Asean Countries Quotes

What do you and the ASEAN countries want us to do?” Lee replied, “Stop the radio broadcasts.

As a method of warfare with “beyond limits” as its major feature, its principle is to assemble and blend together more means to resolve a problem in a range wider than the problem itself. For example, when national is threatened, the answer is not simply a matter of selecting the means to confront the other nation militarily, but rather a matter of dispelling the crisis through the employment of “supra-national combinations.” We see from history that the nation-state is the highest form of the idea of security. For Chinese people, the nation-state even equates to the great concept of all-under-heaven [tianxia, classical name for China]. Nowadays, the significance of the word “country” in terms of nationality or geography is no more than a large or small link in the human society of the “world village.” Modern countries are affected more and more by regional or world-wide organizations, such as the European Community [sic; now the European Union], ASEAN, OPEC, APEC, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the WTO, and the biggest of them all, the United Nations. Besides these, a large number of multinational organizations and non-state organizations of all shapes and sizes, such as multinational corporations, trade associations, peace and environmental organizations, the Olympic Committee, religious organizations, terrorist organizations, small groups of hackers, etc., dart from left and right into a country’s path. These multinational, non-state, and supra-national organizations together constitute an up and coming worldwide system of power.3

Without an FTA, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the ASEAN countries will be integrated into China’s economy—an outcome to be avoided.

Most Southeast Asia countries look to the United States to provide some sort of counterbalance to China, but they have increasing doubts about Washington’s dependability, know-how, resources, and staying power. These uncertainties affect their strategic thinking and planning in their relations with Beijing. “The U.S. needs to have a long-term consistent, comprehensive, bipartisan approach to the Asia Pacific,” says an ASEAN diplomat. “Countries in the region believe the U.S. will change its policy depending on who the next president is.

Prior to the term of President Rodrigo Duterte, average infrastructure spending for the past five decades was only at 2.5 percent of the country’s GDP. The 2015 IMF report found that the Philippines had a lower public investment in comparison to other members of ASEAN. We all know that Build, Build, Build is a program that is not only necessary but is in fact long overdue. If the Philippines is to achieve its full potential, then it must do something to cut losses due to traffic congestion in Metro Manila, which has gone up to ₱3.5 billion a day. It was at this point that Secretary Mark Villar presented the plan to decongest the 90-year-old EDSA, a 23.8-kilometer circumferential highway, which has long exceeded its maximum capacity of 288,000 vehicles a day.

Korea culturally has much in common with China and historically has tilted toward China. For Singapore communist China was an enemy during the Cold War. In the 1980s, however, Singapore began to shift its position and its leaders actively argued the need for the United States and other countries to come to terms with the realities of Chinese power. With its large Chinese population and the anti-Western proclivities of its leaders, Malaysia also strongly tilted in the Chinese direction. Thailand maintained its independence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by accommodating itself to European and Japanese imperialism and has shown every intention of doing the same with China, an inclination reinforced by the potential security threat it sees from Vietnam. Indonesia and Vietnam are the two countries of Southeast Asia most inclined toward balancing and containing China. Indonesia is large, Muslim, and distant from China, but without the help of others it cannot prevent Chinese assertion of control over the South China Sea. In the fall of 1995 Indonesia and Australia joined in a security agreement that committed them to consult with each other in the event of “adverse challenges” to their security. Although both parties denied that this was an anti-China arrangement, they did identify China as the most likely source of adverse challenges.37 Vietnam has a largely Confucian culture but historically has had highly antagonistic relations with China and in 1979 fought a brief war with China. Both Vietnam and China have claimed sovereignty over all the Spratly Islands, and their navies engaged each other on occasion in the 1970s and 1980s. In the early 1990s Vietnam’s military capabilities declined in relation to those of China. More than any other East Asian state, Vietnam consequently has the motive to seek partners to balance China. Its admission into ASEAN and normalization of its relations with the United States in 1995 were two steps in this direction.

redeployment” (I studiously avoided the word “withdrawal” as it tended to trigger endless debate between the parties) of the troops of both countries; as well as respect for the commitment to the avoidance of conflict (the terms “cessation of conflict” or “ceasefire” proved far too contentious).

a true security community in Southeast Asia could not be attained if ASEAN was to remain limited to its five original founding member states; instead, it required all ten countries of Southeast Asia to fall within the ambit of such an “umbrella”.

ASEAN itself became the hub for dialogue and communication between the aforementioned countries. All three countries — China, the Russian Federation and the United States — have had the “comfort level” to allow ASEAN to take the lead in promoting a cooperative framework in the region.

When then President Barack Obama visited Laos in September 2016, he reminded us that America had dropped more than two million tons of bombs here in Laos—more than we dropped on Germany and Japan combined during all of World War II. It made Laos, per person, the most heavily bombed country in history.

ASEAN must henceforth seize the initiative in addressing emerging issues affecting its member countries — shaping and moulding developments — and not allow such issues to spiral outside its control.

The US and Thailand signed an accord in October 1985 setting up a war reserve weapons stockpile in Thailand, making it the first country without a US military base to have such an arrangement.

Indonesia’s strategic location in the Indian Ocean and its control of the Melaka and Sunda Straits made the country exceptionally important for US strategic and security interests in the region.