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Abstract Projecting and constructing a systematic security arrangement that includes the security force under the framework of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is an issue proposed several times by the ASEAN countries while it has not been achieved yet. Existing research offers some explanations for the individual effects of the ASEAN way, the ASEAN countries’ capabilities, or the impacts of major powers without providing a testable comprehensive analytical framework. Then, why has the ASEAN not yet built up its security force as an institutional arrangement?
This article argues that three factors exert important impacts on the preferences and motivations of the ASEAN countries for the ASEAN security force: the ASEAN’s leadership, the external validity of the ASEAN regional resilience, and the convergence of the ASEAN countries’ security demands. We argue further that only when all these factors are situated in a condition simultaneously where there is a consensus between the ASEAN countries on the ASEAN leadership, the relatively high level of external validity of the ASEAN regional resilience, as well as an increasingly convergent view on the security priorities within Southeast Asia, then there would be a significant improvement on the ASEAN countries’ preference for the ASEANlevel security force. In this case, the ASEAN security force is more likely to be projected and arranged. With this theoretical framework, we further analyze the ASEAN’s relatively unsuccessful pursuit of the security force in its history in different phases including the Cold War phase (1967-1991), the memberships enlargement phase (1992-2003), and the highspeed development phase (2004present) respectively. We find that the relatively low level of external validity of the regional resilience, the disagreement on the leading country in the field of security within the ASEAN, and the decreasing trend of convergence on the security demands among the ASEAN countries are challenges for the ASEAN security force construction for the abovementioned three phases.
In the future, the projection and construction of an ASEANlevel security force would remain an open question to both the ASEAN countries and other countries with great interests in Southeast Asia. However, it is noteworthy to investigate alternative approaches to security cooperation among the ASEAN and other countries to make the stability of Southeast Asia durable.
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