By Phar Kim Beng, PhD

In light of the general panic in the European Union (EU) that the United States (US), its transatlantic ally, is abandoning it, what can EU learn from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for a change?

The latter is often dubbed the most successful regional organisation in the world after EU. Yet the putative possibility that ASEAN can be any guidance at all is dismissed out of hand. There are numerous reasons that EU has to keep in mind that ASEAN has got its relations with the US right. But before one gets to them, it is just as vital to explain the role of the US first.

Now, with or without President Donald Trump, for that matter, Vice President JD Vance breaking the diplomatic tradition in Germany by talking to AfD, the far-right party of the country, Germany is literally the largest country in the EU. The fact is EU has been treading on dangerous waters for some time now. At least since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008-2009 indeed.

The very basis of EU was originally based on France and Germany being able to achieve the self restraint from going at each other militarily. The two were either the proximate causes or actual trigger of World War I and II in 1915 and 1939, respectively. Yet the two countries, while able to end their mutual animosity, have been a pale shadow of their old selves. Invariably, at least since 1970. The fact that the idea of "Euro Sclerosis" was not a widespread phenomenon to weigh France and Germany down, did not escape the attention of some scholars and economists. Such as the likes of Dani Rodrik at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. Not excluding Fareed Zakaria, previously the Editor of Foreign Affairs too. For that matter Ruchir Sharma at Morgan Stanley Bank. They knew France and Germany, together with EU, were low in productivity.

Jacques Delors, Father of the Euro, for instance, has long understood the weaknesses of the French and German economies, which is why a Franco-German entente embedded into the larger expanding structure of the EU was considered the most sensible to arrest the national and regional decline of the two countries and the EU writ large.

The fact is over the last 30 years in particular, France and Germany have not been shiny examples of functional states. Much of French citizens could never find their conditions in the workplace to be, at all, satisfactory.

Hence the constant allure of local or national strikes. Germany, on the other hand, outsourced most of its operations to the likes of China and other parts of less developed Southeast Asia to enjoy a cost advantage. Hollowing out the industrial base of Germany in due course.

Meanwhile, President Emmanuel Macron failed to win over the left and right segment of the French society in May 2023. This is asymptomatic of his lame duck presidency that has four more years to go.

Meanwhile, Olaf Scholtz has not only lost the reins of his power to Frederick Metz of the CDU party, but AfD too. The latter is predominantly strong in the hitherto East Germany. It gained at least 20 per cent of the German votes on February 23, 2025.

Something that is totally unprecedented since the end of the first Cold War in 1989. With these two economies flailing, the whole of EU is naturally affected.

When one keeps in mind the fact that the United Kingdom (UK) has long left EU through Brexit, all that remains of the 27 member states that formed EU, ostensibly creating the basis of the United States of Europe, indeed, to rival the confederation of the United States (US) proper, is now even less impressive.

The EU, for the lack of a better word, is truly in trouble since it is tied to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) too.

The crisis of NATO is not necessarily due to the war that started on February 24, 2022, in Ukraine. When the EU is not growing, the defence spending of NATO is generally weak. Often below 2 per cent of the member states' Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which Trump has inadvertently insisted. But Trump has changed his tone. Trump now wants the military contribution to NATO to stand at 5 per cent of the GDP of each member state of NATO.

For what it is worth, the EU has been so weak, with general low growth, that the likes of Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain, with or without the pejorative of PIIGS, does not truly matter anymore.

When France and Germany begin to wobble, always functioning at less than the duo's ideal economic standards, it goes without saying that the whole edifice that forms the EU is not only weak but unable to find any resources to grow.

While not exhaustive, and they are not meant to be, what are the instructive policy lessons that the EU can ruminate deeply that ASEAN has more stamina than EU does in handling someone like Trump?

If anything, ASEAN has not fallen into a state of panic when Secretary of Defence Peter Hegseth, at his confirmation hearing, could not answer what was ASEAN at all. The leaders and laity in ASEAN just laughed it off. Below are just five instructive lessons for the EU.

