For decades, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — known as ASEAN — has been treated in Washington and other capitals as a bedrock of regional stability. It has been a model of consensus-driven diplomacy and a potential counterweight to Chinese dominance in the Indo-Pacific.
But in 2025, that image is becoming dangerously outdated. ASEAN is no longer a coherent political bloc. Fragmented by internal crises, paralyzed in the face of regional threats, and unable to coordinate a meaningful response to the great power rivalry unfolding around it, ASEAN is collapsing — slowly, quietly, but unmistakably.
The crisis is perhaps most vivid in Myanmar, where the military junta that seized power in 2021 is now fighting for its survival. The country is in open civil war. Resistance groups have taken control of large parts of the borderlands, while the regime continues to commit war crimes and ignore every diplomatic overture. ASEAN’s so-called Five-Point Consensus — once touted as a pathway to peace — has become a dead letter.
The bloc has refused to suspend Myanmar’s membership, despite growing international pressure. Its only action has been to exclude the junta from high-level summits, a symbolic gesture that does nothing to halt the violence or alleviate the suffering of civilians.
Myanmar is not the only fracture. Thailand, one of ASEAN’s founding members and once seen as a stabilizing force in the region, is now consumed by its own political drama. After the 2023 general election, the progressive Move Forward Party won the most seats, only to be blocked from forming a government by the military-appointed Senate. In a stunning reversal, the Pheu Thai Party — once the main opposition to military rule — formed a coalition with those same military-aligned forces. The deal returned the old guard to power, sowing deep distrust among voters.
Now, that uneasy alliance is unravelling. Paetongtarn Shinawatra, daughter of exiled former prime minister Thaksin and a prominent Pheu Thai figure, has been suspended from parliament amid an escalating scandal involving a leaked phone call with Cambodian strongman Hun Sen. The call, widely interpreted as backchannel political coordination, has triggered an uproar in Bangkok, deepened factional rifts within the ruling coalition, and prompted speculation that another military coup — Thailand’s third in two decades — may be on the horizon.
Cambodia, for its part, is not even pretending to operate as a democracy. The 2023 handover of power from Hun Sen to his son, Hun Manet, was engineered with minimal transparency and no serious opposition. Phnom Penh remains one of Beijing’s most loyal allies in the region, frequently undermining ASEAN unity on issues involving China — especially in the South China Sea. Laos is similarly aligned with China and effectively absent from ASEAN diplomacy.
These trends are not isolated. They expose a deeper structural failure: ASEAN’s model of consensus, non-interference and formal equality among states is no longer fit for purpose. It worked — barely — during the Cold War and its aftermath, when the region could afford strategic ambiguity. But today’s geopolitical climate is different.
Today, the region is a front line in U.S.-China competition, and ASEAN’s diplomatic architecture is proving inadequate. It lacks a unified voice on security, democracy, trade or technology — the defining issues of our time.
The bloc’s inability to act has real consequences. As tensions rise in the South China Sea, with Chinese maritime aggression accelerating around the Philippines and Vietnam, ASEAN has failed to issue even a joint statement of condemnation. As the U.S. and its allies try to build resilient supply chains and technology partnerships, ASEAN members are signing competing deals — often with China — and undercutting each other’s positions.
Even on trade, where ASEAN was once considered relatively cohesive, real influence has shifted elsewhere. China is now the largest trading partner for nearly every ASEAN state, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership has further institutionalized Beijing’s role at the center of regional commerce.
Behind closed doors, ASEAN officials increasingly acknowledge the dysfunction. Some are frustrated by the charade of unity. But the bloc’s institutional design — a rotating chairmanship, no enforcement powers, and a culture of diplomatic avoidance — makes real change nearly impossible. The result is performative multilateralism: summits that produce boilerplate communiqués, working groups that avoid hard issues and a growing gap between ASEAN’s image and its actual influence.
This matters for U.S. strategy. Washington has long relied on ASEAN centrality as a foundation for its Indo-Pacific engagement. But if ASEAN cannot function as a reliable partner, U.S. policymakers will need to shift course. That may mean building more flexible “mini-lateral” coalitions with individual countries like the Philippines, Vietnam or Indonesia. It may also require confronting the uncomfortable truth that ASEAN’s decline helps Beijing, which has long exploited the bloc’s divisions to blunt regional resistance to Chinese assertiveness.
Southeast Asia remains one of the world’s most dynamic regions — economically vibrant, demographically young and strategically pivotal. But its central political institution is in retreat. ASEAN is not dead, but it has become hollow. Until its member states and their international partners are willing to admit that reality, the region will remain vulnerable — not just to external pressure, but to its own slow unravelling.
Joseph Black is an American expat currently pursuing a master’s in international affairs at King’s College London and a Ph.D. in gender studies at Chiang Mai University. He also serves as a research officer at the University of New South Wales.
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