Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

History

Formed in 1967 by five countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand—ASEAN's membership has since increased to ten, with Brunei joining in 1984, Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Myanmar (Burma) in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999. The association was originally established to build trust and confidence among its members, who continue to engage in regular consultations with each other and with their external dialogue partners on a host of shared intraregional and external problems that impinge on regional peace, security, and economic prosperity. Regarded as one of the more enduring regional organizations in the developing world, ASEAN was instrumental in turning a once tense and violence-prone region into a zone of peaceful interstate relations. After 1990 and the end of the Cold War, ASEAN began to address new transnational problems that had begun to challenge states, particularly those grouped under the rubric of nontraditional security, such as maritime piracy, drug trafficking, terrorism, illegal migration, environmental destruction, and, more recently, food and energy security as well as human trafficking. ASEAN also began to pay closer attention to matters of economic cooperation, initiating the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) in 1992 and the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) project in 2003. ASEAN has also negotiated bilateral preferential trading arrangements with countries outside the region. In addition to managing regional order in Southeast Asia through ASEAN, member-states have also actively managed the wider East Asian order by establishing broader frameworks for governance centered on ASEAN but extending beyond its membership. Through the ASEAN Regional Forum, the ASEAN Plus Three grouping, and the East Asian Summit, the ASEAN states work together with other states—including regional and global powers such as the United States, China, Japan, India, Russia, and the European Union—in ways that help secure ASEAN's external environment for its members. These sorts of regional governance activities ultimately impinge on global governance arrangements, although the regional-global relationship can take a number of forms.

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