As one of the world’s most dynamic developing regions, Southeast Asia has been a place of intense strategic competition among major powers. This have had multi-dimensional impacts on the regional countries’ security and development. In that context, strengthening consensus and enhancing identities as well as the central role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in order to maintain peace, stability, and dynamic development in the region, are of great public concern.

The focal points of strategic competition among major powers

Recently, when the world's economic and political centre of gravity is shifting from the West to the East, the Indo-Pacific region, with many strategic advantages, has become a key area where the world's major powers compete for their influence. Many analyses confirm that if any country being able to control the Indo-Pacific, it would have significant influence globally. Southeast Asia is the hub, connecting the Indian Ocean with the Pacific Ocean, with many international maritime lines of communication passing. Southeast Asia is also the world's fifth largest economy, with a population of above 650 million  and GDP of about $3 trillion. It is therefore considered the leading region within Indo-Pacific. Gaining dominance in Southeast Asia also means having advantages in the Indo-Pacific competition. Therefore, the competition for influence among the major powers in Southeast Asia is increasingly fierce and unpredictable. Due to differences in strategic interests and relationship, many factors arise in this competition that impact Southeast Asia’s peace and stability requiring each country to come up with reasonable solutions and policies. Being in competition, besides strong policies to deter and prevent its rivals, major powers also focus on enhancing soft power through economic cooperation projects, defence and security assistance for their traditional partners and regional countries – in order to gather forces, expand influence, and gain advantages. These activities provide opportunities for countries in Southeast Asia to develop their economies, improve their defense & military potentials, and ensure national security. Yet they also pose some potential risks and threats to their security and development strategies.

ASEAN’s identity and its central role

For more than half a century of establishment and development, maintaining its identities and central roles has always been key for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) - the ASEAN Community – to promote its brand and success. Now when major powers are strengthening their strategic competitions, bringing about both opportunities and challenges, ASEAN has been implementing many flexible, creative, appropriate policies; and at the same time attempting to promote its identity and central role in managing and maintaining balanced relation with its partners, especially with those great powers. Along with that, the Association also seeks to minimise challenges and contradictions emerging in the implementation of cooperation regulations, leading bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the direction most beneficial to the member countries. ASEAN insists on its fundamental principles reached by the community, promotes the role and effectiveness of its dialogue mechanisms, and ensures that its policies are relevant with each partner’s capacity and conditions, and the Association’s needs. Through dialogues, ASEAN and its partners enhance mutual understanding, build strategic trust, and promote mutually beneficial cooperation, rather than thread or use of force. This is a unique feature of ASEAN that no other organisation in the world has.

