| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The opening paper gives an account - partly drawn from the archives of an outside state, New Zealand - of the ancestors of ASEAN: ASA and SEAFET. ASEAN developed a life of its own. Yet SEAFET and ASA give some hints of its aims and some indications of its methods: the need to restrict the intervention of major outside powers; and the need to avoid the dominance by one substantial regional power, but to allow it due influence. The paper suggests that a strong motive behind the early attempts at a regional association was an attempt to deal with the disparate size and power of one state, Indonesia. If - but only if - its urge to regional primacy could be moderated and accommodated would it be possible to diminish recourse to or opportunity for the intervention of outside powers.
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