ASEAN’s Multilateral Dilemma: Continuity and Change from NAM to BRICS
No Asian Century without true multilateralism . ASEAN’ s enduring strength has never been its ability to project power, but its capacity to manage diversity through restraint, process, and dialogue. In an increasingly polarised strategic environment, pressures to align more explicitly with emerging blocs such as BRICS risk diluting ASEAN ’s long-standing emphasis on autonomy and consensus. For Southeast Asia , security is less about joining alternative power centres than about preserving decision-making space amid intensifying great-power rivalry. A revitalised non-aligned approach—adapted to contemporary challenges such as economic fragmentation, digital governance, and maritime security—offers ASEAN greater flexibility to engage all major actors without becoming dependent on any. In this sense, non-alignment is not a rejection of cooperation, but a pragmatic strategy to sustain ASEAN centrality in a multipolar, yet deeply contested, regional order. Let us continue with a rat...
%20in%20Geneva.jpg)