In considering the future of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the role of ASEAN in it, it would be useful to focus on five issues — participation, the subjects for discussion, the question of ASEAN leadership, the nature of confidence building, and the prospects of preventive diplomacy.

• Participation: The expansion of ARF participation, often driven by the relations of individual participants with applicant countries, could have an impact on the forum's “geographic footprint” and effectiveness.

• Agenda: It would increase the forum's effectiveness if the number of items in the agendas for the ministerial and other senior-level meetings could be reduced, so that discussions could be more thorough, deeper and more focused. The more intensive discussions, however, should not intensify mutual suspicions and animosities and exacerbate divisions. Such a balance would present a challenge to ASEAN leadership.

• ASEAN leadership: In exercising leadership of the ARF, ASEAN must go beyond preparing for meetings and managing the process, although these are important. ASEAN has to ensure both deeper and more thorough treatment of each subject and the promotion of goodwill, amity and consensus. It has to contribute more consistently to ARF ideas and initiatives. At the same time, it must ensure that greater intellectual activism does not result in the loss of its valued neutrality.

• Confidence building: An examination of the ARF's confidence-building function should yield answers to the questions of whether the forum is actually building mutual confidence between the major powers and whether confidence building can be achieved between powers whose strategic interests diverge significantly.

• Preventive diplomacy: In considering the exercise of preventive diplomacy, the ARF should determine in some measure whether that exercise should apply to conflict situations within nations and the relative degrees of attention to be given to “traditional” and “non-traditional” security threats.

As an indicator of the ARF's – and ASEAN's – efficacy as security institutions, Indonesia has not received much help in confronting the numerous threats to its security, which range from border disputes to separatism and communal conflicts to transnational challenges like terrorism, people trafficking and arms smuggling.