Aseyan collapses, and no one wants to admit it
For decades, the Association of Southeast Asian Countries – known as ASEAN – in Washington and other capitals as the cornerstone of regional stability. It was a model of diplomacy driven by consensus and a possible balance weight of Chinese domination in the Indian Pacific Ocean.
But in 2025, this image became dangerously outdated. ASEAN is no longer a coherent political bloc. Divided by internal crises, paralyzed in the face of regional threats, and is unable to coordinate a meaningful response to compete with the great power that reveals around it, ASEAN collapses – slowly, quietly, but unambiguous.
The crisis may be more vital in Myanmar, as it fights the military council that has seized power in 2021 now for its survival. The country in the open civil war. The resistance groups took control of large parts of the border areas, while the regime continues to commit war crimes and ignore each diplomatic offer. The so-called consensus has become five points from the Southeast Asian Nations Association-which was once a path of peace-a dead message.
The bloc refused to suspend Myanmar membership, despite the increasing international pressure. The only procedure was to exclude the military council from high -level peaks, a symbolic gesture that does nothing to stop violence or reduce the suffering of civilians.
Myanmar is not the only fracture. Thailand, one of the founding members of ASEAN, who was once considered a stability force in the region, is now consuming its political drama. After the 2023 general elections, the Progressive Movement Party won most of the seats, only to be prevented from forming a government by the Senate appointed military. In an amazing reflection, the PHEU THI-which was the same day was the main opposition of military rule-in alliance with those military forces itself. The deal returned the old guard to power, scattered deep lack of confidence between the voters.
Now, this troubled alliance collapses. Paetongtarn Shinawatra, daughter of former Prime Minister Thaksin and prominent PHEU THAI, was suspended from Parliament amid an escalating scandal that includes a leaked phone call with a strong man, his depth, and a wide appeal interpretation, widely of rear political coordination. Speculation that another military coup – the third in Thailand in two decades – may be on the horizon.
Cambodia, for its part, does not even pretend to work as a democracy. The handover of power from 2023 from Hun Sen to his son, Hun Manit, is designed with the least transparency and lack of dangerous opposition. Bennah is still one of the most loyal Beijing allies in the region, and often undermines the unity of ASEAN on issues involved in China – especially in the South China Sea. Laos is similarly compatible with China and is effectively absent from ASEAN diplomacy.
These trends are not isolated. It shows a deeper structural failure: the ASEAN model is no longer a consensus, other than the interference and formal equality between countries suitable for the purpose. I barely succeeded – during the Cold War and its effects, when the region managed to bear strategic mystery. But the geopolitical climate today is different.
Today, the region is a front line in the United States of Chinese competition, and ASEAN’s diplomatic architecture proves is insufficient. It lacks a unified voice on security, democracy, trade or technology – the issues specified in our time.
The inability of the bloc to act has real consequences. With the high tensions in the South China Sea, as Chinese naval aggression accelerated throughout the Philippines and Vietnam, ASEAN failed to issue a joint conviction. Since the United States and its allies are trying to build flexible supply chains and technical partnerships, ASEAN members sign competing deals – often with China – and they reduce each other’s positions.
Even in trade, where ASEAN was considered a relatively coherent day, the real influence has turned to another place. China is now the largest commercial partner for almost every ASEAN, and the comprehensive regional economic partnership has played an additional role for Beijing’s role in the regional trade center.
Behind closed doors, ASEAN officials are increasingly recognized by a dysfunction. Some feel frustrated by the axis of the unit. But the institutional design of the mass – the rotating presidency, no enforcement powers, and the culture of diplomatic avoidance – makes change almost real. The result is the multiplicity of performance: the peaks that produce boiler nightmares, and work groups that avoid difficult problems and the increasing gap between the image of Asyan and its actual effect.
This is important for us the strategy. Washington has long relied on the centrality of ASEAN as a basis for its Indian and Pacific participation. But if ASEAN is unable to work as a reliable partner, American policy makers will need to transfer the path. This may mean building more “small” flexible alliances with individual countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam or Indonesia. This may also require confronting the uncomfortable truth that the decline of the Southeast Asian Nations Association helps Beijing, which has long used the sections of the bloc to distort the regional resistance of Chinese confirmation.
Southeast Asia remains one of the most dynamic areas in the world – economically vibrant, young demographic and strategic pivotal. But its central political institution is to decline. ASEAN did not die, but he became hollow. Until its member states and international partners are ready to recognize this reality, the region will remain at risk – not only for external pressure, but to its slow separation.
Joseph Black is an American expatriate who is currently following a master’s degree in international affairs in King’s College London and PhD. In sexual studies at Xiang Mai University. He is also a research officer at New South Wales University.
