Регионы в современном мире: глобализация и Азия. Зарубежное регионоведение - стр. 38
No less significant ASEAN’s asset is its political-security brainchild with positive economic aftereffects. Having developed the cooperative security system in the Asia-Pacific region – exemplified by the ASEAN Regional Forum, the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus Eight and the East Asia Summit, – the Association has strengthened its credentials as a respectful Asia-Pacific actor. This allows the association to maintain a relatively peaceful international milieu in Southeast Asia contributing to its economic and investment competitiveness.
Lastly but perhaps most importantly, the history of ASEAN amply demonstrates how an international actor can benefit from the virtues of the evolutionary regional order by fostering international cooperation premised upon inclusivity and neutrality. The most important competitive advantage of ASEAN is its ability to bring to the Asia-Pacific region the inclusive and neutral mode of cooperation. The latter is an important strategic asset that is behind the present relative insulation of the Asia-Pacific region from the unfolding “global entropy”, which to a considerable extent has been made possible by the ASEAN-led institutions.
While the afore-discussed ASEAN’s advantages are indisputable, its points of its vulnerability are no less serious.
Arguably, the most potentially dangerous threat is ASEAN’s inability to create safety mechanisms against the negative aftereffects of globalization. The flows of capital are hampered by international sanctions, the free movement of people is accompanied by illegal migration, the information flows go hand-in-hand with the spread of fake news. In its turn, ASEAN lacks both institutional mechanisms for collective action and the capacities of its member states to manage these challenges.
With ASEAN’s pronounced intention to strengthen its influence on the global development, the global processes demonstrate the same characteristics the association has been trying to eliminate in the Asia-Pacific region since the ASEAN-led cooperative security system was established. In the global realm, long-term and mutually beneficial projects are regularly sacrificed for the sake of short-term minor political profit – suffice it to mention implications of the anti-Russian sanctions for Russia’s partners. From the ASEAN perspective, examples of the damage the anti-Russian sanctions inflict on the states of Southeast Asia are numerous40. On the whole, the ASEAN leaders disapprove of the present sanction-countersanction vicious circle exemplified mostly by China-US trade contradictions