Southeast Asia From ASEAN to ASEAN Community towards COVID-19 Pandemic

บทคัดย่อ

This paper describes how ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asia) was established and why ASEAN Community was founded after the cold war. It also analyses the success and failure of ASEAN Community compared to EU. Sub-regional groups in ASEAN and intra-region organizations such as India Act East and Mekong-Ganga Cooperation which try to cooperate with ASEAN Community and East Asia are also discussed. Regional organizations in Asia and Southeast Asia are impacted by COVID-19 instead of working to meet the objectives in 2025. The impact of COVID-19 to regional cooperation are tremendous, especially in social security and labor movement. These lead to the worst sectors affected by pandemic, such as accommodation and food services, tourism, wholesale trade, transportation, and construction, etc. The author suggests that concept of ASEAN way (no interference) should be changed to flexible or constructive engagement in order to help each other, not leave any countries in the region behind. The success of ASEAN cooperation after the COVID-19 has been solved are also recommended by the author.