatic and business elites. ASEAN has been defined by its inaction not its action. Its “success” is debatable. The geopolitical risks Mahbubani mentions only incentivize SE Asian governments to maintain non-interference in the world’s second most undemocratic region.
0
0
Right you are Robert — pardon my typo. That’s been corrected. All the best, James
0
0
Kishore Mahbubani rose to fame a couple of decades ago as the theorist of ‘Asian values’. How sad it is that he didn’t have time in this brief interview to update us on where Asian values are at present. Where in the dispute between China and the Philippines, for example, can we locate Asian values? On a median line half-way between the two countries, perhaps?
Speaking no doubt before Brexit, Mahbubani can’t be blamed for praising the EU as the leading regional organisation in the world. Who was to know that Britain would leave? Probably only observers or analysts who paid some attention to British public opinion. But, watching Mahbubani in this interview, one doesn’t have the impression that he is very interested in public opinion.
Since Mahbubani was no doubt once described by Time Magazine as one of the most influential of global thinkers, we should perhaps try a different tack. Let us assume that he knew Britain would leave but somehow thought that losing the member country possessing the second largest economy would nevertheless not undermine the EU’s top dog status. But, if this more charitable explanation is correct, it clashes with his praise of ASEAN’s bringing economic prosperity to Southeast Asia.
It is one of the idiosyncracies of Singapore’s polity and civil service that it is citizens of South Asian origin who tend to be the most provocative. They also tend to lay down the law about how Australia should behave towards Asia, and how Australians should behave towards Asians. This is why it is inappropriate to treat them with undue deference.
Bilahari Kausikan, a former permanent secretary of the Foreign Ministry, is even more outspoken than Mahbubani, though I don’t know what his ‘take’ on Asian values happens to be. Maybe Asian values didn’t make it into the new century.
Readers of this website who are familiar with Bilahari’s public utterances should know that they can’t compare with what he says in private.
0
0