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?

Brexit, for example, was not a "freak referendum", according to professor Niall Ferguson from Harvard and Stanford University. "It was waiting to happen."

As the late Thomas Kuhn explained, when there are too many anomalies, there will be a "rupture of consensus", leading to another paradigm shift.

ASEAN and EU have this problem of understanding when the shift can happen. That is because their decisionmakers regale in high-browed meetings but not being in the fertile field.

For one, the EU liberalized the borders of Europe far too quickly, before unionization and national wages can be readjusted upward. The European Commission (EC) and the Council of Europe further approved it. These follies resulted in allowing too many Eastern Union workers to move into the UK, thereby, depressing any appreciable rise in wages viz a viz the annual inflation.

Thus, the situation that had been incubating silently for decades since the end of the Cold War in 1989, when Eastern Europeans (not excluding flamboyant Russian oligarchs), even Malaysians, Singaporeans and mainland Chinese made a beeline into the metropole of London, increasing the cities' rent and property prices.

In this vein, should the EU fail to assist Ukraine to evict Russia, the large number of refugees, rising to an influx of 6.2 million workers in a few years or less, based on the studies of the United Nations, then the general level of income chasm from Alsace-Lorraine in France all the way to Athens in Greece will lead to stagflation.

All 27 members states of the EU, including the UK, will experience "Eurosclerosis", which has its roots in the 1960s.

Yet nation-states are not very good at accepting refugees. Of the 65 million refugees registered by the UN prior to the fall of Afghanistan and soon Ukraine, only 50,000 people were resettled, of which former United States president Donald Trump's administration only accepted 17,000 people.

Granted that this is occurring, at a time when 30 percent of the manual labor in the EU will be permanently replaced with automation and artificial intelligence by 2030, the problems can only become more entrenched in the EU and ASEAN.

Let's now turn to ASEAN on why other research institutes must come in immediately. Otherwise, the UN, Group of Seven, Group of 20, the EU, EC, ASEAN and its Secretariat will be looking at a refugee number in Ukraine that will cross the 6.5 million mark — 300,000 more than the "Syrian crisis". Such hot conflicts are fertile ground for radical mercenaries.

 In the case of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi made the fatal error of confusing her inner calm, derived from decades of intense Buddhist meditations, with the ability to handle all issues – including excluding herself from any dialogues with her main nemesis Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing for more than two years.

Entities such as the ASEAN Institute of Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR) and Malaysia's Institute Kajian Ethnik (KITA) could have been allowed by their government to warn the National League of Democracy (NLD) or Suu Kyi herself.

Yet this stasis was allowed to persist, even though the ambition of the latter was not to retire at all in May 2021. Suu Kyi knew the problem but chose to ignore it. ASEAN and the Secretariat went along to remain quiescent. Track I and Track II diplomacy fell apart.

Thus, just three months before his retirement, Aung Hliang drew first blood by launching the coup last year.

Finally, “centrality” is one of ASEAN’s purposes and principles as mentioned in the charter, which was incorporated into it.

Granted the gravity of the language, the ASEAN secretary-general and Secretariat must be proactive problem solvers, not sidebar listeners.

Yet neither is capable of living up to this role because each sees themselves as a "secretary" rather than the "general".

When the phrase “the centrality of ASEAN in external political, economic, social and cultural relations while remaining actively engaged, outward-looking, inclusive and non-discriminatory” (ASEAN Charter, Article 2 Paragraph 2(m) is further included in the ASEAN Charter, ASEAN becomes deluded with its self-importance. What is the solution?

The belief that only ASEAN or the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) have the track record to get things explained, must be expanded to include two more entities.

The Track 1.75 AIPR, led by Gusti Agung in Jakarta is just as important, as is the role of Malaysia's Institute Kajian Ethnik (KITA) at the National University of Malaysia. Both have the backing of their federal governments.

The institutions must be well-funded by ASEAN and the EU, and 128 ASEAN ambassadors accredited to ASEAN.

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The writer is the founder and CEO of the Strategic Pan Indo-Pacific Arena.