Conclusion: ASEAN into the 1990s

Abstract

ASEAN is not the first, nor is it likely to be the last regional organisation in Southeast Asia. It has lived to see its third decade not because it has done all the things its members want, but because it has done some of them, making continued membership, with its costs and compromises, worth more to each than the alternative of non-membership. What ASEAN has done is by no means negligible: but what ASEAN has not done is also significant and, in the view of some observers, may yet undermine it.¹ The conclusion of the contributors to this book is that, although its effectiveness could be improved, ASEAN will be more needed than ever in the 1990s. To point to ASEAN’s unfinished business, to the widening disparities between its members, to their disagreements, to international pressures which bear upon them and to the internal and external problems they face, is not to suggest that these will be so great as to destroy ASEAN.