Getting ASEAN Right in US Indo-Pacific Strategy

As part of the intensifying great power competition between the United States and China, a set of new Indo-Pacific frameworks primarily led by Washington—namely the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), the AUKUS, and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF)— has emerged. These US-centric minilateral and multilateral frameworks essentially aim to build a coalition with politically and strategically “like-minded” states to maintain and enhance the existing rules-based international order largely constructed by the West since the end of the Cold War. For the United States, the core institution in East Asian regional architecture, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), remains a “second order” priority. As the United States has extensive bilateral alliance networks in the region, ASEAN has never played a central role in its foreign policy in East Asia or the Indo-Pacific region. Of course, the United States and its allies continuously emphasize the importance of ASEAN as well as “ASEAN unity and centrality” and praise ASEAN’s effort to pursue its own Indo-Pacific vision, the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP). However, the United States has neither explained the strategic role ASEAN is expected to play in the Indo-Pacific region nor defined “ASEAN unity and centrality” in its strategic thinking.