Critical Perspective on ASEAN Security Community under ASEAN Political and Security Community

Abstract

Despite economic integration challenges, ASEAN faces greater security challenges. It is
obvious to assert that a stable economic development requires a secure regional atmosphere.
The traditional and nontraditional threats encounter ASEAN home land security. The most
probable threats portraying ASEAN are hostile foreign entities infiltration, intra and inter states
disputes, radical religious movements, human trafficking, drugs and narcotics smuggling, and
even cybercrimes. To this point, ASEAN has taken constructive measures such as establishing
consultative forums, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Defense Minister’s Meeting
(ADMM) and ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crimes (AMMTC). In 2009, ASEAN
adopted the ASEAN Political and Security Community. One of its stated purposes is to share
security responsibility of each ASEAN member through constructivist approach. However,
APSC has far of being success to achieve its ideal mission. Therefore, this piece would critically
examined the fundamental questions: how does ASEAN security policy through APSC meet its
interest to secure ASEAN region? To search for the answer it would apply constructivism
approach. Constructivism ponders the significance role of regional security institution such as
APSC in security structure. It suggests that regional security community should be build based
on shared values among states in a region. Constructivist’s regional security model will be used
as the explanatory model for APSC case. While the Regional Security Complex (RSC) theory
would be employed to analyze the security dynamic is ASEAN. Itargues that the APSC is able to
create pivotal security forums but lack of confidence in tactical level. It also suggest that
APSC’s policies are laid in triangualar basis; rely on dialogue, establishing forums and
innitiatives, and rely on non-legal binding principle.