Organizer: The Stanford Southeast Asia Program

Description:

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) deserves credit for sustaining peaceful and consensual multilateral cooperation in a diverse and historically divided region. Accordingly, in principle if not always in practice, outside powers have supported the regional centrality of ASEAN. But what does that centrality mean and can it survive current challenges? While still recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Southeast Asia faces the destabilizing consequences of intense US-China tensions, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and global economic uncertainty. Nor has ASEAN responded effectively to the ongoing domestic repression by the junta in Myanmar, one of the grouping’s own member countries. Are there steps that ASEAN’s 2023 chair, Indonesia, could take to help meet these challenges? Should minilateral options be considered? In the context of addressing these and related topics, Sharon Seah will share pertinent findings from a just-published regional survey of Southeast Asian opinion influencers, The State of Southeast Asia 2023.

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