In the future, the Association’s centrality risks definitively transforming into a symbol of a “beautiful era”—a term that will continue to resonate in ASEAN documents and joint statements with external partners, yet diverge ever further from the actual state of affairs within the Association itself, writes Alexander Korolev.
In expert discussions, the argument is increasingly voiced that ASEAN is gradually losing relevance amid the emergence of various “plus” formats such as BRICS and the intensifying strategic confrontation between the United States and China. Within this logic, the Association is portrayed either as a passive observer of global shifts or as a second-tier regional platform being displaced by new centres of power and forfeiting its former relevance. Yet ASEAN’s future is determined less by external factors than by its internal substance—by its capacity to adapt its institutional practices and preserve governability amid growing internal fragmentation.
Debates about ASEAN’s effectiveness and prospects are best examined through two interconnected levels—the external and the internal—since it is their intersection that shapes the Association’s developmental trajectory. At the external level, the key variables are, on the one hand, the emergence and evolution of new “political organisms” in the form of “BRICS Plus”, and, on the other, the now classic degradation of US–China relations. The impact of these processes on the Association, however, differs fundamentally in nature.
Unlike the conflict between Washington and Beijing, BRICS has not yet become a structural factor for ASEAN. It does not exert systemic influence over the regional architecture, does not compete with the Association’s institutions, and does not call into question ASEAN’s viability as a politico-economic project. For the countries of Southeast Asia, BRICS remains a flexible and weakly institutionalised global platform, but not an alternative to the ASEAN model of regional interaction.
Nevertheless, the active interest of several member states in BRICS and their desire to obtain full participant status sends an uncomfortable signal to ASEAN itself. It would be overly simplistic to interpret attempts by individual Southeast Asian countries to integrate into the “BRICS Plus” space merely as a desire by small and medium-sized powers to pursue a multi-vector foreign policy.
If states are prepared to invest political capital in a format that is not an international organisation and lacks full international legal personality, this indicates deeper and more complex motivations. In effect, regional countries are seeking to compensate for what they fail to obtain—or cannot in principle obtain—within ASEAN.
This concerns, above all, opportunities for strategic hedging in the context of aggressive protectionism, the fragmentation of the global economy, and the politicisation of value chains. No less important are practical expectations relating to access to new markets and sources of financing at a time when traditional economic partners increasingly link trade, investment, and technological cooperation to political and ideological conditions. Finally, for some Southeast Asian states, participation represents an investment in their own political status—through membership in an elite club of states aspiring to reshape the system of global governance.
It is here that the limitations of ASEAN’s toolkit become increasingly evident. The Association lacks mechanisms for collective protection against external sanctions and tariff pressure, and it falls far short of possessing resources comparable to those of BRICS in terms of amplifying diplomatic weight and enhancing the capacity to “be heard” on the global stage. ASEAN has effectively reached the ceiling of its capabilities and is unlikely to offer its members projects and initiatives comparable in scale to those expected from BRICS. It is important to understand that, by engaging with BRICS formats, ASEAN countries act exclusively as sovereign national actors. They do not represent a “single voice” of ASEAN nor articulate a collective position of the Association.
A challenge of a wholly different order for ASEAN’s future is the US–China confrontation. It directly affects the very logic of regional governance in Southeast Asia. Competition between the two powers undermines the fundamental principles upon which the Association’s identity and rules of the game have rested for decades—unity, consensus, and centrality within the regional architecture. As rivalry deepens, ASEAN member states increasingly gravitate towards different camps, the region’s unified political space fragments, and consensus becomes ever more complex and politically costly to achieve. As a result, the Association’s principal institutional resource—its ability to speak on behalf of the region—is gradually eroded.
Some states are consistently integrating into US-promoted formats in the spheres of security, defence, and high technology. Particularly illustrative is the policy shift of the Philippines under the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., accompanied by expanded US access to the country’s military infrastructure. Singapore and Vietnam, while maintaining cautious rhetoric, have likewise significantly deepened strategic interaction with Washington. At the same time, Cambodia and Laos remain closely embedded within China’s economic and infrastructural ecosystem, while for Malaysia and Indonesia China has long been a key trade and investment partner.
The very logic of US–China rivalry increasingly pushes ASEAN to the periphery of decision-making processes. Issues of regional security, supply chain resilience, technological development, and infrastructure are more frequently discussed in bilateral formats, where the Association functions as diplomatic décor—or finds no place at all. A striking example is the signing of asymmetrical trade agreements between the United States and individual ASEAN member states in October 2025 on the sidelines of the organisation’s summit in Malaysia.
