ASEAN should forge ahead with integration despite territorial disputes

Abstract

When Indonesia took the chairmanship of ASEAN in January, it could not have asked for a more challenging task than to deal with the military clashes which have erupted between Thailand and Cambodia over a border dispute. Jakarta had some grand designs when it asked Brunei to swap places for the right to chair the regional grouping as Indonesia's turn was not due until 2013. Endy Bayuni, Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center in Washington, discusses the problems for Indonesia as it attempts to forge ahead with the creation of a Southeast Asian Community by 2015, amidst clashes on the Thai-Cambodian border that are a reminder of the many territorial disputes among ASEAN's ten members that for much of its 44-year history have been swept under the carpet.