ASEAN 50: Regional Security Cooperation through Selected Documents curates key official documents that establish ASEAN as the foundation of Southeast Asia's peace and security. Since 1967, ASEAN has played the crucial role of managing conflicts and maintaining stability in a region shaped by diverse political, economic and socio-cultural dynamics. During the Cold War, ASEAN's ability to keep major power rivalries and intra-mural disputes in check provided the conditions for economic growth in the region. Yet the extent of ASEAN's contributions to the security of Southeast Asia have not been systematically presented.This compendium of official ASEAN declarations, statements, treaties, conventions and workplans demonstrates the activism and innovation of ASEAN member countries in their management of regional security for the past five decades. ASEAN 50: Regional Security Cooperation through Selected Documents provides answers to how ASEAN remains a cohesive organisation through periods of regional conflict, how ASEAN unity thrives despite seemingly insurmountable differences among the ten members, and how ASEAN centrality is resilient against pressure arising from great power influences in Southeast Asia.

On 28 July 2008, the ASEAN Studies Centre and the Regional Economic Studies Programme, both of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung organized a roundtable on The ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint. The brainstorming session gathered Southeast Asian experts from the region to discuss the AEC Blueprint, which ASEANs leaders had adopted at their summit meeting in November 2007, and the prospects of any obstacles to its implementation by the target year, 2015. The roundtable started with a progress report on the AEC Blueprint given by S. Pushpanathan, Principal Director of Economic Integration and Finance, ASEAN Secretariat, Jakarta. Thereafter, the sessions examined the various aspects of the Blueprint tackling the non-tariff barriers, designing a comprehensive ASEAN Investment Agreement, a regional framework for competition policy, the role of infrastructure development in economic integration, the importance of international production networks in economic integration, etc.

Talking about ASEAN, this volume reappraises the organization from the inside, through controversial or perplexing issues such as the ASEAN Way, the accession of the new members, including Myanmar, the principle of non-interference, regional security, regional economic integration, the haze and SARS, and ASEAN's future.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is strategically significant because of its size, dynamism, and role in the Asian economic and security architectures. This paper examines how ASEAN seeks to strengthen these assets through "centrality" in intraregional and external policy decisions. It recommends a two-speed approach toward centrality in order to maximize regional incomes and benefit all member economies: first, selective engagement by ASEAN members in productive external partnerships and, second, vigorous policies to share gains across the region. This strategy has solid underpinnings in the Kemp-Wan theorem on trade agreements. It would warrant, for example, a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement with incomplete ASEAN membership, complemented with policies to extend gains across the region. The United States could support this framework by pursuing deep relations with some ASEAN members, while broadly assisting the region's development.