Time for bolder steps from ASEAN

March 4, 2019

By : Ponciano Intal Jr, ERIA

ttps://www.eastasiaforum.org.

ASEAN is now facing circumstances that are fundamentally different from anything it has dealt with before. They require a much more proactive approach on international and regional integration strategies. ASEAN is unlikely to maintain its centrality unless its leaders are prepared to take bold steps, beyond ‘business as usual’.

 

ASEAN has come a long way from its beginnings in 1967. It transformed an area of turmoil, antagonism and violence into a zone of cooperative peace and prosperity, and disparate economic backwaters into an increasingly integrated global growth powerhouse. A region that was a Cold War pawn is now central to the economic and political-security architecture of the Asia Pacific, and Southeast Asian peoples, once largely cut off from one another, are becoming a strong socio-cultural community.

A major reason for this remarkable transformation is that ASEAN leaders collectively stepped forward when faced with tremendous challenges. ASEAN crisis-points in the past are frequently forgotten when assessment is being made of its capacity to deal with new challenges. For example, leaders replaced Preferential Tariff Arrangements with the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) in 1992 when faced with potential ’fortresses’ in the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement. AFTA is still driving regional integration and the ASEAN Community, despite the 1997 financial crisis and the shift in investment flows out of ASEAN and into surging China.

But the new challenges require an even bolder response.

The realignment of great power relations in the Asia Pacific is causing great geopolitical uncertainty. The digital and fourth industrial revolution is expected to accelerate, generating significant regional unease about its impact on lower end employment. On the other hand, there is transformative potential for greater productivity in firms and industries, better growth opportunities for small and medium enterprises, and enhanced resiliency and sustainability across the ASEAN economies.

The surge in protectionism and anti-globalisation in much of the developed world underlines the priority of pursuing inclusive growth, economic openness and regional integration in ASEAN and the wider region through the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The rules-based multilateral trade regime and economic order is vital to ASEAN’s prosperity, but is under threat. The vulnerability of many ASEAN countries to climate change also demands sustainable and resilient development.

The next two decades will see history’s largest increase of middle and upper-middle classes in the India–ASEAN–China corridor, dubbed the ’golden arc of opportunity’. ASEAN needs to be well positioned to take advantage of this opportunity. With far less technological capability and skilled manpower than China or India, ASEAN has to improve markedly its technological prowess, human capital, institutions and infrastructure.

So what can ASEAN leaders do to overcome the immense challenges the region faces?

Nimble and proactive diplomacy that asserts ASEAN centrality and harnesses the collective leadership of middle powers can do much for peace, security and prosperity in the wider region. Bringing together middle powers to raise their concerns will help constrain China–US competition and confrontation. ASEAN can also provide a strong and unified voice to ensure an inclusive regional architecture emerges.

Asian collective leadership is now essential to maintaining and strengthening multilateral rules and trading systems that ASEAN and the wider region rely on for economic prosperity and political security. Successfully concluding RCEP is just the start. But it will be important to ASEAN’s global credibility and voice in brokering a way forward with reform of the multilateral trade regime.

The biggest threat to ASEAN’s open and inclusive development is that to the rules-based multilateral trading system and international economic order. This system is a core interest of ASEAN and other countries in this region. The trade war has highlighted deficiencies in the World Trade Organization and international trading system that need to be addressed. ASEAN and Indonesia through their prominent participation in the G20 process have a common and urgent interest with like-minded partners in framing Asia’s proactive response to this challenge.

A more vigorous and active regional and international diplomacy will only be successfully built on stronger ASEAN foundations. Leaders will need to implement the ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint and other measures that realise an integrated, connected and seamless ASEAN single market and production base. This would help ASEAN compete with China and India’s more liberal trade and investment environments and allow deeper integration across the region.It will also help ASEAN stand firm in its international diplomacy.

Deeper ASEAN integration means making fully operational national single windows, the ASEAN Single Window, national trade repositories, the ASEAN Trade Repository, the ASEAN Customs Transit System, and ASEAN self-certification schemes.

It also means ensuring transparent and streamlined non-tariff measures and a more concerted effort to strengthen regional and national standards and conformance quality infrastructure and systems. Leaders should also develop a strong and liberalised services sector and an open investment regime with freer flow of data and payments, institutionalise ASEAN’s Good Regulatory Practice, and implement a quality Regulatory Management System in each ASEAN country. There also needs to be greater commitment to skills mobility and development within the region, including greater focus on lifelong learning and skills training.

