ASEAN:The Remake

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at the 27th summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) last November,the 10 member countries announced with great fanfare that as of 2016, their organization would become a full-fledged regional community. The vision of an ASEAN Economic Community for the next decade, according to Le Luong Minh, its Vietnamese secretary-general, was "to build an integrated and highly cohesive economy, a competitive, innovative and dynamic ASEAN, a resilient, inclusive and people-oriented and people-centered ASEAN, enhanced sectoral integration and cooperation and a global ASEAN." He was addressing editors and senior journalists from the region, taking part in a roundtable discussion earlier this month in Kuala Lumpur on the prospects of ASEAN achieving that lofty goal.

It is a far cry from the late 1960s, when Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand founded the association. At the time, their aim was to seek their own solutions to local conflicts that were byproducts of the wider Cold War.It took time, but they were able to begin a dialogue among themselves and share common interests, providing alternative conflict resolutions and gradually forging their own regional identity.