The latter is often dubbed the most successful regional organization in the world after the EU. Yet the putative possibility that ASEAN can be any guidance at all is dismissed out of hand. There are numerous reasons that the EU has to keep in mind that ASEAN has got its relations with the US right.

But before one gets to them, it is just as vital to explain the role of the US first.

Now, with or without President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance has broken the diplomatic tradition in Germany by talking to AfD, the far-right party of the country. The fact is that the EU has been treading on dangerous waters for some time, at least since the global financial crisis in 2008-2009.

The very basis of the EU was originally based on France and Germany being able to achieve self-restraint from going at each other militarily. The two were either the proximate causes or actual triggers of World War I and II respectively. Yet the two countries, while able to end their mutual animosity, have been a pale shadow of their old selves, at least since 1970.

The fact that the idea of "Euro Sclerosis" was not a widespread phenomenon to weigh France and Germany down did not escape the attention of some scholars and economists. They knew France and Germany, together with the EU, were low in productivity.

Jacques Delors, the father of the Euro, for instance, has long understood the weaknesses of the French and German economies. Therefore, a Franco-German entente embedded in the larger expanding structure of the EU was seen as the most sensible way to arrest the national and regional decline of both countries and the EU as a whole.

The fact is that over the last 30 years, France and Germany in particular have not been shining examples of functional states. Many French citizens could never find their conditions in the workplace to be satisfactory, hence the constant allure of local or national strikes. 

Germany, on the other hand, outsourced most of its operations to the likes of China and other parts of less-developed Southeast Asia to enjoy a cost advantage, hollowing out the industrial base of Germany in due course.

Meanwhile, President Emmanuel Macron failed to win over the left and right segments of French society in May 2023. This is symptomatic of his lame-duck presidency that has four more years to go.

In Germany, Olaf Scholtz has not only lost the reins of his power to Frederick Metz of the CDU Party, but AfD as well. The latter gained at least 20 percent of the German vote on Feb. 23, which is unprecedented since the end of the first Cold War in 1989.

When one keeps in mind the fact the United Kingdom has long left the EU through Brexit, all that remains of the 27 member states that formed the EU is now even less impressive. The EU, for lack of a better word, is truly in trouble since it is tied to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The crisis of NATO is not necessarily due to the war in Ukraine. When the EU is not growing, the defense spending of NATO is generally weak, often below 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), which Trump inadvertently insisted upon. But Trump now wants the military contribution to NATO to stand at 5 percent of the GDP of each member state.

While not exhaustive, what are the instructive policy lessons that the EU can ponder deeply in the regard that ASEAN has more staying power than the EU in dealing with someone like Trump?

If anything, ASEAN has not fallen into a state of panic when US Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth at his confirmation hearing could not answer what ASEAN was. The leaders and laity in ASEAN just laughed it off. Below are just five instructive lessons for the EU.

First and foremost, regardless of what the theory of international relations or institutional economics may say, do not keep binding all the 27 member states by sheer diplomatic fiat. Brussels can no longer tell a country such as Bulgaria what to do anymore.

The more all the EU member states try to hold on to the old conventional wisdom of a single Europe, the more the quest for common glory will become a distant memory. The EU, or the bureaucratic priesthood that guards it, is breaking down.

Second, the EU is always burdened by reams of regulations, whereas in ASEAN it is light on rules. Not surprisingly, it is seeing the bamboo shoots of its hard efforts. Between 2025 and 2030, the collective bloc of ASEAN is expected to grow at 5.2 percent, two times higher than the EU.

Third, notwithstanding the looming dawn of the age of artificial intelligence, the EU has not been able to innovate its way out of its conundrum. Brands such as Audi, Mercedes and BMW, all made in Germany, are outsourced to other countries.

Much of the fear that has engulfed the EU is now due to the unwillingness of the EU to relax its trade rules. Meanwhile, ASEAN does not suffer from any need to find an alternative regional purchaser. India and China can serve as the trading partners of the strategic group. By 2030, ASEAN would have a collective GDP fourth in size after China, the US and India.

Fourth, while ASEAN has a history that only began on Aug. 8, 1967, the regional bloc, time and again, seems to have achieved more. Except for Myanmar, ASEAN has absorbed member states into a cohesive whole. The chances of ASEAN breaking up remain impossible.

Last but not least, ASEAN has also willed its loose existence into being. It surrendered no sovereignty to any secretariat, nor can any member states resort to making decisions unilaterally.

The EU has allowed legalism and institutionalism to prevail over it time and again. It has to learn how to sink or swim with dead weight locked to its ankles, especially when it is faced with the rise of a recalcitrant Russia that has refused to give in to the demands of NATO or the EU.

As and when help has not been forthcoming from the US, the EU is in sheer panic.

In turn, if the US were to abandon ASEAN, there are more than several major powers to prop ASEAN up lest it be at the mercy of either India or China. The primary thrust of ASEAN, other than ensuring the institutional tie-up with the US, also involves working with a group of comprehensive strategic partners.

Germany and France are ASEAN's development partners. When the two can get out of their rut, ASEAN will work with them.

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The writer is a professor of ASEAN Studies at International Islamic University of Malaysia.