The changing face of ASEAN
With much of ASEAN stuck in the economic doldrums and its senior members beset with issues ranging from unprecedented levels of corruption to violent insurgencies and maritime disputes with China, the regional bloc has known better days. But from the most unlikely corners of northern ASEAN, a more common sense approach to the region’s increasingly complex political dynamics appears to have accompanied leadership change. The electoral victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy in Mynamar plus the appointments of Bounnhang Vorachith as president of Laos and Nguyễn Xuân Phúc as the new prime minister in Vietnam may well have ushered in a surprising new era. Along with Cambodia, the grouping of Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam as the CLMV has sometimes derogatorily been referred to as the poor relation of ASEAN. Their combined gross domestic product is about $224 billion, less than 10 percent of the $2.4 trillion GDP enjoyed by the entire 10-nation bloc.
