1. ASEAN and Its Security Offspring: Facing New Challenges
- Author:
- Sheldon W. Simon
- Publication Date:
- 09-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
- Abstract:
- In its 40 years of existence, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has played well above its collective weight in world politics, though its reputation for effective diplomacy was seriously tarnished by an inability to resolve the region's 1997-98 financial crisis and other political challenges in the 1990s, including East Timor's secession from Indonesia, annual forest fire haze from Indonesian Borneo that creates a regional public health hazard, and the 1997 Cambodian coup that overturned an ASEAN-endorsed election. The primary explanation for ASEAN's political weakness has been its attachment to the principle of noninterference in its members' domestic affairs. Much of ASEAN's political effort in the early 21st century is devoted to overcoming this weakness.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, and Globalization
- Political Geography:
- Indonesia, Asia, and Cambodia