More recently at its summit in Washington, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) signaled the strengthening of relations with its Indo-Pacific partners Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, which are also ASEAN defense dialogue partners.

As the High-Level Task Force on ASEAN Community Vision 2045 (HLTF-ACV) is drafting the Strategic Plan for its Political-Security Community, it should ponder how these developments indicate broader trends that could impact the grouping’s relevance and policy space to navigate regional security issues. Underlying these trends are fundamental questions on ASEAN’s raison d'être, now and in the future.

Recent developments point to an outlook for ASEAN that looks bleaker than ever.

First, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke at the 21st Shangri-La Dialogue last month to promote the Peace Summit for Ukraine, held on June 15-16 in Burgenstock, Switzerland. After the Shangri-La Dialogue, veteran Singaporean diplomat Prof. Tommy Koh said in a Facebook post on June 2 that he hoped ASEAN countries would attend the summit to show support for Ukraine, as doing so would uphold the United Nations Charter and the rule of law.

However, only four out of the 10 ASEAN member states – Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – attended the summit.

Regarding its absence, Cambodia pushed back against criticisms that it was a client state of China, which also skipped the summit. Based on a strategic outlook shaped by the nation’s historical experience of war and conflict resolution, a Cambodian expert explained that the summit would not produce any meaningful outcome if the dialogue excluded certain parties, such as Russia.