Summary
Today … the overwhelming impression of East Asia’s enduring strength and of ASEAN’s efficacy has been cast aside and forgotten. The same commentators who used to assume a future of continuous growth for ASEAN now seem to believe that ASEAN can do nothing right—or can just do nothing … This mass shift in perception is perhaps understandable. After all, the economic disaster that has engulfed Southeast Asia, together with much of the rest of East Asia, has wiped out many of the gains of the region’s tiger economies, with no quick end in sight. An environmental disaster arising from forest and peat fires has swept large parts of Southeast Asia. The frustration and bewilderment over the sudden reversal of fortunes of the region have led many, including some in Southeast Asia itself, to raise questions about ASEAN’s effectiveness and utility and about the validity of the very idea of ASEAN. (Rodolfo C. Severino, Jr, Secretary-General of ASEAN, speaking at the University of Sydney, Australia, 22 October 1998)
ASEAN as a group is being seen as helpless and worse, disunited … In our summits in 1997 and 1998, we failed to convince the outside world that ASEAN was tackling the crisis with determination and decisiveness to regain its high growth. (Goh Chok Tong, Prime Minister of Singapore, in Brunei, April 1999) services and investments’, yet, on the other hand, we seem to be unable to agree on the sectors to be liberalized.
The effects of globalization and the region’s economic and financial crisis have not only caused outsiders to doubt our efficacy, but also forced us to rethink our role … On the one hand, we have the Vision of 2020, which talks about ‘a stable, prosperous and highly competitive ASEAN Economic Region in which there is free flow of goods,
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