Columbia International Affairs Online
CIAO DATE: 10/5/2007
Southeast Asian-Pacific Frameworks: What Do They Frame and What Work Do They Do?
October 2006
Abstract
Although these pages feature Southeast Asia, our topic is spatially far-flung. Pictured as sets of participating countries highlighted on a map of the world, regional and interregional frameworks that include some or all of Southeast Asia run a vast and complex gamut of partly concentric and partly overlapping yet distinctive and sometimes changing memberships or attendances. MALSINDO1 spans three contiguous Southeast Asian states. ASEAN2 encompasses all ten. ASEM3 is inter-regional. FPDA4 offers a fourth pattern, linking as it does two adjacent Southeast Asian countries with three distant partners—two in the far-southern Pacific, one in far-western Europe. The hub-and-spoke dialogue arrangements known collectively as ASEAN Plus One illustrate a fifth schema.
