Association of Southeast Asian Nations

Historical Context

Unlike NAFTA, the impetus for ASEAN was not rooted in a desire among countries in southeast Asia for increased intraregional trade and investment. Rather, postcolonial southeast Asia in the 1960s was preoccupied with nation building and issues of sovereignty and identity. Galvanized by the outbreak of war in Vietnam, the five original members, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, embarked on a model of “relational control” that was effectively driven by concerns of regional security and stability. Such control included the containment of communist expansion from Indochina and the construction [Page 128]of an indigenous geopolitical space in the context of ideological competition between the Soviet Union and the United States.

A few attempts to develop regional consciousness and identity had preceded the formation of ASEAN but failed to gain widespread support among the countries. Japan, for example, had pursued a vision of regional co-prosperity in the 1920s by proposing an East and southeast Asian economic bloc. However, its activities in World War II precluded any role for Japanese leadership in the proposed regional initiative. Britain, too, had tried to promote the then Filipino leader Manuel Quezon's pan-Malayan union comprising the Philippines, British Malaysia, and the Dutch East Indies in the 1940s, but with little success.

By the 1960s, however, events were favorable for the formation of ASEAN. First, with the victory of Viet Minh forces in Vietnam in 1954, the United States began to pay greater attention to the region. The seeds of regional cooperation were sown, for instance, when the Unites States agreed to contribute funds and help establish the Asian Development Bank. Second, the ascension of new leadership under Indonesian President Suharto greatly reduced tensions between two of the original ASEAN members, namely, Malaysia and Indonesia, paving the way for improved regional relations. Third, conflicts in Indochina provided an incentive for increased engagement in regional problems.

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