Marking time: The ASEAN summit in Laos

In a world of tumult, there is something quietly reassuring about the predictable summitry of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Susannah Patton

4 October 20244 min read

Next week, one of Southeast Asia's smallest countries, Laos, will play host to its neighbours for the ASEAN Summit. It will also welcome the region’s great powers, including the United States, China and Japan, for the adjoining annual East Asia Summit.

The defining backdrop for this year’s summitry is incomplete political transitions in Washington and Jakarta.

Next week’s ASEAN show will come to Laos and then roll on again. Concrete progress on pressing issues will be sorely lacking.

As for the rest of the world, the outcome of next month’s presidential election in the United States looms large in Southeast Asia. The possible re-election of Donald Trump, who could ramp up protectionism and take a more confrontational approach to China, would make the region less stable and predictable. Even the possible election of Vice President Harris would bring uncertainty, because her level of interest in and commitment to showing up in Southeast Asia is unknown, despite her regular travel to the region as a surrogate for President Biden. The ongoing election campaign means the United States will have more junior representation in Laos, in the form of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

In Indonesia, the long interregnum between president-elect Prabowo Subianto’s February election victory and his inauguration on 20 October is finally drawing to a close. While Prabowo is a known quantity, his approach to ASEAN and regional issues like the South China Sea is less easy to predict. If he becomes, as Rizal Sukma has argued, a “foreign policy president”, he could breathe new life into ASEAN, which has received only episodic attention from outgoing Indonesian president Jokowi.

The Summit, which comes ahead of this year’s APEC and G20 meetings in Peru and Brazil, will also be the first for several new leaders. Japan’s new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, will attend and hold sideline talks with his South Korean counterpart. Thailand’s Paetongtarn Shinawatra will be the youngest and newest Southeast Asian leader at the ASEAN table this year.

Singapore’s leadership has also undergone generational change, with Lawrence Wong replacing veteran prime minister Lee Hsien Loong in May. Wong is competent and echoes much of Lee’s foreign policy rhetoric, but Lee’s departure is a loss to the grouping, which in 2024 is largely led by less seasoned politicians, a majority of whom are in place due to dynastic political successions rather than merit-based election or selection.

The ASEAN agenda

Expectations of a smaller chair country like Laos are always limited, and Laos probably just hopes to survive the year unscathed, given the many sensitive regional and international issues that create divisions within the group. This year, the toughest of these are Myanmar – where a civil war continues to rage but ASEAN’s response remains in bureaucratic stasis – and the South China Sea, where China is piling pressure on the Philippines, which has received scant support from most of its neighbours.

If Prabowo becomes, as Rizal Sukma has argued, a “foreign policy president”, he could breathe new life into ASEAN.

Laos has already survived the toughest test on these sensitive issues, which is agreeing a jointly negotiated communiqué issued after the July meeting of foreign ministers. By contrast, the leaders’ meeting issues only a “chairman’s statement”, meaning that while the text is subject to negotiation, there is greater wiggle room for the chair to fudge disagreements among members.

The East Asia Summit, which includes ASEAN countries plus eight major partners including the United States, China (generally represented by premier Li Qiang) and Russia (represented by foreign minister Sergei Lavrov), must also grapple with contentious global issues like conflict in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

ASEAN has taken steps to insulate itself from differences between its dialogue partners. Until 2022, partners could propose issue-specific East Asia Summit statements. However, negotiation of these statements (one of which was proposed by Russia in 2022 on the seemingly innocuous topic of volunteerism) became too contentious. While the EAS is still likely to issue at least one jointly negotiated statement in 2024, it is a reflection of global political polarisation that ASEAN’s dialogue partners are no longer able to propose their own duelling statements to advance their preferred language on international issues.

Because Laos is a weaker ASEAN member, many will already be looking to Malaysia’s chairmanship in 2025. Prime Minister Anwar has courted international controversy with his support for Hamas and tilting towards China’s positions on Taiwan and the South China Sea. But the ASEAN chair’s influence is always limited, so Anwar’s own views will not change the trajectory of the organisation. Anwar has already invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the 2025 ASEAN summits, which could provide an opportunity for Moscow to secure a diplomatic win such as achieving comprehensive strategic partner status, which Australia, China, the United States and Japan already enjoy (South Korea will have comprehensive strategic partner status confirmed later this year).

So, next week’s ASEAN show will come to Laos and then roll on again. Concrete progress on pressing issues will be sorely lacking. But as the global environment becomes more contested and the scope for international consensus narrows, ASEAN’s convening power is perhaps more important than ever.

About the author

Susannah Patton

Susannah Patton is Director, Asia Engagement at RMIT and a Nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute.

Topics

ASEAN