The latest “ASEAN Leaders’ Statement on ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific for a Future-Ready ASEAN and an ASEAN-Centric Regional Architecture” may have a long title, but its main message is clear: the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) aims to remain the leading regional organization responding to Asia’s regional challenges. Issued on October 9, 2024, during the 44th and 45th ASEAN Summits in Vientiane, the declaration highlights ASEAN’s commitment to fostering a peaceful environment amid regional and global uncertainties. In line with previous statements, he highlights ASEAN’s role in promoting inclusive cooperation, preserving peace, respecting international law and promoting regionalism and multilateralism. Crucially, the declaration reiterates ASEAN’s commitment to “ASEAN centrality”, particularly in light of geopolitical developments in the Indo-Pacific region.
This year’s declaration, which emphasizes peace and stability, stands in stark contrast to those of 2023. Among the seven declarations issued during the 43rd ASEAN Summit in 2023, the ASEAN Leaders’ Statement on ASEAN as an Epicenter of Growth presented the main message of the Leader. Although it began by recognizing the disruptive power of geostrategic changes, the declaration focused largely on resilience and growth, highlighting areas for improvement across a wide range of areas, including health, climate change, disaster preparedness, food security, energy systems, macroeconomic stability, and supply chain connectivity. He presented the drivers of growth, including global supply chains, digital transformation and efforts towards a green, blue, creative and inclusive economy. With this in mind, the 2023 Declaration positioned ASEAN as the “epicenter of growth,” prioritizing economic and socio-cultural resilience over political and security concerns. In contrast, the 2024 declaration shifts focus, elevating the political and security pillar to the forefront – a notable recalibration of ASEAN priorities in a single year.
The 2024 declaration revisits familiar ASEAN themes, now with a much greater emphasis on security. It reaffirms ASEAN’s leadership in maintaining regional stability, emphasizes ASEAN-led mechanisms, and champions regionalism as a path to peaceful resolution of disputes. The declaration highlights ASEAN’s commitment to international law, referencing key texts such as the United Nations Charter, the ASEAN Charter and the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC). It also promotes inclusive cooperation and seeks support from regional partners. However, it unambiguously asserts that the Indo-Pacific regional architecture must remain firmly centered on ASEAN, emphasizing ASEAN’s indispensable role in the region.
Why does ASEAN centrality require such strong reaffirmation? In recent years, the rise of the Indo-Pacific as a strategic framework has challenged ASEAN’s role as the leading regional organization in the Asia-Pacific. Critics question whether ASEAN’s slow decision-making process and limited enforcement powers undermine its ability to deal with the Indo-Pacific’s complex security landscape. However, these critiques, sometimes the result of comparative bias in regional studies, tend to overlook ASEAN’s distinct role as a regional actor. Unlike the European Union (EU), a supranational organization focused on deep integration, ASEAN was founded as an intergovernmental organization whose main objective is to foster peace, security and mutual respect in the region. While both organizations promote peace through economic development, ASEAN prioritizes preserving the national sovereignty of its various member states over pooling their sovereignty.
The emphasis on sovereignty creates a more complex decision-making process, which may limit ASEAN’s flexibility. Yet this very structure highlights ASEAN’s strength: its ability to build consensus and serve as a vital platform for dialogue. The ASEAN path, which prioritizes non-interference, mutual respect and consensus-building, has been instrumental in maintaining regional stability and dialogue among major powers. In the Indo-Pacific era, ASEAN’s unifying power – its ability to bring diverse actors together for dialogue and cooperation – remains its greatest asset. The unique nature of the organization’s mobilization capacity, demonstrated for example by the ASEAN Regional Forum, is essential to ASEAN’s enduring relevance in an increasingly competitive geopolitical landscape, marked in particular by tensions between the United States and China. Amid increasing polarization, the organization’s historical proximity to non-alignment also strengthens its potential to navigate the Indo-Pacific as an area of growing great power competition.
The Indo-Pacific is often touted as a transformative change in Asia’s geopolitical landscape. However, ASEAN’s engagement in the Indo-Pacific region – primarily through the ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook (AOIP) 2019 – suggests continuity rather than disruption. The decision by Southeast Asian countries to collectively define their position on the Indo-Pacific by adopting AOIP as a regional strategy, rather than pursuing individual national strategies, perfectly illustrates this continuity.
Recent debates about the future of Indonesian foreign policy echo the widespread emphasis on the newness associated with the Indo-Pacific and provide valuable insights into how ASEAN’s centrality in the Indo-Pacific Pacific is currently being discussed. As the main advocate for the adoption of the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP), Indonesia played a central role in aligning the new Indo-Pacific concept with the existing values of the ASEAN of stability, cooperation and inclusion. Some analysts, however, speculate that Indonesia could move away from the Indo-Pacific under the Prabowo administration, which came to power a month ago. This perspective reflects a disciplinary tendency to approach regional studies primarily from the perspective of great power politics. As the geographical and institutional heart of ASEAN, Indonesia cannot “walk away” from its own neighborhood, and the emergence of the Indo-Pacific will not change this. Despite the adoption of this terminology, the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific reflects Indonesia’s commitment to integrating ASEAN values into the Indo-Pacific framework, making it a strengthening of ASEAN principles rather than a paradigm shift.
Under former President Joko Widodo, the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, led by Retno Marsudi, championed the ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook (AOIP) as a key part of Indonesia’s foreign policy. This advocacy reflects Indonesia’s vision that the Indo-Pacific is a natural extension of ASEAN centrality. While each successive Indonesian administration may seek to distinguish its foreign policy with new historical concepts, the AOIP’s anchoring in ASEAN’s long-standing principle of centrality ensures its continued relevance to both Indonesia and ASEAN. From an external perspective, ASEAN’s adoption of Indo-Pacific terminology could appear to be a significant change. When in reality, for the political elites involved in the development and institutionalization of the AOIP, the Indo-Pacific concept forcefully reaffirms ASEAN’s role as a stabilizing force rather than introducing radical change . In other words, the document signals a reaffirmation of ASEAN’s – and by extension Indonesia’s – commitment to the organization’s enduring central role in addressing critical issues for South Asian countries. Southeast, whether or not one considers Southeast Asia part of the Indo-Pacific.
The above-mentioned Declaration illustrates ASEAN’s continued efforts to remain at the center of regional affairs, even in a vastly expanded Indo-Pacific region. With emphasis on centrality, stability and inclusive cooperation, the leader’s statement reiterates ASEAN’s resolve to address contemporary regional challenges and its central role in shaping the Indo-Pacific regional architecture. It also invites external partners to support the AOIP in accordance with ASEAN principles. This reaffirmation of ASEAN’s role is not a break with tradition but rather a continuation of its long-standing commitment to Asian regionalism.
ASEAN’s vision for the Indo-Pacific remains firmly anchored in its core principles of centrality, multilateralism and inclusiveness. While the idea of the Indo-Pacific has gained global popularity in thinking about contemporary Asia, ASEAN’s commitment to (regional) multilateralism ensures its relevance as a primary regional organizer. At the same time, declarations such as that of the 2024 leaders underline the organization’s commitment to peace, connectivity and cooperation, strengthening its enduring role in Asia’s regional architecture . Amid geopolitical uncertainties, ASEAN’s message of “perennial” centrality remains more vital than ever in the Indo-Pacific region.
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