The experiences of ASEAN-EU integration have clarified some hard truths. Both organisations should take each other more seriously and recognise the differences and similarities between their respective regions and organisational structures.
The strategic landscape in South East Asia is reordering. Southeast Asians and Americans must convince China that the “nine-dotted line” South China Sea is a bridge too far.
The Shangri-La Dialogue provides an unofficial setting where ministers and other senior officials are given the opportunity to address major security issues and interact with a large audience of security specialists. Additionally, many officials use the summit to arrange private meetings with their counterparts on the sidelines.
The current standoff in the South China Sea between the Philippines and China threatens to raise tensions to new heights.
Washington’s emphasis on multilateral diplomacy underlines the point that ASEAN as a whole as well as other states have significant interests in the Sea that go beyond the territorial disputes between five states and China.
Southeast Asia and the South China Sea are now clearly major theaters of rivalry between the US and China, and once again, a cockpit of major international rivalries. ASEAN’s members are squarely in the middle of this rivalry. Meanwhile Russia is trying to run a bluff on China, which will probably only provoke Chinese and Asian mistrust despite the mutual professions of an identity of interest with China.
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