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Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur communities can save EU and ASEAN centrality
For one, the EU liberalized the borders of Europe far too quickly, before unionization and national wages can be readjusted upward.
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Malaysia's Saifuddin Abdullah, Philippines' Teodoro Locsin, Singapore's Vivian Balakrishnan, Cambodia's Prak Sokhonn, Indonesia's Retno Marsudi, Laos' Saleumxay Kommasith and ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi pose for a group photo during the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Retreat in Phnom Penh on Feb. 17, 2022. (AFP/TANG CHHIN Sothy )
A
n epistemic community is a collection of scholars and thinkers, sharing the universal belief in causality, who can warn of various scenarios to come based on prolonged field studies.
About 80 percent of the world's think tanks were created after 1950, which marked the start of the Cold War. Any suggestions that the world is heading into another Cold War must now enlist veteran analysts that have the experience to separate the wheat from the chaff.
ASEAN is often touted as the second most successful regional organization after the European Union.
Be that as it may, in ASEAN, less, or almost no attention, is given to the impact-driven research institutes that come under the fold of two of the most active member states of the regional organization: Indonesia and Malaysia.
Thus, ASEAN and the EU become the reified "dominant discourse" that only they, and they alone, are the only point of entry to their respective regions. Yet both are a fallacy, unfortunately.
The fact that neither the EU could keep the United Kingdom from leaving Brussels on Jan 1, 2020, is telling. In the case of ASEAN, for that matter, the ASEAN Secretariat, the fact that it was unable to engage the international media to keep Myanmar's Tatmadaw from launching a coup on Feb. 1, 2021, was also just as revealing.
All these institutions participate in EU summits and ministerial meetings, as well as the biennial ASEAN-EU (ASEM) summits. How can they miss the fat-tail event?
