Organizer: The Stanford Southeast Asia Program

Description:

2023 marks the 40th anniversary of APARC. Four decades ago, in 1983, the repercussions of Vietnam’s 1978 invasion of Cambodia and China’s 1979 invasion of Vietnam were still underway. Those wars were intermestic; they implicated both international and domestic relations. Interstate relations in Southeast Asia have been basically peaceful ever since, despite some domestic conflicts, as in Myanmar now. Will they remain so? Will ASEAN thrive, or merely survive? Will its members together constitute the world’s fourth largest economy by 2030—below the US, China, and the EU, but above Japan—as predicted by Singapore’s prime minister? Will ASEAN choose neither the US nor China; choose them both; or somehow choose itself instead? What would each scenario mean? Will minilateralism erode ASEAN’s centrality? Will the differences between mainland and maritime Southeast Asia split the region into respectively Sinic and Pacific spheres of influence? How durable is the Indo-Pacific concept? Is autocratization inevitable? How will it affect foreign policy? Will artificial intelligence help the region or hurt it, or both, and how? In the South China Sea, will the ASEAN claimants resolve their differences for the sake of unity against Beijing, or is it too late for that? How relevant to the region are the futures of Taiwan and Ukraine? What are Southeast Asia’s greatest strengths, risks, and opportunities going forward?

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