Podcast: ASEAN Centrality, US-China Competition and Minilateralism

Future scenarios on Indo-Pacific and ASEAN geopolitics and geoeconomics, minilateralism, U.S.-China competition and much, much more.

Dear Readers – today ASEAN Wonk is pleased to launch our latest product called “The ASEAN Wonk Podcast” (AWP) which offers in-depth video and audio conversations with diverse expert voices across industries on policy developments in Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific. We’re proud to be rolling this out after growing demand from our subscriber base, and thank you for your feedback! Our aim with AWP is to provide quantitative, actionable insights with depth and granularity, even if — not unlike our other products — AWP might sound to some a little “wonky” relative to traditional podcasts.

Our inaugural episode below looks at ASEAN centrality under challenge amid proliferating minilaterals, intensifying major power competition and flashpoint management stress across issues including the South China Sea disputes and the Myanmar crisis. The subject has come under scrutiny once again following the recent ASEAN meetings convened by Laos in July. For this inaugural episode, we were pleased to be joined by Professor Amitav Acharya, a distinguished professor and UNESCO chair at American University which houses the ASEAN Studies Initiative. We’re also pleased to be able to release this when ASEAN Day hits Southeast Asia — a day that commemorates the founding of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations after which this site is named, which occurred on August 8, 1967 in Bangkok, Thailand.

For this and future episodes, full video and audio podcasts, along with edited and sectioned transcripts as well as block quotes, will be a premium product for our paying subscribers, but we will include a short free transcript preview and a clip for all readers to maintain accessibility. Paying subscribers can find the rest of the full transcript and the full video podcast right below the paywall. If you have not already, do consider subscribing below by inserting your email and then selecting a monthly or annual option. And if you have already done so, do consider forwarding this to others who may be interested. Thank you for your support as always!

Podcast: ASEAN Centrality, US-China Competition, Minilateralism & More

Note: The transcript that follows the above free clip preview has been lightly edited for clarity and organized into sections for ease of quick browsing.

INTRODUCTION

ASEAN Wonk: Welcome to the ASEAN Wonk podcast, where we will be bringing you expert insights and regional perspectives on Southeast Asia and Indo-Pacific geopolitics and geoeconomics. I'm your host, Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran, founder of ASEAN Wonk. And if you haven't already, do subscribe to the ASEAN Wonk platform at www.aseanwonk.com so you don't miss our posts and episodes.

For our guest today on our inaugural podcast episode, we're very pleased to have Professor Amitav Acharya, who is a distinguished professor and UNESCO chair at American University which houses the ASEAN Studies Initiative. In addition to his extensive academic work, he has also had several practitioner-based roles as well, including advising ASEAN officials and leaders who have sought his insights, including the past ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan. He has written books on topics as we've discussed extensively on ASEAN Wonk, including Indonesia's role in Southeast Asia, ASEAN, Southeast Asia, a multiplex world order, and Myanmar, which is one of the flashpoints that we talk about in Southeast Asia frequently today.

We begin our discussion with key geopolitical and geoeconomic questions, including on major power competition and minilateralism. Make sure you listen to the full episode to hear more about specific and future-looking insights on ASEAN and the Indo-Pacific. So thank you again, Professor Acharya, for joining us on our inaugural ASEAN Wonk podcast episode

FUTURE INDO-PACIFIC SCENARIOS

ASEAN Wonk: Let's start, if we could, on the notion of the Indo-Pacific, which you've written extensively about. We've seen a proliferation of strategies on the Indo-Pacific, not just from the usual suspects like India, Japan, Australia, but also a number of European countries and even Canada, for example. ASEAN has come up with its own notion of an Indo-Pacific strategy, and that's been, some would argue, a belated effort to sort of recapture centrality or institutional centrality within ASEAN. As we zoom out a little bit, as somebody who's written about regionalism from a variety of perspectives, including Asia, Asia Pacific, East Asia, where do you see the Indo-Pacific aspect of this conversation moving forward? And how do you understand the relevance of this? What are its advantages and perhaps limitations in that regard?

Amitav Acharya: Thank you, Prashanth. Thank you for inviting me to your first ASEAN Wonk podcast. I'm a big fan of ASEAN Wonk, so I'm very happy to be here.

Now, about your question, let's start by noting that Indo-Pacific is a new concept. There are a lot of people who will tell you that, oh, you know, Germans have talked about it, Nehru has talked about it. But really, the concept has not been in the policy domain for until maybe a decade ago…really in the 2010s, that decade, it really became a recognizable name in the policy world and even in the academic world.

So, like all the regions in the world, including Southeast Asia, including Asia or Asia Pacific, this term has to evolve. It has to be accepted. It has to have traction among not only the policymakers, but also the people and academics. And I don't think it has had that yet. The Chinese don't like the term. And of course, it has a lot more popularity in India and increasingly the US and Japan and Australia. But none of these are ASEAN members.

But that doesn't mean it will not gain popularity. And this is why we should talk about how the Indo-Pacific came about or how is it different from other terms like East Asia and Asia-Pacific, which have not gone away by the way.

I think the Indo-Pacific is a very strategic notion. The term Asia-Pacific was basically built on economic interdependence of the 70s and 80s and 90s. But Indo-Pacific doesn't really reflect any such interdependence. And India, one of the key players in the Indo-Pacific, is not really linked to East Asia in the way that, say, Indonesia is.

Similarly, the term Asia was a political and cultural term because there was this pan-Asianism before and after the Second World War. And it was built around that notion of pan-nationalism, cultural, civilizational affinity among Asian countries. That's why people like Jawaharlal Nehru of India or Sun Yat-sen of China and Okakura Kakuzō of Japan, they talked about Asia.

But Indo-Pacific is not a cultural concept. So it doesn't have the same kind of cultural gravitas as Asia has. It might get it, but this concept has a long way to go. It was coined for a very strategic purpose: basically to draw attention to the rise of China, the sharing of security concerns around the rise of China.

And also it was meant to bring India in. India was not really a big player in the Asia-Pacific notion because it was not really economically integrated into Asia Pacific. And Indo-Pacific puts India in the center. It gives Australia a very prominent role. And it also serves the strategic purpose of the United States and its allies or partners — like Japan, Australia, and in the case being a partner India increasingly — moving toward the US.

In that sense, like many regions, there is no guarantee that this concept will be around for the next 20 years. It might become something else. Regions are a way of rising and falling, just like empires. And we'll have to wait and see whether Indo-Pacific will survive.

But in the meantime, even as a narrow strategic concept, it has made a difference. And the big difference is that because of the support and the promotion of this concept by the United States, by Australia, by Japan, by India, it sort of kind of sidelines ASEAN.

As you know, you mentioned my work on Asia-Pacific regionalism or Asian regionalism. A key element — actually the defining element — of any previous regional concept was the centrality of Southeast Asia.…………………………………………………