Southeast Asia

• Main Author: Koga, Kei
• Other Authors: B. C. H. Fong
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2024
• Subjects: Social Sciences; Southeast Asia; ASEAN; Cold war; Post-Cold war; Regional security; Diplomacy
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/181207; https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Great-Power-Competition/Fong-JaIan/p/book/9781032367910?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAxea5BhBeEiwAh4t5KxDEynnYqkyVVr7zI-uOTvK1RA2O_KeDPZY9u8OZz2MVYEnxHI8h4xoCvDUQAvD_BwE
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This chapter explores how Southeast Asia has coped with various great power competitions since the end of World War II. Given Southeast Asia’s strategic location and the existence of natural resources, great powers (namely the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan) have been attracted to the region and played a significant role in shaping the regional strategic balance, which has created political and economic divergences within the region. However, Southeast Asian countries have also conducted skillful diplomacy to maintain regional stability and autonomy despite the strategic pressures deriving from great powers and intra-regional tensions. One of the most successful outcomes of such diplomacy is the establishment and development of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The association was instituted in 1967, not only mitigating intra-member tensions during the Cold War but also becoming the core of regional multilateralism in the Asia–Pacific following this period, thus diffusing its institutional norms, the ASEAN Way, and ASEAN Centrality, so as to navigate the behavior of great powers. However, the current US–China strategic competition, diverging perspectives among ASEAN member states, and members’ domestic instability, particularly Myanmar, pose serious challenges to the existing utility of ASEAN and its member states’ foreign policy orientation.