Toward an ASEAN Strategic Narrative: Community, Agency, Inclusivity

ABSTRACT

At the present time there is a growing interest in strategic narratives. The United States and China, not surprisingly, receive most attention. In an increasingly multi-polar world, however, it is critical to consider the strategic narratives of India, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Significant work has already been focused on individual Southeast Asian states—and some also on ASEAN as a grouping. The present essay seeks to tell the ASEAN story in a manner that helps to formulate a succinct strategic narrative. It presents ASEAN historically in the framework of “Asia” regionalism—stressing the competition with “Pacific” regionalism. It then highlights ASEAN's ambitious region building—first in the “Southeast Asia” sphere and then in the wider “East Asia.” At a third, even broader level ASEAN seeks to contribute to an “Indo-Pacific” order—giving prominence to certain longstanding principles, such as inclusivity, non-intervention and the search for consensus.

1 Introduction

The powerful narratives emanating from major powers today are well known. In the Cold War, the United States highlighted the protection of “freedom” while the Soviet Union portrayed itself as defending socialism. The more recent, pre-Trump, narrative stressed major-power contest, alliance-building, and the so-called “rules-based order.” China, in the words of a Vietnamese analysis, is “reclaiming its place on the global stage.” It articulates as well “a vision of Chinese modernization that rejects notions of colonization” and calls for “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and mutually beneficial cooperation” (Hoang and Ngo 2023). Increasing reference today to the emergence not of a bipolar but of a multipolar order indicates the need to analyze the strategic narratives of other regional players. Apart from Japan and India, Southeast Asian countries and the regional organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), also demand attention. Put succinctly, a nation's “strategic narrative” is a compelling story that can convey to the world, and to a domestic community, the nation's “identity, interests and visions for the international order.” Such a narrative provides a “framework that explains a nation's past, justifies its present actions, and outlines its future aspirations” (Hoang and Ngo 2024; see also Freedman 2015; Miskimmon et al. 2017; Ba 2019).

Read the full article at https://doi.org/10.1111/aspp.70029

Originally published in Asian Politics & Policy, 17 (3), 2025