Showing 1 - 10 of 49
Real integration action in mainland SE Asia
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 15/05/2015
» Those caught up in the hype over the Asean Community (AC) and its three pillars of political-security (APSC), economic (AEC) and socio-cultural (ASCC) by end 2015 are fixated on the wrong places. Integration from connectivity, where borders are proving increasingly irrelevant, is happening less on paper and more on the ground in mainland of Southeast Asia. Beyond the agreements and scorecards of the AC, mainland Southeast Asia is where real integration will take place.
Speaking peace to Asean
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 01/02/2013
» Never before in its 45 years of existence has the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) received so much public attention in Thailand.
Thailand amid Asean economic integration
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 11/08/2017
» The first year and a half of the Asean Community has transpired not with a bang but a whimper. Thailand's role in it has been correspondingly uneventful. The first 18 months of the Asean Economic Community (AEC), one of three pillars together with the Asean Political-Security Community and Asean Socio-Cultural Community, witnessed no fundamental or qualitative differences from trade and investment patterns prior to its introduction. If the AEC is to work out as intended, it has to be reshaped and reoriented from traditional lenses to new realities based on intra-regional investments in tandem with global value chains.
Domestic politics puts checks on Asean
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 13/06/2014
» As it approaches its 47th birthday, heading into the final stretch of its highly touted integrated community, Asean appears increasingly challenged both within the 10-member organisation and the region.
Dire airport, culture hub belie 'Thailand 4.0'
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 17/02/2017
» Thailand is prone to policy faddism. Several years ago, the AEC (Asean Economic Community) was all the rage until it officially came into being with a whimper at the end of 2015. Back then, hardly a day went by without some kind of a workshop or conference in Thailand about the AEC. But it all did not add up to much, as Asean today is hardly more economically integrated than it was more than a decade ago when the AEC was conceived. In fact, Asean is more internally divided and beset with more geopolitical tensions and troubles than we have seen in many years. Yet Thailand went head over heels for it until a new fad arrived.
Asean's 'centrality' faces growing threat
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 17/06/2016
» The debacle earlier this week when Asean foreign ministers opted for a watered-down joint statement after issuing a firmer version following their meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is yet another testament to the challenges facing the 10-member group's "centrality" in building Asia's regional order. That China has been calling in its chips with smaller pliant Asean states and effectively driving a wedge through the organisation over the South China Sea will exacerbate regional tensions and lead to security dilemmas and a dangerous tit-for-tat guessing game in this neighbourhood. To avoid future conflict, a rules-based region under mutual accommodation is the only way forward.
China, US widen Asean rifts
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 27/07/2012
» The post-mortems of the failure by Asean to agree on a hitherto routine joint statement after their 45th Ministerial Meeting are coming in thick and heavy. Recriminations and acrimony are crisscrossing the region, the shockwaves being felt and analysed across the Pacific and to the Atlantic.
Mekong mainland coalesces after Asean rift
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 29/07/2016
» Although it was established 49 years ago, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) as we know it has been around only since 1999 when Cambodia joined Southeast Asia's premier regional organisation as its 10th member state after Laos and Myanmar had entered two years earlier. Asean was originally set up on different rationales and for different purposes than what it has become today as a loosely structured grouping of a diplomatic community with ambitious regionalisation plans that require a central strategic role in Asia.
Asean's Myanmar crisis out of control
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 26/03/2021
» Myanmar's spiralling post-coup violence and bloodshed has become Asean's existential crisis. It is customary to pin hopes on an Asean way of fudging and nudging the main protagonists into some workable, face-saving compromise to save the day but this time the situation is dire and dark. Unless the 10-member regional organisation can make a difference in halting Myanmar's descent into uncontrollable violence and potential civil war, Asean is at risk of undermining and perhaps ending its success story.
How not to organise our education timetable
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 12/06/2015
» A new discussion by the Council of University Presidents of Thailand to revert academic schedules back to the old system is instructive on three levels that expose the fundamental weaknesses of Thai education, the sobering reality of the Asean Economic Community, and the top-down, patronising attitude of government over the governed.