For decades, during the rule of the military junta, Myanmar’s numerous internal problems spilled over its borders, sewing chaos along the frontiers with India,Thailand,China, and Bangladesh. Myanmar’s narcotics producers flooded Thailand and other countries with methamphetamines and heroin, Myanmar’s numerous civil wars sent hundreds of thousands of refugees spilling into Thailand and Bangladesh and created a profitable cross-border illegal arms trade in India, and Myanmar’s combination of rape as a weapon of war and massive migration created some of the most virulent strains of HIV/AIDS in Asia, which then spread into China and Thailand. Read more »

This week’s latest South China Sea incident, in which a Chinese fishing boat cut a Vietnamese seismic cable —at least according to Hanoi— is a reminder that, despite the South China Sea dominating nearly every meeting in Southeast Asia this year, the situation in the Sea appears to be getting worse. This is in contrast to flare-ups in the past, when after a period of tension, as in the mid-1990s, there was usually a cooling-off period. Although there have been several brief cooling-off periods in the past two years, including some initiated by senior Chinese leaders traveling to Southeast Asia, they have not stuck, and the situation continues to deteriorate and get more dangerous.

In the new year, it will likely get even worse. Here’s why: Read more »

In the wake of ASEAN’s disastrous year, which included open fissures in the organization over how to handle the South China Sea, spats between Cambodia and the Philippines, and the utter failure to play any role in helping resolve growing violence in western Myanmar, many commentators —including the current ASEAN secretary-general— have argued that the organization needs to change substantially over the next decade if it is to remain, as it hopes, at the center of East Asian integration. I took my own stab at proposing some far-reaching —some might say idealistic— goals for ASEAN to meet over the next twenty years. Many of the goals that I set out in the paper might seem far-reaching for an organization that has always moved slowly and prided itself on operating, Quaker-style, through consensus. And yet powerful voices within ASEAN, including inside the Secretariat, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Vietnam, do realize the organization needs to change substantially. Read more »

As President Barack Obama sets off this weekend for a historic trip to Southeast Asia, he arrives at a high point for himself —and a low point for the region. Obama, making his first trip since winning re-election at the polls, will be the first sitting American president to visit Myanmar. The country has undoubtedly embarked upon historic reforms, yet is also embroiled in brutal ethnic violence. Thailand, another stop on Obama’s trip, is bracing for what could be a hugely disruptive leadership succession fight. In Cambodia, he will attend the East Asia Summit, as well as the Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an organization in the throes of a crisis. Read more »

Next week,  leaders from Asia and around the world will gather in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for the twenty-first annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and related meetings. On the eve of this event, I have published a new CFR Working Paper, in partnership with the International Institutions and Global Governance program, on ASEAN’s future and its role in the region. While ASEAN has accomplished several notable acheivements in the economic and nonproliferation realms, I argue that ASEAN today lags woefully behind its full potential. In the paper, I analyze the major obstacles currently facing ASEAN, and I  prescribe recommmendations for the both the United States and ASEAN that will enable ASEAN to firmly establish itself as the essential regional organization in Asia. Read more »

Elizabeth Leader is a Research Associate for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. The author’s views on ASEAN’s human rights progress do not necessarily reflect those of Joshua Kurlantzick.

The Asia-Pacific remains the only UN-defined region that does not adhere to its own human rights treaty or possess a region-wide mechanism for the promotion and protection of human rights. Thus, there was seemingly a lot riding on the backs of the ten ASEAN foreign ministers who gathered in New York on Thursday —on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly— to review the second draft of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD). Concern over the controversial draft (drawn up by the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights) has, in the international media, far outweighed any sort of praise. Read more »

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s swing through Asia has been marked by a revelation in Beijing: the source of all China’s problems with its neighbors is the United States. A Xinhua editorial paints the United States as a “sneaky trouble maker sitting behind some nations in the region and pulling strings.” In the Global Times, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences scholar Ni Feng states that the U.S. pivot is “stirring up tensions between China and its neighbors”; while Renmin University scholar Jin Canrong argues that Washington aims to “dominate the region’s political agenda, and build a Trans-Pacific Partnership that excludes China, as well as further consolidate its military edge.” Read more »

In today’s New York Times, a detailed article notes that China’s Central Military Commission has approved “the deployment of a garrison of soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army to guard disputed islands claimed by China and Vietnam in the South China Sea.” This development is only going to ratchet tensions up even higher from the already sky-high level in the wake of the failed ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting earlier this month. Read more »

Although the meltdown of the ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in Phnom Penh last week seemed like an unmitigated disaster, and already has resulted in a flurry of press coverage blasting the organization, the situation in the South China Sea is not necessarily headed for a steep descent into real conflict. To be sure, both sides seem likely to send more “fishing vessels” and other boats that straddle the line between civilian and military vessels into the disputed waters, raising the possibility of further skirmishes. Meanwhile, in the wake of the summit Philippine opinion leaders, and the Philippine media, are both livid at Cambodia for allegedly scuttling any joint position and increasingly aware of how vulnerable the Philippines is, having allowed their armed forces to deteriorate badly over the past two decades. Read more »

In the wake of the disastrous break-up of last week’s ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in Phnom Penh, at which ASEAN failed to agree to any statement summarizing their position on the South China Sea, even some of the most ardent backers of the Southeast Asian organization have begun to wonder whether ASEAN’s traditional consensus way is now totally defunct. This emphasis on consensus, of course, allows even one country, no matter how small, to block any joint position taken by ASEAN – in this case, probably Cambodia and Laos, which are increasingly close to China, blocking any joint statement that criticized Beijing. But this is hardly the first time the consensus approach has proven utterly counterproductive: ASEAN failed for years to strengthen their charter to include strong new clauses on human rights, almost surely because of the objections of more repressive ASEAN members like Myanmar. ASEAN failed, in the past, to take strong positions even on conflict within Southeast Asia, as occurred in East Timor in 1999, because of this adherence – some might say slavish devotion – to consensus and noninterference, a sharp contrast from some other regional organizations like the African Union. Read more »