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Enduring Mistrust and Conflict Management in Southeast Asia: An Assessment of ASEAN as a Security Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2016

Ralf Emmers
Ralf Emmers*
Affiliation:
Ralf Emmers, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU); ISREmmers@ntu.edu.sg
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Abstract

The paper explores whether the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has matured from a weak cooperative arrangement in its early days into a functioning security community by 2016. It first introduces a Deutschian and a constructivist understanding of security communities before examining ASEAN's involvement in the security realm since 1967. The paper claims that the regional body is not yet a security community, partly due to residual mistrust among its members, which undermines ASEAN's ability to address a series of ongoing inter-state disputes in Southeast Asia. While it has contributed to conflict avoidance, the Association has so far failed to conduct conflict resolution in spite of the ASEAN Political and Security Community initiative. The paper concludes that the failure to directly address and ultimately resolve sources of conflict in Southeast Asia has undermined the establishment of a security community in the region.

Keywords

Security communitiesASEANSoutheast Asiamistrustconflict managementconflict avoidance and resolution
Type
Articles
Information
TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia , Volume 5 , Special Issue 1: ASEAN communities , January 2017 , pp. 75 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University 2016 

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