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How central is ASEAN centrality for Australia?
ASEAN needs creativity and vision to develop genuine centrality that comes from its own strategic geopolitical core, and to be more than just a euphemism for Southeast Asia.
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Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong speaks to the media as she arrives at Ngurah Rai International Airport on July 7, 2022 to attend the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Bali.
(AFP/Johannes P. Christo )
O
ne of the most interesting moments during the recent special lecture by Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in Singapore came at the end, during the Q&A session.
This was when Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, asked her about Australia’s view in relation to the fact that ASEAN, considered its internal divisions, might not be as central as often claimed.
This take is widely circulating in Singapore, whose foreign policy is always driven by extreme forms of pragmatism and realism.
After all, perhaps ASEAN is like an expensive, ancient porcelain vase on display in a museum, appreciated and admired by many for its history and tradition, but not much use otherwise.
Considering the bloc’s “dividedness”, to borrow from Chong, due to its members’ different positions and political systems, there is no doubt that ASEAN can be a useful forum. But how central can it realistically be?
As per now, the regional bloc could be seen as a hybrid platform somehow resembling the European Economic Community before 1993’s Maastricht Treaty on the one hand and on the other, a sort of Asian version of the Commonwealth and potentially, if its analytical capabilities are built up, a localized Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Wong had continuously stressed ASEAN centrality during her visit to the region, not only at the IISS event but also during her visit to Kuala Lumpur on June 29, her first visit as an Australian minister to the country where she was born and spent years as a child. In the Malaysian capital, Wong said, “ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions hold the center of the Indo-Pacific.”