It is also essential to prepare for, adapt to and harness the digital and fourth industrial revolution. This requires creating stronger institutions and policies, with many already embedded in the ASEAN Community Blueprint. Embracing the digital revolution and adapting to new technologies under Industry 4.0 would drive ASEAN forward in upgrading its economies, enhance resilience and sustainability, empower its people, strengthen people engagement and connectivity, improving governance, and strengthen ASEAN’s innovation ecosystem.

Put together, these measures will revitalise ASEAN into a vibrant and influential grouping that is set for success in the decades to come.

Ponciano Intal Jr is a Senior Economist at the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia.

 

 

 

 

The emergence of Suukyinomics

March 3, 2019

 

1 March 2019

Author: by Naing Ko Ko, ANU

http://www.eastasiaforum.org

State Counsellor Aung San Sun Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) administration in Myanmar has been heavily condemned by international policy analysts for its absent economic vision and lack of a tangible policy on minority management. But it seems now there is a plan: Suukyinomics, a brand that began with the announcement on 28–29 January 2019 to amend the 2008 military-backed constitution.

 

Suukyinomics is built on the rule of law and institutional economics. It consists of two broad plans. The Myanmar Sustainable Development Plan (MSDP) aims to achieve a peaceful, prosperous and democratic country. The Myanmar Investment Promotion Plan (MIPP) aims to transition Myanmar to a middle-income economy and persuade foreign investors to part ways with US$200 billion over the next two decades.

The MSDP is structured around three pillars, five goals, 28 strategies and 251 action plans. All are firmly aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and the 12 Point Economic Policy of the NLD government. The MSDP aims to institute strong macroeconomic management and good governance, prudent fiscal discipline and the maintenance of a fiscal deficit no more than 5 per cent of GDP.

The MIPP aims to integrate domestic and foreign investment promotion in line with the directions of the National Comprehensive Development Plan (NCDP) and the Investment Policy of 2016. The MIPP also aims to improve the business environment — by 2020, Myanmar’s rank in the World Bank’s ease of doing business index should drop to below 100.

The Investment Promotion Committee (IPC) will be established to facilitate implementation of the MIPP and is chaired by U Soe Win, the Union Minister of Planning and Finance. Whether it will be a success depends on the effectiveness of Myanmar’s 1.8 million bureaucrats who continue to be criticised for the quality of service delivery. The government of Myanmar is the largest employer in Southeast Asia and its union civil servant board (UCSB) is unnecessary — it is militant and has inflexible business practices.

There are three shining spots to be found in the NLD’s economic reform during the period 2016–19. The first is related to the rule of law. Anti-corruption efforts have been particularly successful. President U Win Myint’s recent dismissal of ex-advocate general of Yangon Han Htoo and ex-lieutenant colonel Yan Naing Tun represent a milestone in the recent five-decade history of judicial practice and public administration. U Win Myint and the NLD’s senior leadership have done well to clean up tainted politicians even within their own party, expelling elected members accused of misuse of entrusted power for private gain.

The NLD has also made successful gains in modernising the Central Bank of Myanmar (CBM). After being heavily criticised by local banks and the private sector for unseating the governor of the CBM U Kyaw Kyaw Maung, reformers U Soe Thein and U Bo Bo Nge were appointed as deputy-governors of the CBM with the remit of correcting institutional difficulties. The CBM is vigorously stabilising the economy by controlling inflation, reducing the money supply and regulating its money and financial markets after issuing the Burmese Way to Basel Regulation in July 2017.

The CBM-floated foreign exchange rate now permits 13 foreign banks to loan project financing and trade financing. Recently, the CBM allowed for the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan to be used as convertible currencies to tackle the dollarisation of trade at Myanmar’s borders. In contrast to previous administrations, the reference exchange rate of the kyat for account transactions against the US dollar and other currencies is released daily on the CBM website. A financial stability report and Myanmar’s monetary report are released periodically.

The third shining spot is infrastructure. Roads are being built and rail tracks upgraded nationwide. Some of Myanmar’s coastal areas and border trade routes are also undergoing development thanks to Chinese investment.

According to Aung San Suu Kyi, it is the right time to invest in Myanmar. Still, provision of meaningful assistance for the stateless people of Arakan, Kachin and other minority groups in Myanmar’s border regions remains unaddressed.

