SEAN's security cooperation: Searching for a regional order

Abstract

Abstract This article examines ASEAN's security concerns and its efforts at security cooperation in response to such concerns. From the outset, ASEAN has defined security comprehensively and this has been reflected in its various attempts at security cooperation. In its early days, when security concerns were focused on domestic challenges and consequent opportunities for external power intervention, a number of concepts and instruments were introduced. These included ZOPFAN, SEANFZ, the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, and the Declaration of ASEAN Concord of 1976. Security cooperation in the early stages mainly consisted of bilateral operations against communist insurgents. The most notable success was the building of a ‘security community’. With Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, ASEAN cooperated against the external military threat by non‐military means. In the post‐cold war era, while ASEAN countries seek security self‐reliance in the form of growing arms acquisition and modernization, ASEAN members are ...