Copyright thediplomat
On October 26, 2025 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – ASEAN, for short – opened its biannual summit in Malaysia. Every ASEAN summit also features a host of other high-level meetings. This year, those meetings will feature leaders including Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, and U.S. President Donald Trump. This roster reflects the prominent place that ASEAN now occupies in Asia’s diplomatic calendar. But in recent years, the bloc has faced a number of challenges, among them the ongoing civil war in Myanmar, the maritime disputes in the South China Sea, and the intensifying strategic rivalry between China and the United States. To increasing numbers of critics, ASEAN has failed to meet these challenges. Worse, some say, the organization has devolved into little more than an ineffective talk-shop. These critics have raised a pressing question: in 2025, does ASEAN still matter? In this video by Diplomat Asia, our new YouTube channel, we discuss the history of ASEAN, the challenges the grouping faces, and its continued relevance (or lack thereof) in a world marked by great power competition.