Suukyinomics itself is ambitious and its outcomes will be tested in coming years as the NLD attempts to amend the militarised 2008 constitution. Whether the NLD remains in power come 2020 will partly depend on Aung San Suu Kyi’s tactical skill, strategic manoeuvring and the success or otherwise of this new economic plan.

Naing Ko Ko is a PhD Candidate at the Regulatory Institutions Network, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.

 

EU and ASEAN: Advancing partnership for sustainability

February 16, 2016

By Francisco Fontan

https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50578204/eu-and-asean-advancing-partnership-for-sustainability/

 

The EU–ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting in Brussels on 21 January. Cooperation, solidarity and prosperity have long been the hallmark of the EU–ASEAN relationship.

As global stakeholders, the EU and ASEAN have the responsibility to advance the international rules-based order and preserve their ‘global commons’, writes Francisco Fontan.

In January I joined Federica Mogherini ( pic above), the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, in Brussels as she co-chaired the 22nd EU-ASEAN Ministerial Meeting. It was an impressive occasion, and the best attended such gathering anyone could remember, with almost all the ten ASEANan and twenty-eight EU member states represented by their Foreign Ministers. Brussels was preparing for its first big snowfall of the winter, but the reception we gave our ASEAN partners was a truly warm one.

The debate inside the room reflected the depth and breadth of our relations, from conflict in the Middle East, to the importance of the South China Sea and the Rohingya crisis, to promoting trade, investment, or higher education. Much was said but there was also a unity of purpose – a common desire to strengthen EU–ASEAN cooperation including in new areas such as combating unregulated fishing, or launching a new high level dialogue on environment and climate change, and an agreement in principle to upgrade our relations to a strategic partnership.

..

As Ms Mogherini said after the meeting, this was “a recognition of the strategic nature of the partnership we already have in many fields. It was an important signal showing that the two most advanced and most successful integration processes in the world stand firmly behind multilateralism and a rules-based global order.”

Or as her fellow co-chair Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Singapore and ASEAN coordinator for EU relations put it “we take our partnership to a greater height, we will continue to explore new areas in which we can cooperate and learn from each other, such as cybersecurity, maritime security, connectivity and climate change.” A close and deep partnership between the EU and ASEAN is thus of strategic importance for both regional blocs.

We are certainly pivotal economic partners already. Our private sector is, by far, the first investor in ASEAN, holding a quarter of total stock in the region, and we are ASEAN’s second largest trading partner. The EU has concluded or is negotiating free trade and investment agreements with a number of Asean members, building blocks for an ambitious region-to-region trade and investment framework.

We are working hard to increase transport links and our overall connectivity. If – as I hope – we soon agree the first ever region-to-region Comprehensive Air Transport Agreement, millions of our citizens will benefit and the travel and tourism industry in particular stands to make great gains. We can build on this and establish a comprehensive EU–Asean Connectivity Partnership. While some question globalisation and are retreating into economic nationalism, it is important that ASEAN and the EU together seek to bolster global links, make them work for all and show their true value to our shared prosperity.

And as ASEAN says, we can leave no one behind.

..

The EU remains the largest donor to ASEAN, helping the organisation and your governments to reduce poverty and spread opportunity, with over 200 million euros ($225 million) in support of ASEAN regional integration and connectivity, on top of over 2 billion euros of bilateral assistance to ASEAN member states, and the direct efforts of our 28 EU member states. We will also continue to stand by you after each major natural disaster, from tsunamis to cyclones, putting victims’ needs above any other consideration.

Cooperation, solidarity and prosperity have long been the hallmarks of our relations. And while they remain so, the rapidly evolving international scene is leading us to focus more on key strategic issues. Our shared ambitions can only realise their full potential in a rules-based, peaceful and stable environment. This is what makes ASEAN so important for the EU in Asia – not just as a community of ten, but being also the core of the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Regional Forum, or the ADMM+ process. And this is where ASEAN and the EU are already rightly expanding their security cooperation – from trafficking in persons to cyber-crime, from maritime security to transnational crime and counter-terrorism.

No one can achieve these goals alone. And thankfully that is something else we agree on – the Foreign Ministers spent more time talking about the environment, climate change and sustainable development than anything else. We agreed to deliver together on our United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including on the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

As global stakeholders, the EU and ASEAN have the responsibility to advance the international rules-based order and preserve our “global commons.” I have been immensely privileged, as the EU’s First Ambassador to ASEAN, to have seen our strategic relationship go from strength to strength. I am confident that it has even further to run and that, together, we will play a leading role in developing the global responses needed for the challenges of tomorrow.

