And yet, given the first-order challenges confronting the creation of a true ASEAN community, SCS disputes are the least of ASEAN’s community-building problems. If one takes the position that ASEAN should be what the charter lays out-a community-, then unity on the South China Sea is a logical objective. And there are some surprises, including the very low salience of the SCS issue in discussions about the future of ASEAN. Set against these arguments, the implications of the SCS disputes for ASEAN are very different. But a more sustainable assessment of the impact for ASEAN of the SCS’s disputes can be made if one evaluates the main arguments about the purposes, challenges, and prospects of ASEAN. This balance is nuanced and subject to change given shifting and complex dynamics of the disputes themselves. However, there are also arguments for why ASEAN should be coherent and responsible regarding the SCS, and limited signs that it is increasingly becoming so.
The fact that ASEAN failed for the first time in its history to issue a joint communiqué in 2012 due to disagreements on the SCS issue does not mean the issue has “centrality” to ASEAN or that ASEAN is a useless organization. This analysis argues that there are several reasons to question why the SCS disputes should be considered “central” to ASEAN or that ASEAN should have a unified position on the disputes. Hence, it is best to assess the implications of the SCS tensions on ASEAN in the context of “eye-of-the-beholder” assessments of the organization’s purpose, challenges, and prospects. But leading experts still disagree on what ASEAN is and should be, what challenges the organization faces, and whether or not ASEAN can cope with or even survive them. A centerpiece is that ASEAN will become a single economic and political-security community. Individual ASEAN member-states adopted a charter in 2008 that lays out the organization’s formal objectives.
An evaluation of the impact of SCS disputes on ASEAN at this critical juncture in its evolution depends, fundamentally, upon what one thinks ASEAN is all about.
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