By Mehmet Enes Beşer The persistent trade surpluses of the majority of ASEAN countries are not accidental nor merely the result of favorable global demand. They are the outcome of deliberate, long-term development strategies founded on export-oriented industrialization (EOI)—a model once actively promoted by the very institutions of the liberal international order led by the United States. Ironically, while Washington ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer Southeast Asia is one of the world’s most strategic sea highways where global commerce passes through, strategic rivalries, and environmental risk points meet. From Malacca Strait to South China Sea, Southeast Asian seas are as vital to global economic being as they are to Southeast Asian seas’ diversity for sovereignty and national interests. Ocean Space is ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer While the world speeds toward a low-carbon future, the ten ASEAN member states stand at a strategic crossroads. BLESSED with solar, hydro, wind, and geothermal resources, ASEAN is positioned well to ground the enormous potential of its development on renewable power. Painfully lacking clear regional ambitions and growing global interest, the ASEAN switch to renewable energy ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer Urbanization is transforming at a fast pace the population and economic landscape of developing ASEAN economies at all-time highs. From the metastasizing metropolises of Ho Chi Minh City and Manila to Jakarta’s and Phnom Penh’s suburbs, cities are increasingly becoming drivers of growth, hubs of innovation, and drivers of opportunity. But as the region urbanizes, so ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer In the face of mounting global pressure towards a binding plastic pollution treaty, ASEAN finds itself at a weak juncture—a testament to its economic ambitions as much as its environmental vulnerabilities. The region, having long been a strategic hub in global production and supply chain maneuvering, now increasingly sees itself becoming perceived as a pressure point ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer In a world that is grappling with an evolving geopolitics order—defined by frayed multilateralism, economic nationalism, and intensifying great-power competition—the evolving China-Vietnam relationship has another tale to tell. Too often seen in the narrow context of their border conflicts and historical challenges, Sino-Vietnamese relations are being constructed in low-key style as a pragmatically rooted, forward-looking relationship ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer The post-Cold War dream of an American global order—liberal in ideology, capitalist in architecture, and technocratic in tone—was once celebrated as universal. That order, built on the shoulders of international institutions and trading regimes crafted in Washington, New York, and Geneva, held out the prospect of prosperity through union and stability through conformity. That promise is ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer Today, it is entering its fourth year with no endgame on the horizon. The military regime is as entrenched as ever, and anti-junta forces have become more united in their efforts, while humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate month after month. Within this maelstrom of uncertainty and dysfunction, Thailand has sought to position itself as a force ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer The atmosphere in the capitals of Southeast Asia is growing increasingly unmistakably fatigued when it comes to climate finance. All those repeated promises from the developed world to mobilize billions on the behalf of climate mitigation and adaptation in the Global South have come woefully short. From unpaid commitments under the Paris Agreement to sluggish disbursement ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer The environmental sustainability experience of Southeast Asia is an uneven and rugged terrain, shaped by forces that intersect but refuse to move together in harmony. As the ASEAN countries speed up to discover the middle path between economic development and nature protection, they must contend with the unbalanced consequences of the leading drivers—digitalization, natural resource exploitation, ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer There is a stunning paradox at the core of the Southeast Asian model of development, a paradox more desperate with each climate summit, energy crisis, and investment diversion. The ASEAN bloc has subscribed formally to world climate targets. Its member states have made Nationally Determined Contributions, committed net-zero emission goals (some as early as 2050), and ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer The year has conspired to make ASEAN’s end-October Leaders’ Summit in Kuala Lumpur unusually consequential. Malaysia, chairing under the banner of “Inclusivity and Sustainability,” must navigate a denser-than-usual thicket: renewed tariff salvos from Washington, the still-bleeding crisis in Myanmar, the slow-moving South China Sea code of conduct process, and the long-promised—but only recently bankrolled—push for regional ...