Francisco Fontan is European Union Ambassador to ASEAN.

Navigating ASEAN’s economic priorities

February 14, 2019

11 February 2019

By  Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit, RSIS

Southeast Asian economies may face major economic headwinds this year amid US–China trade tensions and US Federal Reserve interest rate increases. To help weather the impact, ASEAN member states should prioritise progress on regional economic initiatives.

 

Some observers think that the 90-day truce between Washington and Beijing could beget better relations between the two powers. But they may be overestimating China’s ability to make concessions that fulfil what the Trump administration wants. Buying more American products is easy, but implementing measures to address ‘unfair’ trade practices to a degree that satisfies the United States is more difficult to achieve within 90 days. More rounds of tariff escalations or other trade-restricting measures could be in the offing.

On the financial front, in December 2018 the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates from 2.25 to 2.50 per cent and forecast the possibility of further increases in 2019. The Fed did so to ensure there will be room for it to use monetary policy and decrease interest rates to fight the next US recession.

Additional hikes could trigger capital pull-outs from Southeast Asian countries as investors move funds to seek higher yields in the United States. If not well-managed, such capital outflows may instigate financial instability in the ASEAN region.

Regional economies must brace themselves for future economic and financial turbulence. While they are unlikely to be able to avoid such headwinds, ASEAN member states can nevertheless cushion the impact through regional initiatives: the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) 2025, ASEAN–Hong Kong Free Trade and Investment Agreements (AHKFTA and AHKIA), Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM).

Policymakers should prioritise the complete implementation of the AEC 2025. This is a regional economic integration project by the 10 ASEAN member states designed to achieve five objectives: a highly integrated and cohesive economy; a competitive, innovative and dynamic ASEAN; enhanced connectivity and sectoral cooperation; a resilient, inclusive, people-oriented and people-centred ASEAN; and a global ASEAN.

Advancing the AEC 2025 will enable businesses to better tap into the integrated market of over 600 million people, rendering regional economies more resilient to the incoming headwinds.

Southeast Asian governments should also ratify the AHKFTA and AHKIA signed in November 2017 so that these treaties can enter into force in early 2019 as expected. The agreements will enhance cross-border flows of goods, services and investment between ASEAN and Hong Kong.

The agreements will not only allow firms to enjoy greater access to goods and services markets and better investment protection, but also enable ASEAN nations to further tighten trade and investment ties with China. The latter will help Southeast Asian economies to recuperate from any damage that future Washington–Beijing trade spats may inflict on them.

ASEAN authorities should also concentrate on wrapping up RCEP talks. If concluded, this 16-economy free trade bloc will encompass a market of 3.6 billion people that contributes to a third of global GDP. It will cover 29 per cent of global trade and 26 per cent of the world’s foreign direct investment flows.

Concluding the negotiation will create more opportunities for businesses to deepen their supply chains, and provide RCEP economies with another means to diversify their economic relations and cushion against the negative effects of future US–China trade war spats.

Finally, ASEAN nations together with China, Japan and South Korea (ASEAN+3) should advance the CMIM, a regional financial safety net under the ASEAN+3 framework. Launched in 2010, the scheme provides financial support through a network of currency swaps to help ASEAN+3 nations weather their balance-of-payments difficulties.

Because future Fed rate hikes could trigger investor panic leading to financial instability and capital flights in certain regional economies, the CMIM can provide financial assistance to alleviate such problems.

Admittedly, the above initiatives face their own challenges. A major hurdle for implementing the AEC 2025 is a lack of coordination among domestic ministries and agencies. Individual ASEAN countries must sort out how to improve coordination among the involved authorities. Certain domestic hurdles must also be cleared for a successful ratification of the ASEAN–Hong Kong treaties.

Planned elections in Australia, India, Indonesia and Thailand in 2019 may delay the conclusion of RCEP negotiations in the first half of 2019. Politicians in these nations will likely prioritise their electioneering over international matters. And if the momentum of RCEP talks picks up in the second-half of the year, the parties’ different positions and preferences will still need to be reconciled to seal the deal.

