For decades, Southeast Asia has built its economic security on a simple proposition — that openness works. Regional integration, export-led growth and deep embeddedness in global supply chains helped ASEAN become the world’s fifth-largest economy in 2024 with a combined GDP of US$3.9 trillion. But that model now rests on increasingly fragile foundations and must be urgently recalibrated.
While ASEAN has never articulated a formal economic security doctrine, its approach rests on two mutually reinforcing concepts — commercial liberalism and neoliberal institutionalism. The logic was that trade and investment would bind states together, create mutual dependence and raise the costs of conflict, while regularised cooperation, institutions and rules would reduce uncertainty and sustain regional stability. This belief that regional integration would generate prosperity and resilience has expanded over time to encompass financial crises, climate risks and health emergencies.
But intensifying US–China rivalry has fractured the liberal international order on which ASEAN’s strategy was premised. What began as a trade war has become a full-spectrum geoeconomic contest spanning technology controls, investment screening, export restrictions and the weaponisation of trade and supply chains.