The paradox lies in the fact that US–China confrontation simultaneously creates additional opportunities for ASEAN countries. Despite rising tensions, neither Washington nor Beijing is interested in the complete dismantling of ASEAN-centred multilateral platforms. The East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Regional Forum, and the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus continue to function precisely because they remain rare institutional spaces where political and military dialogue between the region’s key actors is possible. In this sense, ASEAN still retains significance as a neutral organisational framework that, if not reconciling opposing sides, at least enables them to sit at the negotiating table.
Equally important is that strategic rivalry among major powers stimulates the redistribution of economic and investment flows in favour of Southeast Asia. Vietnam has become one of the principal beneficiaries of the diversification of global production chains and the relocation of certain capacities from China. Malaysia has substantially strengthened its position in the global semiconductor industry, largely due to demand from companies seeking to reduce technological dependence on both China and the United States. Indonesia is leveraging external rivalry to attract investment into nickel processing and to develop a national battery and electrical engineering sector, securing more favourable localisation terms. Even in the security sphere, regional states attempt—often under compulsion—to convert external pressure into additional resources, expanding military-technical cooperation with Russia, Japan, Australia, and other significant external actors in Southeast Asia.
However, such windows of opportunity arising from heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing are predominantly national rather than collective in character. ASEAN as an organisation has not yet managed to transform external competition into a source of enhanced institutional authority, internal cohesion, or strategic autonomy. Against this backdrop, the principal risk to the Association’s future becomes increasingly evident—a risk rooted less in external pressure than in its internal condition.
The Limits of ASEAN’s Governability
Originally, ASEAN was conceived and established as a “product for internal consumption”, rather than as a project of external positioning. At various stages, member states managed—with varying degrees of success—to use the organisation as an instrument of intra-regional stabilisation and elite socialisation. Yet over the past five to seven years, ASEAN has shown diminishing capacity to adapt to its own crises and to manage its “domestic” agenda. This undermines its legitimacy and trust in it as a reliable political mechanism far more than any external challenge.
The crisis in Myanmar has become the most illustrative example of the organisation’s institutional and conceptual impasse. The “Five-Point Consensus” adopted in 2021 proved, in practice, an empty shell. The Association failed to secure either a cessation of violence, the launch of an inclusive political dialogue, or full access for its special envoy to key parties to the conflict. Moreover, there is no agreement within ASEAN itself regarding acceptable forms of pressure on Myanmar’s military leadership, effectively paralysing collective action. This case starkly demonstrated the limits of the principles of non-interference and consensus when one member becomes a source of chronic instability and humanitarian crisis for the entire region.
The protracted contradictions between Cambodia and Thailand—including border armed clashes and periodic diplomatic disputes—are no less symptomatic. Here too, ASEAN has functioned more as an observer than as an instrument of de-escalation. The Association lacks both early response procedures and effective mediation mechanisms capable of ensuring the manageability of crisis dynamics.
All this reflects a deeper problem—a deficit of strategic consensus regarding the future of the regional project itself. Member states differ in their perceptions of the role of external partners, in their assessments of the risks of involvement in great power confrontation, and in their interpretations of ASEAN’s central role. Consequently, an institutional architecture originally designed to minimise political disagreements, build trust, and safeguard national sovereignty increasingly transforms from a source of resilience into a factor of administrative inertia. The crisis in Myanmar and the tensions between Cambodia and Thailand are not “black swans”, but rather a mirror of ASEAN’s current condition.
None of this, however, suggests that the Association stands on the brink of collapse. On the contrary, it remains—and will likely continue to remain—a sought-after platform both for Southeast Asian states themselves and for external partners. Nonetheless, for many years now, a process of ASEAN’s conservation has been observable: organisational forms, diplomatic rituals, and declaratory agendas persist, while the capacity for political renewal and institutional adaptation steadily declines. The expansion of ASEAN through the inclusion of East Timor appears, from a formal institutional standpoint, to be an innovative step, yet in substantive terms it is anything but.
Such crisis situations have become so routinised that they are perceived as the norm of ASEAN’s present condition, and few—including the member states themselves—appear to expect a genuine breakthrough from the organisation, whether in partially correcting internal imbalances or in responding effectively to emerging shocks. The perfunctory statement by an official of an ASEAN member state in 2026 regarding the failure of the “Five-Point Consensus” on Myanmar merely underscores this reality.
At the same time, the idea of ASEAN centrality—once a significant political asset of the organisation—is ceasing to serve as a measure of its real influence and importance, increasingly functioning instead as a diplomatic cliché for its own members. In the future, the Association’s centrality risks definitively transforming into a symbol of a “beautiful era”—a term that will continue to resonate in ASEAN documents and joint statements with external partners, yet diverge ever further from the actual state of affairs within the Association itself.
By Regard Sur l’Afrique (Valdai Discussion Club)
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