Regarding the CMIM, while a laudable agreement was signed in December 2018 to create more favourable conditions that will enable the regional financial safety net to better assist in a crisis, efforts to advance other aspects of the CMIM have been lacklustre in recent years.

For one, its size has remained the same at US$240 billion since 2012. With this amount, the scheme can at best provide simultaneous lending support to a few small- and medium-sized economies should they come under a crisis. The participants must push for an expansion of the CMIM’s size.

US–China trade tensions and Fed rate hikes will likely generate undesired effects for Southeast Asian economies this year. Despite the challenges of the above initiatives, ASEAN countries must collectively pursue them to navigate through the coming economic headwinds. Time is running out and policymakers must act fast.

Navigating ASEAN’s economic priorities

Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit is Deputy Head and Assistant Professor at the Centre for Multilateralism Studies, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

 

Harapan entering a grey area, a year before 2020

December 26, 2018

Opinion  |  by Phar Kim Beng

https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/457606

 

 

Opinion  |  by Phar Kim Beng

COMMENT | As I write this, Malaysia, as governed by Pakatan Harapan, is entering both a festive occasion – marked by Christmas and the New Year – and a festering one too. There are five telltale signs of the latter:

• The tragic death of firefighter Muhammad Adib Mohd Kassim in the Seafield temple riots.
• The 55,000 who gathered in Kuala Lumpur for the rally against the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Icerd).
• Authorities seemingly forgetting about M Indira Gandhi’s missing daughter, and about Teoh Beng Hock’s death nearly ten years ago.
• Close to 15 percent of Malaysia’ population will be above 60 years of age by 2023.
• About 38,000 Felda settlers getting cost of living aid  and deposits for replanting.

In any one of the above, Harapan has at best either been silent, or belatedly proactive. Meanwhile, the world continues to change in five ways:

• US President Donald Trump deciding on two simultaneous withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, signalling the end of American presence in two of the most conflict-prone regions in the world.
• Russia staying quiet on the pullout of American troops, although this strategic withdrawal is akin to the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
• Islamic State and the Taliban also staying quiet, suggesting a deeper motivation to push deeper into the Western world, or perhaps Asia, to wreak more havoc;
• China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, which appeared to be all but irreversible, has been challenged by the Quad (United States, Japan, Australia and India).
• Japan, one of the key powers in the Indo-Pacific region, continuing to shrink in terms of population, thus further heightening its insecurity.

These are dangerous times. There are some quaint parallels: the elan of the Vietnam War, when Communist forces pushed forward from the north to south in 1975; the fall of Kabul in 1989; the Russian incursion in Georgia in 2008; and the slow but organic militarisation of South China Sea from 2011 onwards when China, for the first time, referred to the area as its “core interest,” a term previously only reserved for Taiwan and Tibet.

But there is no telling if Harapan is aware of the whiplash effects of these world events. Political scientist Arthur Stein once warned of the importance of “relative gains” in international relations, wherein all great powers see gains and losses in zero-sum terms.

Granted, Malaysia has a foreign and defence policy that seems to be geared towards the centrality of ASEAN. But there is no telling if it wants to adjust to a post-US-Japanese world and the emerging Sino-Russian world order.

East Asia is entering this post-US-Japanese world. The US had always made it a point to keep Tokyo informed of any dramatic moves.

But now, at the speed of a tweet, Trump proceeded to announce the withdrawal of the US from the theater of the Middle East and South Asia, without notifying its staunchest East Asian allies Japan and South Korea.

Japan got its first taste of the ‘Nixon shock’ when the then-US president announced his plan to visit China in 1971, before Nixon announced his New Economic Programme, which included abandoning the gold standard.

The country would be shocked again when it received no thanks from Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah of Kuwait for its financial contribution to Operation Desert Storm led by then-president George Bush.

What Trump did in recent weeks must constitute a third shock for Japan – a major ally pulling out of two regions at the same time, even with the opposition of outgoing Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

By pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan, Japan must be reeling from the fear that its security relationship with Washington can be subject to the same forces that catapulted Trump to power – populism and the American far right.

China and Russia must also be smiling in glee, with the American admission of the impossibility of conducting simultaneous conflicts in two regions.

Malaysia is entering a world of uncertain geopolitical realities and flux.

What adds to the instability is the fact that it is ruled by a new coalition of four parties now beset by infighting – and one still due for a possibly messy transition at the top.

