This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on June 10, 2024 - June 16, 2024

The Asean secretariat is in the process of preparing the post-2025 Asean Community plans. It is most transparent with workshops and consultations, including the appointment of a consultant, with respect to preparation of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) plan after 2025, which is the focus of this article. But it will be evident that the AEC post-2025 blueprint cannot be purely economic and academic without allusion to political-security and sociocultural challenges, which must be fully addressed in the other two plans.

The need for coordination for the plans among the three community pillars — economic, political-security and sociocultural — has never been greater, as the issue of security, whether state or lives/livelihoods, is going to be pre-eminent in the years ahead.

On the economy, the Asean Integration Monitoring Directorate reports that most of the 2,408 action lines under the AEC Blueprint 2015-25 have been completed, with the last 203 action lines being revved up to be completed by 2025.

The Asean economy is now US$3.8 trillion, used as a proxy of success of integration efforts, about the same size as India’s, the fifth largest in the world. This, of course, assumes Asean is one entity. Therefore, efforts at economic integration should be doubled in the next blueprint to surmount barriers hindering it, such as different regulations and standards in economic activity, which affect investment and trade flows that result in uneven benefits from innovation and technology, which cause poor overall regional response to human and health crises, as was seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, which cut deeply into lives and livelihoods — the end objective, surely, of economic growth and size.

The last point speaks to the Asean decision-making process. For the longest time, it has been observed that decisions take too long to be made, urgent issues are ducked and the tendency is to kick them to the long grass where working groups meet and meet. It has also been long noted that the secretariat is underfunded and is reluctant to take the lead on matters it can see that need decisions to be made.

However, there is little appetite for sweeping reform, either in the structure of decision-making or capacity and capability of the secretariat.

When Malaysia takes the chair in 2025, it should at least push for the establishment of an Asean High-Level Commission (AHLC), comprising the leaders’ chosen representatives, to make decisions during emergencies, a kind of exco. This was proposed by the Asean Business Advisory Council in 2020 during the Covid crisis in its report, “A Pathway Towards Reform and Hope for Asean”, when it was palpable the regional grouping was not making joint decisions as lives and livelihoods were being lost in the pandemic, which would have been better spared had there been just joint purchase of vaccines, for instance.

Indeed, Malaysia must already get the secretariat to take this on board in the post-2025 blueprint for the approval of Asean leaders.

While it is not likely that the AHLC would be acceptable in political-security issues, Malaysia should press for establishment of the AHLC to handle socioeconomic emergencies. The Asean Coordinating Council, comprising foreign ministers only, coordinates decisions already made by the leaders. The leaders would not have met when a crisis struck, and would not meet again and again as it is addressed.

So, while it is to be expected that the post-2025 blueprints, particularly economic, will get into the minutiae, action line by action line if it must (although even on this score, previous plans have not been bold enough to make big proposals on how competing Asean states can also work together, for example, in attracting foreign direct investment and promoting tourism), it must not lose sight of the forest for the trees. It must also have a big picture and make proposals by learning from the past, as from the Covid nightmare.

In respect of the big picture, the economic blueprint should double down on how to deal with an increasingly difficult external environment, even if the details have to be spelt out in the plan under the relevant pillar. It should be proposed that Asean actively takes common positions in major international forums such as the G20 (where Asean should be a member), the World Trade Organization and relevant UN bodies, as well as Asean Plus Dialogues. There must be proposals on how to give greater substance to Asean centrality, rather than just be host to and chairperson of meetings.

How can the de-dollarisation proceed? Should the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation be expanded, both in terms of membership and size of committed funds (now standing at an insufficient US$240 billion)? How might Asean try to be prepared for a Trump administration in the US, not that it should be ill-prepared with another Biden administration, in a world increasingly thrashed and deglobalised.

It should not be beyond the blueprint to identify potential economic shocks going forward. A blueprint which just runs down a list of desirable objectives without also underlining how they might be frustrated or become too costly will not be fit for purpose.

For instance, while the Asean power grid of green energy is certainly desirable, its efficacy, seabed transmission cables and cost would be exposed to potential conflict in the South China Sea, unless Asean and China were able to revive and revitalise the Declaration of Conduct signed in 2002, which commits every state to good maritime behaviour in the region, including by those who use the waterway. Keeping peace in the South China Sea is every nation’s responsibility.

The blueprint, even if economic, should direct attention to political and security issues and observe that the political-security blueprint must address issues that could undermine business sentiment and escalate project costs as well as insurance premiums.

In its own economic terms, the blueprint should project the likelihood of global bifurcation and more intense regionalisation, and suggest scenarios of their likely shape and what might have to be the Asean preparation as well as response. Technology wars and technological decoupling are impinging on what was once a globalised world. Divergent technological standards and a divided internet are real possibilities. Climate change is said to be a common challenge for mankind, yet the so-called joint effort to face it is often selfish.

Where would Asean fall in all of this? With consultants in tow, the economic blueprint particularly, should point to the challenges, risks and minefields — in whatever thought discipline.

Even if economic, it should not turn away from what might be regarded as political and security issues. We are seeing the “securitisation” of economic matters as never before. The geopolitics is weaving its way through the global economy. The geoeconomics has to be actively managed.

A report by the Asia Foundation in September 2021 rightly observed that the productive relationship between the US and China had been at the very heart of Asian order in the last 50 years. Few are prepared for the profound shift in US-China engagement. For all the Asean blueprints post-2025 to be documents that are substantial and useful, they must not be prepared in isolation. It is a well-known management fact that operating in silos results in contradictions and failures and, at best, very suboptimal outcomes.

So, the Asean post-2025 plan, including the AEC Blueprint, must be sure to cover the following matters: security, technology and climate.

No doubt, going by past record, the tendency is to dive into the minutiae, without setting the context, acknowledging the challenges and offering suggestions on how they might be overcome or contained.

Security is not just about navigating the geopolitics, although perforce that has to be done, but also about the so many facets of human security too long neglected in Asean in the unending chase for necessary economic growth. However, economic growth must not become an end in itself. It needs to be better shared in income and wealth, as well as in infrastructure and health for the people.

Technology has become the hotshot item in the world, and Asean is very much at the cutting edge of benefiting from its enabling power. Indeed, right now, investors are scouring Asean markets and companies, looking out for those most likely to attract global artificial intelligence investment.

What must not be forgotten are the displaced people with the introduction of new technologies in the workplace. They must be trained and upgraded — constantly.

Climate change, said to be an indivisible challenge, is dogged by the realpolitik of unequal indivisibility. There is asymmetry in the politics of cause and effect of climate change. There are elements of: Yes, we all suffer together, but some more than others, some sooner than us.

But Asean has no time to be angry. The threat of climate change in South and Southeast Asia is more severe than in other parts of the world, with a risk to annual gross domestic product by 2050 of US$2.8 trillion to US$4.7 trillion if no action is taken. About 80% of the population of Southeast Asia live 100km or less from coastal waters. The region’s sea level will rise by more than 68cm before the end of the 21st century.

Thus, the Asean post-2025 AEC Blueprint, particularly, should acknowledge this sombre challenge and the need for joint action. It should also inject some optimism that could be found in working together by also sharing the regional wealth of carbon dioxide removal, development of carbon markets and use of carbon credits.

In sum, all the details granted, the Asean post-2025 plan, the AEC Blueprint particularly, would be failing in the purpose of preparing the region for the future if the proposals were made as if in a vacuum, without confronting the strategic challenges buffeting the world. These have to be identified with suggestions on how to manage, if not to surmount, them.

Tan Sri Dr Munir Majid is chairman of CARI Asean Research and Advocacy

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