Fall 2008
"Correspondence: ASEAN, Regional Integration, and State Sovereignty"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 2, volume 33
By Hiro Katsumata, David Martin Jones and Michael L.R. Smith
Hiro Katsumata responds to David Martin Jones and Michael L.R. Smith's Summer 2007 International Security article, "Making Process, Not Progress: ASEAN and the Evolving East Asian Regional Order."
Summer 2007
"Making Process, Not Progress: ASEAN and the Evolving East Asian Regional Order"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 1, volume 32
Forty years after its inception, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, rather than representing an integrated economic, security, and regional community, essentially remains a conglomerate of diverse states maintaining order in Southeast Asia through a complex bureaucratic process. Inviolable national sovereignty, a refusal to use force, and a desire to avoid confrontation among its members dominate the group’s policies and limit its political role. The result is a secretariat that lacks an overarching capacity to enforce its policies, as an analysis of ASEAN’s responses to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the war on terrorism in Southeast Asia, and the rise of China demonstrates. ASEAN is only as strong as its member states want it to be, and too often states put individual goals above a common one.