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad still looks set to hands over the reins to Anwar Ibrahim, although there are signs that things are less than rosy behind the scenes – such as when the daughter of the latter quit her posts in government.

The new year seems likely to put Malaysia in a pinch as it looks ahead to 2020.

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PHAR KIM BENG is a multiple award-winning head teaching fellow on China and the Cultural Revolution at Harvard University.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

 

 

Singapore’s uphill battle to maintain ASEAN unity

December 3, 2018

by Joel Ng, RSIS

Singapore’s uphill battle to maintain ASEAN unity

As year as the ASEAN chair was marked by several milestones in the deepening of regional peace and security. Ahead of the 33rd ASEAN summit from 11–15 November 2018 that finished with Singapore’s official handing over of the chairmanship to Thailand, Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan stated that ASEAN ‘actually achieved far more than I dared to anticipate’.

 

As a small nation, Singapore cannot impose its own ideas in regional or global settings. Instead it has the much trickier challenge of convincing other players, each with their own contexts and agendas, that strengthening the multilateral framework is in their best interests.

Tensions in the South China Sea, North Korea’s long-range missile tests and threats of a US–China trade war clouded the end of 2017 and presented a considerable challenge to ASEAN’s ongoing efforts to enhance regional cooperation. Despite the uphill battle, ASEAN and Singapore have played an integral part in ameliorating tensions on all three fronts.

Most recently, the 33rd ASEAN summit made an important contribution to the easing of regional tensions, with China agreeing to participate in talks on the long-proposed South China Sea Code of Conduct (COC). China offered a timeframe of three years for COC negotiations to be completed, which Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong declared as good progress.

The COC is perhaps the most important document related to the South China Sea disputes. With competing states attempting to apply different rules to claim legitimate sovereignty over the waters, fears have arisen that conflict could break out over misunderstandings or maritime encounters going wrong. The COC has been in gestation since the 2002 Declaration on Conduct in the South China Sea, but has barely progressed in the intervening years.

Claimants agreed upon a draft negotiating text for the COC earlier this year, ahead of the ASEAN–China Post Ministerial Meeting in August 2018, and now China has committed to signing the COC within three years. While this may sound like piecemeal progress, it is important to remember the headwinds facing the discussion: as a much larger power, there is little incentive for China to sign anything at all.

Keeping all parties on board while pushing consensus and norms forward — at a pace that divergent parties can accept — is something ASEAN does well. With Singapore at the helm, ASEAN has helped to keep the COC moving forward without alienating any of the negotiating parties. The significant difference in 2018 has been China’s explicit commitment to a rules-based order, a position it believes distinguishes itself from the United States.

Perhaps the most surprising event of 2018 was the US–North Korea peace talks in Singapore. As recently as 2017, both sides had issued threats against the other. North Korea continued to conduct missile tests, and the murder of Kim Jong-nam had soured its previously cordial relations with Malaysia. Singapore was one of the only plausible choices as a venue because of its high security, positive relations with both sides and an avowed impartiality.

While talks were initially cancelled just weeks before they were to be held, Singapore remained alert and ready for their resumption. The country’s experience in hosting summits put it in good stead for facilitating the dialogue, regardless of uncertainties on either side. The eventually successful engagement demonstrated the importance of Singapore as an open, inclusive and highly efficient state ready to contribute to international security.

ASEAN has paddled against global currents in 2018 to offer hope that multilateral initiatives will continue to bring states closer together on common objectives. But trade tensions between ASEAN’s two largest partners — the United States and China — continue to concern the region. Progress on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) remains a priority for ASEAN to offset this concern, though negotiations will continue into 2019 after RCEP partners failed to meet the November 2018 deadline.

The initial impetus for Southeast Asia to unite as a region was to buffer individual countries against the pull of larger powers, whose efforts to draw smaller states exclusively towards them are often driven by whimsical domestic agendas. As Prime Minister Lee noted during the opening ceremony of November’s ASEAN summit, ASEAN has raised its standing in the world and made itself greater than the sum of its parts by maintaining a collective voice on global issues.

Singapore’s chairmanship offered a strong restatement of ASEAN’s aims and bolstered the frameworks that were devised to address the myriad concerns of its members. Maintaining unity in the face of these external pressures is probably the best way for ASEAN states to maintain a strong position and secure the best outcomes for their continued growth.

Joel Ng is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Multilateralism Studies at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.

A version of this article originally appeared here on RSIS.