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1 1 (February 21, 2023)

handle is hein.crs/govekqq0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Con gres&onal Research Serv inf rig I le ~ I live d tale 'o 1914 Updated February 21, 2023 The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Overview The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is Southeast Asia's primary multilateral organization, a 10- member grouping of nations with a combined population of 660 million and a combined annual gross domestic product (GDP) of around $3.2 trillion in 2022. Established in 1967, it has grown into one of the world's largest regional fora, representing a strategically important region straddling some of the world's busiest sea lanes, including in the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea. Taken collectively, ASEAN ranks as the world's fifth-largest economy and the United States' fourth-largest export market. ASEAN's members are Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. (Timor-Leste, the region's newest nation, has observer status.) Members rotate as chair: Indonesia is ASEAN's chair for 2023 and Laos is to assume the chair in 2023. ASEAN engages in a wide range of diplomatic, economic, and security discussions through hundreds of annual meetings and through a secretariat based in Jakarta, Indonesia. In 2008, the United States became the first non-ASEAN nation to appoint a representative to ASEAN, and in 2011 it opened a U.S. mission to ASEAN in Jakarta with a resident ambassador. President Biden held two summits with ASEAN's leaders in 2022-a special summit in May in Washington, DC. (Burma's junta leader and outgoing Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte did not attend), and the annual summit in Cambodia in November. ASEAN is a diverse and informal organization. Two of its core operating principles are consensual decisionmaking and noninterference in the internal affairs of its members. Some observers argue that this style constrains ASEAN from acting strongly and cohesively on important issues. Others argue that these principles-dubbed the ASEAN Way-promote regional stability and ensure that the group's members continue to discuss issues where their interests sometimes diverge. The principle has been tested as ASEAN seeks to address the crisis that has followed the Burmese military's 2021 coup d'etat, which has led to a political and humanitarian crisis in one of the group's members. ASEA N and Asian Ref`onaI Architecture Asia has no dominant EU-style multilateral body, and many observers see the region's economic and security institutions as underdeveloped. ASEAN convenes and administratively supports a number of regional fora that include other governments (known as dialogue partners)' including the United States. ASEAN Member governments deeply value what they call ASEAN Centrality in the evolving regional architecture. The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), first convened in 1994 with 26 Asian and Pacific states plus the EU, was formed to facilitate dialogue on political and security matters. The East Asia Summit (EAS), created in 2005, is an evolving, leaders-level forum with a varied agenda, in which the United States gained membership in 2010. The EAS includes all 10 ASEAN members, plus Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. The ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus (ADMM+), established in 2010, regularly brings senior defense officials from EAS members together and hosts multilateral military exchanges. In recent years, as cooperation through non-ASEAN regional groupings such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the Australia-UK-U.S. (AUKUS) security grouping has deepened, some Southeast Asian observers have expressed concern about ASEAN's place in U.S. strategy. The Biden Administration casts its two 2022 summit meetings with ASEAN leaders as a tangible demonstration of U.S. commitment to the organization. qAssociation Asian Nations SODIA S N GAPO RE' PI1 II-ES 'NO NEF Source: Graphic created by CRS. U.S.-ASEAN R.ations The United States has long had strong bilateral relations with individual Southeast Asian nations, including treaty alliances with the Philippines and Thailand and a close security partnership with Singapore. Many U.S. policymakers see engagement with ASEAN as complementing bilateral relationships and strengthening the region's collective diplomatic weight as other regional players gain in economic and military power. The United States initially supported ASEAN as a means to promote regional dialogue and as a bulwark against Communism, becoming an ASEAN Dialogue Partner in 1977. In 2009, the United States acceded to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and committed to an annual U.S.-ASEAN Meeting. In 2012, the United States and ASEAN agreed to raise the level of the U.S.-ASEAN meeting to a Leaders Meeting and elevated the relationship in November 2015 to a U.S.-ASEAN Strategic Partnership and in November

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