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ASEAN Indo-Pacific guide still impractical, but not a lost cause: experts
Operationalization remained ASEAN’s biggest challenge in actualizing its Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP), experts from across the region have said, as hope prevails that the 10-nations group could actualize the much-needed document.
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Philippines' President Ferdinand Marcos Jr (left), Thailand’s Prayut Chan-O-Cha (third left), Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh (fourth left), Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah (fifth left), Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihamoni (fifth right), Prime Minister Hun Sen (fouth right), Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo (third right), Laos' Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh (second right) and Malaysia's lower house speaker Azhar Azizan Harun (right) walk during a courtesy call to Cambodia's king before the ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh on Nov. 10.
(AFP/Kenn Sovanarra)
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perationalization remained ASEAN’s biggest challenge in actualizing its Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP), experts from across the region have said as hope prevails that the 10-nations group could actualize the much-needed document.
Deliberating possible solutions at the 13th General Conference of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta, panelists suggested that some tweaks to the document may prove useful to overcome the profound challenges if ASEAN wishes to actualize its vision.
“The [AOIP] requires a set of concrete, actionable plans of action. Something that we have not yet seen so far. Leaders should ask the ASEAN coordinating council to explore the development of an ASEAN road map for promoting an open Indo-Pacific,” Rizal Sukma, a senior researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said on Friday.
The AOIP, first endorsed in 2019, is a framework to assert ASEAN’s centrality in the increasingly contested area, in which the region’s partners would cease competition and instead cooperate through the bloc’s mechanism – such as the East Asia Summit (EAS), the ASEAN Plus forums, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM).
According to Rizal, estimates suggest that it would take at least five years until ASEAN can finalize its concrete plans of action, but that should not mean the association remains passive amid superpowers’ attempts to assert their influence in the region.
Vijay Thakur Singh, director general of the Indian Council of World Affairs, suggested that since the Indo-Pacific was an area of interest for many actors, ASEAN should take advantage by consulting with other subregional groups where closer collaboration may yield higher results.
That other actors may have their own visions for the region does not have to automatically be taken as a challenge to the AIOP, she said.
