ASEAN risks irrelevance as sub-groupings grow, Sec-Gen Kao warns — SkimNews
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- Kao Kim Hourn told more than 150 diplomats, policymakers and academics at the third ASEAN Think Tanks Summit in Jakarta on Sept 14 that ASEAN risks losing relevance as countries increasingly turn to smaller security arrangements alongside ASEAN-led forums.
- Kao cited the US-Japan-Philippines trilateral (first summit in 2024) and the growing US-Japan-Australia-Philippines "Squad" as examples of new groupings whose proliferation — though not intended to replace ASEAN — could erode ASEAN-led processes' coherence and convening power.
- Without naming any grouping directly, Kao urged ASEAN to make more strategic use of institutions it already has, including the East Asia Summit, ASEAN Regional Forum and ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting-Plus, calling dialogue ASEAN's "instrument of first resort."
- The question of institutional fitness takes on added significance in 2027, when Singapore takes the ASEAN chair from the Philippines and the grouping marks 60 years since its 1967 founding.
- Kao warned that energy, food and economic security can no longer be treated separately, and flagged AI-driven disparities, maritime tensions, cyberattacks, online scams, transnational crime and climate disasters as interconnected threats demanding adaptation rather than retreat from regional openness.
- The two-day summit was organized by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs on behalf of the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies, a network of regional think tanks.
Why it matters: With the US-Japan-Philippines trilateral and the emerging "Squad" four-way arrangement already operational, ASEAN's claim to centrality faces a structural test before its 2027 60th-anniversary milestone under Singapore's chair. Kao's framing — that centrality "cannot rest on institutional inheritance alone" and "must be earned continually" — signals that ASEAN's existing forums will be judged on delivery, not longevity, during a period of intensifying major-power competition.
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