My Take | Asean must seize the moment for regional security and prosperity

After the Cold War, US intellectuals waxed lyrical about “the end of history”. And across the Atlantic, the continent was celebrating the “postmodern state”, as in the European Union that had supposedly put an end to centuries of enmity, war and genocide by achieving collective security, power-sharing and decision-making.

Meanwhile, the economies of the nation states in the Asia-Pacific had taken off, but they were perceived to be ideologically or philosophically backward, as they were only catching up to the modernity being left behind by the West.

Now we know who jumped the gun too early. After 9/11, history has returned with a vengeance for the US. And the global financial crisis, Brexit and now the war in Ukraine have exposed inherent weaknesses and cracks in the EU.

It may be left to the realist and pragmatic world view of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), and its success so far in navigating the Chinese-American rivalry, to show the way forward not only for the region, but across the Global South.

In an important essay published in Foreign Affairs, Kishore Mahbubani, arguably Singapore’s most prominent public intellectual, sets out to explain why Asean has built “a culture of pragmatism and accommodation for its member states”, he wrote, and “has bridged deep political divides in the region and kept most Southeast Asian countries focused on economic growth and development”.

While Western critics like to belittle the Asian grouping as no more than a talking shop, its “greatest strength,” wrote Mahbubani, “paradoxically is its relative weakness and heterogeneity [which] ensures that no power sees it as threatening”.