During the current era of change, the 42 years old ten-nation organization consisting of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, continues to be dawdling monolith weighed down by expectations and its own effectiveness.
This year, expectations were particularly high after the adoption and ratification of the Association Charter during 2007-2008. While trying to forge an EU-style community, the new Charter aims to establish a single market economy by 2015 for the region inhabited by 500 million people. The Charter also proposed to promote a ‘rule-based, people-oriented’ ASEAN “in which all sectors of society will be encouraged to participate in and benefit from ASEAN integration and community building”. The Charter is definitely a positive symbol and can provide a stronger basis for the organization to proceed. But at the same time, it is crippled by a lot of drawbacks.
Today’s ASEAN needs to get its act together in facing future challenges (global and regional) such as the financial meltdown and maintaining competitive capability vis-à-vis the rising economic dynamism of India and China. The organization also needs to take a leading role in institution building within East Asia and to achieve that goal, ASEAN needs to make its member states work together more closely.
Read the complete Article on http://www.idsa.in/publications/stratcomments/PranamitaBaruah040509.html
Credit: http://www.idsa.in/
Pranamita Baruah is a Research Assistant in the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.
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