WHILE annual Asean summits come and go, some summits sometimes stand out from the rest. Much depends on the host country’s competence, integrity, and response to external circumstances.
The point for the Asean Chair as host country, then, is to ensure the summit content is cogent and impactful after taking full account of South-East Asia’s prevailing circumstances. What are the challenges and opportunities facing the region, and how should Asean respond?
No less important is the broader global situation, particularly as it impacts on South-East Asia and Asean as the region’s chief intergovernmental institution. How larger global developments affect individual Asean countries, and how differently, would require Asean to decide on its collective response.
A successful summit is distinguished by identifying common challenges confronting member states, then proposing likely shared solutions with the right balance of realism and idealism. Over time this builds into a vital resilience as a key ingredient of the “Asean way”.
Much of the rest in hosting the summits consists of administrative or housekeeping functions. These centre on providing a secure and comfortable environment amenable to fraternal discussions by Asean leaders and their counterparts from partner countries.
Malaysia has long established a sound reputation for providing such an environment to the highest international standards. Recent reports suggest that it has spared no effort in making this year’s summit exemplary.
The main part of this 46th Asean Summit (May 26-27) will witness the launch of the Kuala Lumpur Declaration 2025. This set of documents is billed as helping define Asean’s future, regional governance, and Asean’s more activist geopolitical role abroad.
Much in the content and intent of the Kuala Lumpur Declaration is not new. Sustainable development, the digital transformation and even the call for more action beyond mere rhetoric have become all too familiar.
The Asean Community Vision 2045 falls broadly into this category, with its call for a greener and better connected future. This “20-year blueprint” for enhanced political, economic and socio- cultural cooperation may see regional changes in the next two decades requiring modifications to any blueprint, so it is important to prepare for that.
Until the Asean Community as a work in progress is fully realised, statements on its “community vision” will continue to be rolled out for future years. It is obligatory to remain consistent with Asean’s goals, or at least their spirit, however much the external environment may change and change consequentially.
This week’s summit is distinguished by its broader canvassing of inputs from non-governmental stakeholders in pre-summit preparations. Asean began as an intergovernmental initiative, but it now needs to engage civil society and other groups as serious stakeholders if the Asean Community is to be achieved within a reasonable timeframe.
Asean activism for a fully fledged Asean Community is needed as much on its three pillars of the political, the economic and the sociocultural aspects as elsewhere. Malaysia’s efforts in this 46th Summit should only be a start in that direction, with subsequent Asean Chairs building on it.
The Asean Power Grid (APG) as a proposal is more than four decades old. It continues to develop as a project in scale and reach, promising to deliver a basic resource needed by all member states. On Borneo, the APG captures the essence of BIMP-EAGA (Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines-East Asean Growth Area) in sub-regional Asean member states working together as part of the larger Asean community. These are major projects that take years to organise, then to be sustained with full commitment for decades or more.
The Asean Community, and in particular its sociocultural element, requires a workable and credible regional refugee protection network. Forced migrant communities like the Rohingya are pressing for this, but it is a basic requirement of all ethical nations in the 21st century.
As Myanmar’s multiple civil wars get messier, the situation is no longer strictly internal when spillovers occur repeatedly over borders. Asean needs to find more effective ways to address the various kinds of fallout.
The First Summit of the G77 Plus China group, which Malaysia co-founded, was held in September 2023 in Havana. The following month the First Asean-GCC Summit was held with the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Riyadh.
The Asean Summit this week sees the Second Asean-GCC Summit and the First Asean-GCC-China Summit. The Global South is getting together in various ways and in different parts of the globe, since never before have its legitimate economic interests been placed in such great prospective jeopardy.
Such issues as the global trade wars and the genocide in Gaza will also be on the agenda. Addressing dire and impactful issues without evasion is another measure of a significant summit.
Bunn Nagara is director and senior fellow at the BRI Caucus for Asia-Pacific, and honorary fellow at the Perak Academy. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.
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