Chapter seven: ASEAN's adventures.

• Author: Goh, Evelyn
• Position: Great Powers in Wonderland - Critical essay

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"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" said the Queen.

THE ASSOCIATION of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is not a major power in its own right; instead, the imperative of this collection of relatively small countries is to diversify its dependencies by engaging simultaneously with a range of great powers, not to exacerbate its dependence on only one great power. In particular, ASEAN's push for greater regional integration has been justified as a way to both retain and grant regional legitimacy to U.S. strategic involvement in the region, and to engage and incorporate China as a responsible regional power. The two strands are intrinsically linked: the engagement of China is built upon the reassurance of continued U.S. strategic commitment to the region. For instance, ASEAN's increasingly enthusiastic bilateral and multilateral engagement with China is underpinned both by its members' existing relationships with the United States and their desire to use the "China card" to persuade Washington to deepen these relationships.

Despite this broad agreement, differences in strategic preferences must be expected from a grouping of ten diverse countries. ASEAN does not want to enter exclusively into a Chinese sphere of influence. At the same time, governments with significant Muslim populations, such as those in Indonesia and Malaysia, have faced domestic political pressures against identifying too closely with the U.S. "war on terror"; and most ASEAN leaders have also...