ASEAN and the Vagaries of the Asia–Pacific Regionalism

During the last three decades of its history, ASEAN, being an association of Southeast Asian nations, was maturing in the framework of a much bigger Asia–Pacific regional project. The impressive performance of the latter was largely determined by its inclusive character, the availability of the US-China joint engine of economic growth and the ASEAN Centrality in terms of coordinating multilateral dialogues on regional security matters and cooperation. How to explain the fact that the Asia–Pacific region (APR) that seemed to be evolving so successfully has started to undergo increasing fragmentation since the mid-2010s? Is this process reversible in the context of the current globalization crisis and the accelerating transition from the unipolar moment to the multipolar world? What do these shifts mean for the future of the Russia-ASEAN relations as strategic partners? According to the author’s conclusions, the APR’s fragmentation has been largely determined by the fact that not the US but China has emerged as the Asia–Pacific project’s major beneficiary. At present the APR’s fragmentation looks irreversible, resulting in a sharp reduction of ASEAN’s capacity to maintain its habitual Centrality in the geopolitical and geoeconomic spaces adjacent to Southeast Asia. The dramatic global and regional shifts of the early 2020s oblige Russia and ASEAN as strategic partners to look for new cooperation priorities as well as for unorthodox practical ways of their implementation.