Widening or Deepening Regional Cooperation?

Abstract

This chapter deals with the Southeast Asian post-Co1d War era debate on political and economic cooperation in ASEAN. The debate focuses mainly on two questions — one on the enlargement of ASEAN with new members, and the other on measures for deepening regional cooperation. ASEAN’s attempts to create an ASEAN free trade area, AFTA, were important, although expansion also involved economic issues. The attempts at expanding ASEAN, on the one hand, and deepening economic cooperation, on the other, can be seen as competing strategies for developing the organization, even though both aims were accepted by all six ASEAN members. The concrete steps for deepening economic integration came first when the ASEAN free trade agreement, AFTA, was signed at the Singapore Summit in 1992. However, from the broader perspective, it is fair to say that the question of expanding ASEAN dominated the regionalist debate in Southeast Asia during the 1990s.