It could be longer. But then ASEAN is still a work-in-progress too. It has no reason to rub the face of the EU in any post-colonial rant. Not all the time anyway.

First and foremost, regardless of what the theory of international relations or institutional economics may say, do not keep binding all the 27 member states by sheer diplomatic fiat. Brussels can no more tell a country such as Bulgaria what to do any more than can Hungary set EU right.

Both sides are in a vise-like institutional logjam. The more all the EU member states try to hold on to the old conventional wisdom of a single Europe, the more the quest for common glory would become a distant memory. EU or the bureaucratic priesthood that guard it, is breaking down.

Second, EU is always burdened by reams of regulations. Whereas in ASEAN it is light on rules. Not surprisingly, it is seeing the bamboo shoots of its hard efforts. Between 2025 and 2030, the collective bloc of ASEAN is expected to grow at 5.2 per cent, which is two times higher than the EU.

Third, notwithstanding the looming dawn of the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the EU has not been able to innovate its way out of its conundrum. Brands such as Audi, Mercedes and BMW, all made in Germany are outsourced to other countries.

Much fear that has engulfed the EU is now due to the unwillingness of the EU to relax its trade rules, for that matter, labour laws. Meanwhile, ASEAN does not suffer from any need to find an alternative regional purchaser. India and China are able to serve as the trading partners of the strategic group. By 2030, ASEAN would have a collective GDP fourth in size after China, the US and India.

Fourth, while ASEAN has only a history that began on August 8, 1967, well behind that of EU, ASEAN has time and again seemed to have achieved more. With the exception of Myanmar, ASEAN has absorbed the likes of nine other member states of Southeast Asia into a cohesive whole. Thus, the chances of ASEAN breaking up is still not possible.

Last but not least, ASEAN has also willed its loose existence into being. It surrendered no sovereignty to any secretariat nor can any member state resort to making decisions unilaterally.

Since ASEAN functions on two overt rules, that no member state shall support the opposition of another country, charges of one violating the sovereignty of another is hardly audible. Consistent to this axiom, ASEAN member states have also been restrained from openly criticising the military alliances of their neighbours.

These two rules have done away with much of the gossips and fear of the member states of ASEAN falling apart. Can the EU learn all the policy lessons from ASEAN? No, it can't. EU has allowed legalism and institutionalism to prevail over it time and again. It is now tied together.

It has to learn how to sink or swim with dead weight locked to its ankles especially when the EU is faced by the rise of a recalcitrant Russia that has refused to give in to the demands of the NATO or EU for that matter.

As and when help has not been forthcoming from the US, the exact problems are now emerging: an EU in sheer panic.

In turn, if the US were to abandon ASEAN, there are more than several major powers to prop ASEAN up lest it is at the mercy of either India or China. The two of them will perpetually struggle over their preponderance over ASEAN. But ASEAN is not in any mode of meltdown.

The US, for example, cannot completely pull away from ASEAN either plus these two continental powers. If the US does, then ASEAN will opt for China or India, thus weakening the inner core of ASEAN that remains vital to the US.

This is why the primary thrust of ASEAN, other than ensuring the institutional tie-up with the US, also involves working with a group of countries that it labels Comprehensive Strategic Partners.

At the risk of repetition, they are Australia, China, Japan, India, South Korea and the US. Does this mean ASEAN is perpetually secure by these six Dialogue Partners? No.

ASEAN has Canada, New Zealand, the EU and the UK as its safety or geo-strategic insurance too. Other countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkiye, Brazil and Norway are ASEAN's Sectoral Partners.

As for Germany and France, they are ASEAN's Development Partners. As and when the two are truly able to get out from their rut, ASEAN will work with them.

-- BERNAMA

Phar Kim Beng, PhD, is Professor of ASEAN Studies at the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM).