Yet inevitability is not strategy, and Asia’s economic rise has not produced commensurate strategic autonomy. Nowhere is this clearer than in Asean’s strategic predicament. Consequentially, Asean is increasingly urged to anchor itself more firmly in BRICS, or, alternatively, to revive the logic of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The contemporary international system increasingly resembles the one that gave rise to the NAM: weaponised finance, sanctions as diplomacy, fractured trade regimes and information warfare. Asean’s strategic value lies in being indispensable, not aligned.
