As geopolitical shocks expose the limits of Southeast Asia's liberal economic model, scholars argue the region needs not reinvention but recalibration.
A panel discussion was convened by the Centre on Asia and Globalisation (CAG), Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP). Unless otherwise noted, all panellists are affiliated with CAG.
We are living, as Denis Hew, Senior Research Fellow, noted in his opening remarks at the panel discussion, “Southeast Asia’s Economic Security in a Changing World Order”, in an age of “polycrisis”. Multiple emergencies compound one another simultaneously. Great power rivalry is intensifying. Economic fragmentation is accelerating. Supply chains remain volatile. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has driven up energy prices, feeding through to fertiliser costs and stoking fears over food security. And running parallel to all of this, the United States continues to pursue aggressive, targeted trade policies, with the de-escalation of tensions appearing nowhere on the horizon. The question this panel convened to answer was blunt: is the economic security model that has anchored Southeast Asia’s prosperity for decades still fit for purpose?
The Model That Built Prosperity
To understand what is being stress-tested, one must first appreciate what the model actually was, which in this context largely means the stance of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
As Professor Khong Yuen Foong, Co-Director of CAG and Li Ka Shing Professor in Political Science pointed out, ASEAN was conceptually ahead of mainstream security scholars from the very beginning. While Western academics debated security in narrow military terms well into the post-Cold War era, ASEAN’s founding framework of “comprehensive security” had always included economics as a core pillar.
This comprehensive vision translated into a strategic bet. While a hot war was raging in Vietnam, ASEAN’s founding five chose to align with the US and the West. They judged that their economic security depended on integrating with the capitalist world economy. It worked. Export-led growth lifted living standards across the region.
The model was based on the idea that deeper trade ties reduce the incentives for conflict; that a rules-based order would keep shipping lanes open, investment flows predictable, and technology transfer relatively unconstrained. “But the world has changed,” said Khong, “with the US, the former champion of the so-called liberal international order defecting on many of its key rules, norms and institutions.” He said this calls for a serious rethink of what economic security involves today.
For Khong, that rethink centres on resilience: the capacity to withstand shocks when the external environment turns hostile. He identifies three qualities that define it: endurance (staying functional when trade or supply chains are disrupted), autonomy (enough independence to resist external coercion), and adaptability (the speed to diversify suppliers and pivot to new markets). Open, inclusive regionalism is still better than the alternative, he argued, but openness without these safeguards is no longer enough.
Adapting Without Transforming
If the world has changed, how should ASEAN adapt? Barbora Valockova, Research Fellow, drawing on her research with Mae Chow, Research Associate, said, “ASEAN has adapted more than many critics might acknowledge.” The key, she argued, is understanding how that adaptation has worked. ASEAN does not redesign itself from the ground up in response to crisis. It layers, adding new mechanisms, funds, and coordination bodies onto existing ones while preserving the underlying principles of consensus and non-interference.
Each major shock has left behind durable institutional residue. The 1997–98 financial crisis produced regional financial safety nets. The COVID-19 pandemic drove ASEAN toward more joined-up coordination across health, logistics, and macroeconomic recovery. Trade disruptions accelerated integration through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and prompted early discussions on supply chain resilience and a dedicated geoeconomic task force. The direction of travel has been toward a more interconnected economic security architecture.
But Valockova was candid about the limits. The risk, she warned, is ending up with a “dense yet shallow architecture” with many bodies and frameworks, but insufficient resources, slow decision-making, and weak follow-through. The real question is not whether ASEAN has mechanisms, but whether those mechanisms are operational and forward-looking enough to absorb the shocks now arriving faster and in combination.
The Human-Centric Gap
Mely Caballero-Anthony, Professor of International Relations and Head of the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), argued that ASEAN’s economic security model suffers from the wrong framing. For decades, it has been organised around the state, assuming that national-level prosperity eventually trickles down to individuals and communities. However, Professor Caballero-Anthony said, “the evidence that the liberal economic model has failed is not just theoretical, it’s empirical.”
“If you look at survey after survey,” she said, “inequality hasn't really improved. In fact, the gap has actually increased.” She said the resurgence of conflict has threatened food security, energy security, and has heightened the vulnerabilities of those individuals and communities that may have been “marginalised in this so-called hyper-connected, hyper-globalised environment.”
The response is what she terms “human-centric developmentalism.” Not a rejection of openness or integration but a reorientation of their purpose. Integration should be judged not only by trade volumes and tariff reductions, but by whether it delivers “freedom from want and freedom from fear” for actual people. The state must remain active, but broaden its partnerships, working with civil society, the private sector, and non-state actors as genuine co-producers of resilience, not merely recipients of top-down policy.
Resilience as the New Frame
The panel's broader message was that ASEAN's vocabulary is quietly shifting from "economic security" to "economic resilience." You can see it in the documents. The 2019 ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific dealt in broad strokes: openness, inclusivity, cooperation. The 2025 Community Vision for 2045 is far more concrete, addressing supply chains, food and energy security, digital infrastructure, and disaster risk financing.
As Khong put it, a country can be deeply globalised and still resilient, if it has the buffers, institutions, and options. Equally, it can be dangerously insecure regardless of how open it is, if its export base is narrow, its debt is high, and its institutions are fragile. Hew, whose own research spans regional trade and development policy, grounded these structural observations in the lived consequences of the polycrisis for people, for communities and for the political trust that sustains the entire model.
Fit for Purpose but in Need of an Upgrade
No one on the panel was willing to declare that Southeast Asia’s economic security model was no longer fit for purpose. Southeast Asia cannot afford to close itself off. But openness without resilience is increasingly insufficient as a strategy. The external environment that made openness work (stable great-power relations, functioning multilateral institutions, unconstrained technology flows, open shipping lanes) can no longer be taken for granted.
What is required is not reinvention but recalibration. This means stronger regional insurance mechanisms in finance, energy, health, and supply chains; more operational contingency arrangements for critical chokepoints; faster cross-pillar crisis coordination. Crucially, it also demands a domestic dimension that places the security of people at the centre of the framework, one that looks beyond aggregate growth figures to ask whether integration is actually reaching those most exposed to its disruptions.
Southeast Asia and ASEAN have the tools and frameworks needed to respond if refreshed in the right way. The stress test, in other words, is already underway.
This article is based on the panel discussion "Southeast Asia's Economic Security in a Changing World Order," hosted by the Centre on Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.