ASEAN's relations with its partners is implemented in accordance to the following mechanisms: "Dialogue Partnership", "Sectoral Partnership", "Development Partnership", "Special Observer", "Guest"; ... in which, " Dialogue Partnership" is the highest and most important mechanism that ASEAN granted for its partners that are major powers, developed countries, and powerful international organisations. Accordingly, ASEAN conducts dialogues with major powers through the following mechanisms: (1) ASEAN+1 - ASEAN's bilateral cooperation framework with other regional, global countries and entities. Currently, ASEAN has 10 Dialogue Partners, namely: Australia, Canada, China, European Union, India, Japan, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Russia, and the United States. The mechanism not only helps ASEAN conduct dialogue equally with these major powers and developed countries, taking advantages of resources for economic development, the maintenance of defence and security, and regional stability – but also promotes the region’s partnership in the most beneficial way for its member countries. The special ASEAN-US Summit held in Washington DC in May is a clear example, as the US has reaffirmed: to respect ASEAN's central role; and commit to working with ASEAN to establish and elevate their comprehensive strategic partnership for peace, security, stability, and development of each party; (2) ASEAN+3 - a cooperation mechanism between ASEAN and the three leading countries in Northeast Asia (China, Japan and Korea). In this relationship, ASEAN promotes its central role of connecting and expanding cooperation between the two regions Southeast and Northeast Asia. In fact, the online meeting of ASEAN+3 senior officials held on June 8, 2022, opened a new chapter for cooperation and connection between these two regions of rich potentials. Accordingly, ASEAN and three Northeast Asian countries approved many important cooperation directions in responding to and controlling the Covid-19 pandemic stimulating sustainable recovery; strengthening economic, commercial, and financial cooperation; promoting free trade and regional economic linkages through FTAs ​​between ASEAN and each country; (3) East Asia Summit (EAS) - a high-level dialogue mechanism between leaders of ASEAN and East Asian countries and neighbouring regions. The regulation laid that ASEAN plays the central role in organising discussions on strategic issues and contributing to ensuring regional peace, security and prosperity. The online East Asia Summit (EAS), held in June 2022, with the participation of high-ranking officials from ASEAN countries and Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Russia and the United States, reached many important results. At the meeting, parties discussed and exchanged their views on international issues of concern; discussed cooperation directions to control hot spots and handle emerging issues worldwide, such as the situations in the  East Sea, East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, the denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula, conflicts in Myanmar, Ukraine, and many other important issues; (4) Establishing ASEAN Committees in the capitals of major powers in order to coordinate actions promptly and handle emerging issues bilaterally.

In addition, ASEAN's central role is also highly appreciated by many countries on account of its mechanisms, security structures, and cooperation frameworks in the Asia-Pacific region. Some of the most prominent mechanisms are the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) - for cooperation and negotiation on political and security issues; and the ASEAN Defence Ministers Plus Meeting (ADMM+) – for defence and military cooperation. These two platforms serve as ASEAN's main multilateral mechanisms at ministerial level and also its central forums with its dialogue partners – in building trust, enhancing cooperation, and managing conflicts. In June, 2022, the ARF Senior Officials' Meeting was dedicated to discussing and finding solutions to current regional and international issues. Regarding the East Sea dispute, the  participants reached a common understanding of the importance of peace, stability, safety, and air and maritime freedom of navigation; and committed to refraining and settling disputes by peaceful means on the basis of international law, notably the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The Meeting also called on relevant parties to fully and effectively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) and soon reach a Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC), striving to make the East Sea a region of peace, stability, and development.

Outlooks for ASEAN

Past achievements show that, from a sub-regional cooperation mechanism, ASEAN has become a core organisation with a central role in establishing and leading mechanisms and frameworks in the Asia-Pacific region, which have attracted many partners, including major powers as well as regional and international organisations, to participate. All partners respect ASEAN’s mechanisms and frameworks, meaning the respectation to the central role of the Association. ASEAN currently has also established a comprehensive partnership with: Gulf Cooperation Council, Southern Common Market, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Rio Group), and Pacific Alliance, etc. Over time, more and more countries and organisations support and actively participate in ASEAN's dialogue and cooporation mechanisms, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum, Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, etc.

Given the geo-economical and geopolitical context in the Indo-Pacific region, Southeast Asia is changing profoundly. Engagements and policies that increase major powers’ influence in the region have become increasingly unpredictable, and embedding factors that might divide and trigger revalry regionally. These put ASEAN’s mechanisms and frameworks at risk and threat its central role. However, many international analysts and politicians of ASEAN member countries believe that, with its potentials and achievements recorded in the past 55 years, ASEAN will still be a cohesive, stable community that develops vigorously and prosperously, playing its central role in mechanisms and frameworks of cooperation in Asia-Pacific region. However, in order to do it, all ASEAN member countries need to maintain their identities and promote their central roles in bilateral and multilateral cooperations with major powers, as well as regional and international organisations. In addition, it also needs to actively promote cooperation in all fields and at all levels, form norms and mechanisms to deal with traditional and non-traditional security challenges, minimise and prevent conflict, and settle disputes by peaceful means in accordance with international law.

MINH DUC