General Lecture: “ASEAN Community 2015: What does it mean for Indonesia? And Current situation in the East Sea (South China Sea)”

The general lecture is run by Prof. Dr. Nguyen Quang Thuan, Vice President of Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Duy Dung, the director of Institute for Southeast Asian Studies; and Dr. Hassan Wirajuda, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia. Dr. Hassan Wirajuda made a presentation on “ASEAN Community 2015: What does it mean for Indonesia? And Current situation in the East Sea (South China Sea)”, according to him, the concept of ASEAN Community somehow is the result after 20 years of cooperation and talks, to make ASEAN from a loose associate to a community, and help ASEAN become a solid and powerful organization. Even though there are many efforts in deepening the cooperation between ASEAN but it is still playing the role of “bridge builder” though developing many ASEAN talks included ASEAN+1, ASEAN+3, ASEAN Regional Forum and East Asia Summit as well as having talks with other regional organizations. To make ASEAN Community become true with three main fronts is a difficult task and required a lot of time, efforts, and resources. This task is implementing and unable to achieve comprehensively in 2016.

Therefore, to achieve ASEAN Community in 2015 is very important to put ASEAN in a position of rider in the process of building bigger community in East Asia and Asia – Pacific. Today, when ASEAN is considered as less united, it raised a question of how does ASEAN maintain its central role. This matter related to Ministers of Foreign Affairs of ASEAN countries who are unable to agree on a final joint statement – the first time in ASEAN history especially related to East Sea (the South China Sea). ASEAN lost its central role in managing potential disputes in East Sea (South China Sea). At this point, ASEAN and China need to get back to the bilateral talks through forums as the idea of Indonesia to hold a conference on Managing potential disputes in East Sea (the South China Sea) since 1996, may be at the channel no. 1 or no. 1,5. Meanwhile, the countries in the East should strengthen their political and security cooperation in order to balance with economic cooperation.

The general lecture received many exchange ideas and discussions of participants; many questions are answered logically and satisfactorily./.

Nguyen Thu Ha