Roles for the US and ASEAN in Promoting Regional Stability

Against a backdrop of continuing maritime clashes in the South China Sea, China’s recent suspension of bilateral US strategic dialogue, and continued militarization of existing regional disputes, the role of ASEAN as a forum for promoting regional stability appears more crucial than ever.
However, the countries of Southeast Asia and their two most consequential interlocutors, China and the United States, have distinct and at times mutually exclusive views of regional stability and how to attain it.
Nevertheless, there is a limited set of conditions related to stability in Southeast Asia where the United States and China have compatible interests - or at least might agree that compromising on some interests is better than losing all.
In her APLN report, “The United States: An Increasingly Incidental Provider of Regional Stability in the Asia-Pacific?” Amb. Piper Campbell, Chair of the Department of Foreign Policy and Global Security in the School of International Studies at American University, examined these shifting regional dynamics and proposes new initiatives for the US and ASEAN toward building Asia-Pacific stability in this context.
This discussion took place just as the US and leading regional actors prepared to gather for the ASEAN Summit in early October.
Amb. Campbell was joined by Elina Noor, Senior Fellow in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Prashanth Parameswaran, Founder of the ASEAN Wonk Newsletter and Fellow at the Wilson Center. The discussion was moderated by Frank O’Donnell, Senior Research Adviser at APLN.
The event is part of the Asia-Dialogue on China-US Relations, a project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.