ASEAN Perspective on Challenges and Opportunities of Partnerships across the Seas

Abstract

ASEAN will form on December 31, 2015, the ASEAN Community, which will try to integrate 10 very heterogeneous countries into “one family”. On one hand, historical developments and security concerns led to a rather nationalistic position of the individual countries, and on the other, developments related to “non-traditional security” (NTS) issues are forcing a rethinking of hard-line positions in favour of a regional maritime approach. Whilst in many political and academic circles the term “regional resilience” is regularly used, the understanding ranges from the interpretation that this is a new Chinese wording for justifying the increase of the military and maritime power of the country, via the claim that the “new” security approaches are just emerging after the end of the Cold War, to the differentiating theory debate about different political approaches to international relations and the NTS issues. This article explores the historical development of NTS threats and then addresses some risks for the ASEAN Community 2015 as well as providing answers to the ASEAN 2015 three-pillar strategy of the ASEAN Political–Security Community (APSC), the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC). The article will explore a strategic approach rather than operational issues to address certain challenges within this strategy, and will discuss some maritime implications.