Comment on “Politics of Association of Southeast Asian Nations Economic Cooperation”

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-3131.2011.01176.x
• Author: Mohamed ARIFF
• Date: 01 June 2011
• Published date: 01 June 2011

Comment on “Politics of Association

of Southeast Asian Nations

Economic Cooperation”

Mohamed ARIFF†

Malaysian Institute of Economic Research

JEL codes: F1, F4, F5

The attempt by Severino (2011) to coverthe w idth and depth of the intriguing integration

process in Southeast Asia over four decades merits serious attention. One can hardly

disagree with the comprehensive description and crispy analysis by Severino, a former

Secretary General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Nevertheless,

it will be useful to revisit some of the highlights and issues.aepr_1176 39..40

ASEAN is unique. It was born in the heat of the Cold Wardriven primarily by security

concerns emanating from communist threats. ASEAN was so loosely structured that the

acronym was interpreted by some to read as “Ad-hoc Strategic Entity of Ambiguous

Nature.” Ambiguity turned out to be a virtue as it provided the flexibility, the absence of

which the regional body might have aborted. ASEAN was wise enough to go for“consen-

sus” by focusing on issues that would unite its members and steering away from

contentious areas that would break up the fragile entity at the initial stage.

From its inception in 1967 until the Bali Summit in 1976, ASEAN was seemingly

dormant, but the hindsight shows that the first decade was not wasted, as it provided the

space for its members to bury their hatchets and build confidence, trust, and understand-

ing so that they could move on. The Bali Summit was a major milestone for ASEAN as it

marked the end of the beginning and the dawn of a new era of economic cooperation,

albeit on an extremely modest scale. The subsequent story was just one of “learning by

doing” without any blueprint or road map, as manifested by the cumbersome “item-by-

item” trade liberalization and clumsy industrial cooperation based on five mega projects.

ASEAN had apparently put the cart before the horse by identifying the projects and the

locations followed by feasibility studies. The projects wereunderstandably shunned by the

private sector. Lessons learned from this episode ledASEAN policy makers to work more

closely with market forces.

ASEAN was more successful in its external relations with major powers and trading

partners, thanks mainly to the Cold War. The external support that ASEAN had received

in its infancy was due not to its bargaining strengths but its inherent weaknesses and the

importance the developed countries had attached to the region in geopolitical terms. The

end of the Cold War was a rude awakeningfor ASEAN which had to reinvent itself to stay

†Correspondence: Mohamed Ariff, Malaysian Institute of Economic Research, Level 2, Podium, City

Point, Kompleks Dayabumi, 50768 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Email: mohdariff19@gmail.com

doi: 10.1111/j.1748-3131.2011.01176.x Asian Economic Policy Review (2011) 6, 39–40

© 2011 The Author

Asian Economic Policy Review © 2011 Japan Center for Economic Research 39