THE BURDENS OF STUDYING ASEAN

In a sense, the mere diligent registration of ASEAN-related events and schemes, not to mention academic analysis, has never been such a difficult task as it is now. By the standards of the association's recent past, the number of statements, programmes and plans generated after the outbreak of the Asian crisis is stunning. Summits deemed historical are often separated from each other by just a few months. New political, economic and cultural initiatives — some of subregional character, others of intercontinental scope — are announced while implementation of those produced and publicized before them have barely started. One way to realize the magnitude of this process is to look at the list of official ASEAN acronyms on the association's website. Consisting of fourteen pages in small font, it contains, along with catchy, comprehensible and easy-to-pronounce formulas like VAP (Vientiane Action Programme), not a few clumsy abbreviations (for instance, FOCPF standing for the Future Oriented Cooperation Projects Fund) plus such pearls of bureaucratic creativity as IDEA (The Initiative for the Development of East Asia) and ACCORD (ASEAN-China Cooperative Operations in Response to Dangerous Drugs). 1 What is this — a sign of vibrancy or a reflection of vulnerability in a quickly changing world? One unfortunate historical parallel that comes to mind is Sukarno's Guided Democracy — an era when a seemingly powerful regime was inventing acronyms by the dozen trying to dress reality up to its tastes and slipping in the meantime into a deadly crisis.

WHAT'S NEW ABOUT THE NEW SECURITY THREATS?

Be it as it may, it must be acknowledged that some issues arousing concern in the ASEAN capitals are called in the association's documents by their names. These are terrorism, sea piracy, human smuggling, drug trafficking and new diseases, known together in the official parlance as the New Security Threats. Obviously, all and each of them represent a serious problem. But are they so terribly new? For instance, is drug-trafficking so novel to Southeast Asia?