1. Community formation within ASEAN

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was established on August 8^th, 1967 with the signing of Bangkok Declaration by the 5 Founding Fathers of ASEAN, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. In 1997, to mark the 30^th founding anniversary of ASEAN, leaders of 10 ASEAN member countries ratified the important document named ‘ASEAN Vision 2020’ with the general objective of making ‘a concert of Southeast Asian nations, bonded together in a community of caring societies’. To realize that objective, the 6^th ASEAN Summit held in December, 1998 in Hanoi approved Hanoi Plan of Action (HPA) 1999 - 2004.

In October, 2003 ASEAN member countries’ leaders signed the  Declaration on ASEAN Concord II with a view to forming an ASEAN Community in the year of 2020 consisting of 3 pillars, namely Security Community which was changed into Political-Security Community afterwards, Economic Community, and Socio-Cultural Community. In order to adapt to global trend, in January, 2007 ASEAN made a decision to accelerate its target date for achieving an ASEAN Community by 2015. Next, ASEAN members’ leaders, in November, 2007 signed and unanimously implemented ASEAN Charter to lay legal foundations for ASEAN in terms of principles, institutions, and orientation, promoting regional integration; first and foremost, focusing support on achieving an ASEAN Community by the end of 2015. To this end, in November, 2009 ASEAN agreed to adopt blueprints and a roadmap to build an ASEAN Community 2009 - 2015.

An ASEAN Community to be formed in the year of 2015 shall mark a vigorous shift of ASEAN. Started as a small entity in the region, an organisation with loose cooperation, ASEAN has made a considerable investment in building up itself to be an organisation with close-knit connection and a quite complete apparatus, and be the international organisations and powers’ important partner, contributing to peace-making, development, and prosperity in the region and the world.

2. Ideas and objectives

Chiefs of the ASEAN's Navies express solidarity towards a Political - Security Community of the region

In spite of being through  upheavals and vicissitudes, ASEAN, over the years, has made outstanding advances in many fields; building a Community with 3 pillars, namely Political and Security Community, Economic Community, and Socio-Cultural Community is one of its highlights in the region and the world. In order to realize Political and Security Community, ASEAN has planned to lift its Political-Security cooperation to new level as an objective  so that countries in the region and the world would live in a peaceful, just, democratic, and harmonious environment. ASEAN has affirmed its plans not to form a military alliance or a regional military bloc. In the blueprint adopted by the 14^th ASEAN Summit 2009, there are 3 factors to build the political-security community, namely building a community based on shared values and norms; building a cohesive, peaceful, resilient region in which all the members share responsibility for its comprehensive security; striving for a dynamic and outward-looking region in an increasingly integrated and flexible world. For the first factor, ASEAN has speeded up political cooperation, shaped and shared norms throughout a number of treaties, declarations, and forums in the region. For the second factor, ASEAN has focused on building trust, promoting dialogue, defence and security cooperation, and mutual understanding to prevent conflicts; at the same time, in collaboration to find out solutions to conflicts in peace and cooperation, appreciating cooperative solutions to non-traditional security issues. For the last factor, ASEAN has brought into play and raised its centrality role in cooperation to build a regional security architecture which is open, transparent, and inclusive, attaching great importance to partners outside the region. As a result, fields of cooperation based on the aforementioned factors are unceasingly improved and deepened. By the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) mechanism and the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+) including ASEAN members and 8 partners, maritime security cooperation in the framework of AMF, the importance of defence cooperation has been raised. There are also dialogues and cooperative forums such as ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Eastern Asia Summit which have been the factors that help connect and build  the Community. Notably, in response to China’s illegal placement of an oil rig in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, the 24^th ASEAN Summit issued the Joint Communiqué, which expressed its concerns over the incident, and the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting made a Statement on the issue of the East Sea. That reflects ASEAN responsibility for the region’s peace, security, and solidarity in hardships and challenges.

Building an Economic Community is aimed at a stable, thriving, and highly competitive economic zone which is characterized as a free movement of  goods, services, investment, capital, and skilled labour, an equitably developed economy which is able to fully integrate into the global economy. To this end, measures have been deliberately designed by ASEAN leaders, namely: removing tariff and non-tariff barriers, facilitating trade, harmonizing standards of products and conformance procedures, curtailing custom, export, and import procedures, perfecting rules of origin, facilitating services and investment, promoting development of capital market and free movement of capital. ASEAN has also attached consolidation of regional production network by connecting infrastructures, particularly in the fields of energy, transportation, information technology, telecommunication, and e-commerce to promotion of the policies on competitiveness, customers' protection, and intellectual property rights in order to build an open, dynamic, flexible, and fascinating economic zone. The aforementioned measures have been effectively realized with important agreements such as: the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA), the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services (AFAS), the ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement (ACIA) and so on. Tariff reduction, free movement of capital and labour inside the ASEAN region have now changed in positive way, helping create close connection and boost unceasing economic development of each country and the whole region.

