Myanmar and South China Sea to test Asean relevance in upcoming summit

VIENTIANE, Laos — Southeast Asian leaders will meet in Laos this week as Myanmar's civil war and mounting tensions in the South China Sea risk corroding the Asean grouping's central role in the region.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) has, since it was founded in 1967, created complex political structures and processes that have largely enabled peaceful co-operation within the region of over 685 million people.

But its inability to address difficult issues in a timely way may reflect a deeper differences emerging within the regional grouping, said former Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa.

"Both the South China Sea issue, as well as Myanmar, constitute litmus tests for Asean's relevance," Natalegawa told Reuters.

"My main concern...is that the sense of Asean cohesion and sense of common purpose has been fraying somewhat in recent years."

Known as the "Five Point Consensus", the Asean-led peace effort for Myanmar has made scant progress since its unveiling in April 2021, just months after the country's military staged a coup and unseated the elected government.

Instead, violence has spiralled, with the emergence of an armed resistance movement that has loosely allied with several ethnic minority rebel groups to hammer the military on multiple fronts.

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Under Asean chair Laos, the bloc's approach has somewhat shifted from previous chair Indonesia's largely unsuccessful approach by enlarging the peace process to include Myanmar's other neighbours such as China and India, said Dulyapak Preecharush, a Southeast Asian studies scholar at Thailand's Thammasat University.

"It creates more space and less pressure for the Myanmar military," said Dulyapak.

Still, the Myanmar junta