Setting benchmarks for hypocracy: ASEAN

In a bid to leverage more bargaining power in the global landscape, 10 South-east Asian countries have ratified a EU-esque politico-economic charter, and are well on their way to forming ASEAN, in what the Associated Free Press calls "setting benchmarks for democracy." Membership includes, but is not limited to: Brunei, a monarchy; Myanmar, a military dictatorship under EU and US sanctions for imprisoning political activists; Indonesia, only too recently accused of genocide; and Thailand, currently a political trampoline. Hypocrisy aside, this development highlights numerous connections, most notably the paradigm shift towards supranational organizations.

We already have the EU, which has, as an institution, flourished, and the Gulf Cooperation Council, currently in an incubator. There are also comparative fundamental frameworks in place in absolutely every region of the world-most interestingly the Shanghai Cooperation, a bloc incorporating China and Russia, amongst others, and with important states like India, Iran and Pakistan in tow. There will be a future post on this mega-entity.

What ASEAN seems to profoundly illustrate, is how long these organizations take to form-it has its roots in 1967. In comparison, the EU began as the relatively obscure European Coal and Steel Community back in 1950. With NAFTA having begun in 1994, and the SCO only two years later (but ever picking up steam since Russia's re-birth and China's emergence), we should probably prepare for a drastic restructuring of the international system in the not so distant future.

And just in case someone's worried about economically disenfranchised countries being left without a long-term partner, these states are the cornerstones of the system. The EU has its Eastern bloc countries; NAFTA Mexico; ASEAN Cambodia, Burma et al; and the SCO has a wide variety of near-failed-state-status former Soviet republics. They provide a multiplex of cheap capital options, from human to land, and promote intra-coop trade in a bid to foster internal growth and cohesion, and external bargaining power.