Together with building the two above-mentioned pillars, building a Socio-Cultural Community is aimed at improving ASEAN peoples’ quality of life, focusing on building a caring and sharing society where living standards and social welfare are enhanced. To realize this objective, ASEAN has attached great importance to human development, social welfare and sponsorship, social justice and rights, ensuring environmental sustainability; building the ASEAN identity; narrowing the development gap among member states. Concerning human development, ASEAN encourages the development of voluntary education, promotes countries’ education and raises public awareness of ASEAN. For social welfare and sponsorship, ASEAN has focused on health cooperation, prevention and control of the infectious diseases (HIV/AIDS for example) and drug abuse; adopting measures for poverty alleviation, ensuring energy and food security, effectively responding to natural disasters and crises… etc. For social justice and rights, ASEAN has speeded up cooperation in protecting and raising role and interests of women, children, the elderly, persons with disabilities, migrant labourers, etc. For ensured environmental sustainability, ASEAN has focused on enhancing cooperation in responding to transnational environmental challenges such as: greenhouse effect, marine wastes, biodiversity loss, climate change...etc. For building ASEAN identity and raising public awareness, ASEAN has attached great importance to preserving, bringing into play regional traditional values of culture; boosting cultural exchange and people-to-people interactions, respecting the principle of ‘unity in diversity’, promoting mutual understanding of culture, history, religion, and civilization among member states. ASEAN has now completed 80% of the blueprints with its utmost effort to realize the three pillars, laying a solid foundation to make its highest objective come true- an ASEAN Community to be formed by the end of 2015.

3. Challenges and issues

The achievements of over the years gained by the ASEAN member states are undeniable. However, to build an ASEAN Community by the end of 2015 and to be a Community of its contentment in the following years, ASEAN has to deal with a lot of challenges and difficulties, especially in forming a Political-Security Community. First and foremost, ASEAN’s degree of integration is not high yet, common foreign policies are not clear enough, mainly focusing on independent diplomacy of its members. Moreover, due to the differences of political-security interests and objectives among ASEAN members, it has not yet reached a high consensus on viewpoints, attitudes, and stance for the sake of the region’s shared interests. Take the East Sea issue as a typical example. The East Sea’s stability and safety is the decisive factor to the region’s stability and peace. However, ASEAN has not yet realized the importance and necessity of making a focused considerable investment to safeguard the region’s common interests, particularly to raise a strong common voice of solidarity to prevent threats to the region’s security. Together with the East Sea’s instability, Southeast Asia region still faces up to the potential risks of border and water conflicts and transnational terrorism. Noticeably, under global major powers’ multidimensional impacts, ASEAN’s independence, self-reliance, prestige, and status to build a Political-Security Community is considerably damaged.

Therefore, to achieve a Political-Security Community, an ASEAN Community by the end of 2015 as a whole, first and foremost, ASEAN members’ awareness of its role and status in the region’s security should be raised, then reaching for the Community’s common security objective bound legally under enforced principles attached to each member’s political responsibility. Every ASEAN member state has its own national interests, but they must be in line with those of the region, not serving the national interests instead of the region’s interests, or not defending the national interests against the regional ones. In the common space, naturally the Southeast Asia region is affected by other regions and the whole world, and ASEAN’s security objective is attached to security interests of the countries outside the region. That fact requires ASEAN to enhance solidarity, bring into play its centrality role, express its consistent viewpoints and directly engage in security issues, particularly maritime security. First and foremost, it should continue serious implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of  Parties in the East Sea (DOC) and ASEAN’s six-point principles on the East Sea; at the same time, it should actively hold consultations about building and completing the Code of Conduct of Parties in the East Sea between ASEAN and China to be interpreted into reality.

ASEAN, in the present situation, should be fully aware that: building the Political-Security Community plays a decisive role in ensuring the Southeast Asia region’s durable peace and stability. It must be ASEAN who concretizes its political determination with practical acts to reach for an ASEAN Community to be formed by the end of 2015 and to be developed in the future.

Duc Le