ASEAN’s Convening Power Meets Its Delivery Test: Lessons From the 59th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting

The 59th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (AMM) and related meetings in Pasay City, Philippines from 20-24 July 2026, produced no defining breakthrough. Yet Manila as Chair reaffirmed ASEAN’s strategic value as a convening centre of the regional architecture, bringing great power rivals together, keeping channels open and anchoring engagement in ASEAN-led institutions. The harder test is whether ASEAN’s convening power can generate greater leverage and practical outcomes, particularly on the South China Sea, Myanmar and the region’s exposure to external shocks. Shaping the Regional Space ASEAN again demonstrated its value as one of the few venues in the world now capable of hosting bilateral talks between rival great powers, that is, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi representing their respective nation-states. Despite the US’ condemnation of Chinese aggressiveness at the Second Thomas Shoal, Rubio and Wang still held lengthy discussions on preparations for Chinese President Xi’s upcoming US visit and ways to manage bilateral differences. Likewise, the ASEAN gathering offered diplomatic space for Rubio to meet his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, their first face-to-face meeting since last July, to discuss the Ukraine war. Notably, ASEAN’s position in the Indo-Pacific was elevated by the first-ever meeting by the QUAD Foreign Ministers on the sidelines of ASEAN-led gatherings to reaffirm the latter bloc’s commitment to a free, open Indo-Pacific “grounded in the rule of law, sovereignty and territorial integrity”. This is amidst growing Chinese assertiveness in the region and the QUAD’s issuance of a standalone joint statement on cooperation with ASEAN, reaffirming support for ASEAN’s unity, centrality and the Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP). ASEAN’s regional role was further reinforced through the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the East Asia Summit (EAS), the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) and the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference (PMC). Additionally, ASEAN admitted Türkiye as its 12th Dialogue Partner and upgraded Germany and Qatar as Sectoral Dialogue Partners, expanding its network of influential middle powers. The 59th AMM also highlighted ASEAN’s historical role in the region by commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC). ASEAN marked the TAC’s golden jubilee by admitting Sweden, Poland, Romania and Lithuania as its newest High Contracting Parties (HCPs) and launching the Guidelines on the Modalities for Engagement of ASEAN with HCPs under the Treaty. The accession of these four European Union (EU) member states may signal a new wave of interest among European countries in having a stronger foothold in Southeast Asia. These Guidelines will place ASEAN’s engagement with HCPs that are not formal partners within more requirements on structured and operational frameworks. In doing so, the Guidelines raise the bar for engagement under the TAC, as exemplified by the four new HCPs from the EU, all nation-states with advanced economy or technology capable of implementing practical projects. By a higher bar, they provide a means of testing the commitment, reliability and capacity of existing non-partner HCPs before considering their admission to ASEAN’s group of formal partners. This approach may help to prevent HCPs with competing geopolitical agendas, such as Iran, North Korea, Cuba or Ukraine, from becoming a formal partner, thus disrupting ASEAN’s high-level summits. While ASEAN’s role and values in the region appear to be growing, the bloc has again revealed its inherent weakness in the long-running South China Sea (SCS) dispute, following two consecutive recent flare-ups between China and the Philippines. The first clash occurred at Second Thomas Shoal just one day before the AMM’s opening, while the second standoff at Scarborough Shoal occurred a day after the ASEAN-China meeting and the bilateral meeting between the Chinese foreign minister and the Philippine foreign secretary. Although China has employed similar tactics around previous AMMs, these incidents represented a notable escalation in their timing and focus, as they coincided with high-profile diplomatic events hosted by the ASEAN Chair. This underscores ASEAN’s inability to alter great power actions on the ground, despite its continuing value as a shared venue for diplomacy. These clashes, together with growing tensions between China and the Philippines in the SCS in recent years, have presented mounting challenges to the negotiations on the Code of Conduct (COC), even as it is expected to be finalised at the ASEAN Summit in November 2026. The Five-Point Consensus at a Crossroads Myanmar’s post-election landscape has made ASEAN’s dilemma more acute. The military-backed polls at end-2025 have enabled the former junta to try recasting itself as a civilian administration and to seek the restoration of full political representation in ASEAN. This is despite how the military-aligned Myanmar parliament challenges the Five-Point Consensus (5PC) as “interference” in Myanmar’s internal affairs. ASEAN’s response in Bangkok and Manila points to some form of recalibration while the Joint Communiqué (JC) still identifies the 5PC as ASEAN’s “main reference”, but also notes the elections, endorses constructive and principled engagement, and envisages benchmarks for assessing progress before further steps are taken. ASEAN’s carefully calibrated language in the JC suggests that re-engagement is not intended to amount to automatic recognition or endorsement of the new administration. However, expanding bilateral contacts could gradually normalise the administration without the latter making commensurate progress. The 5PC will probably survive as ASEAN’s formal position but whether it retains political relevance will depend on ASEAN aligning these bilateral initiatives with its collective approach and making deeper engagement conditional on concrete and measurable progress. Energy Resiliency Remains a Strategic Piece of the Puzzle On the economic front, the importance of the resilience in energy supply emerged as a key theme in the meetings. Of immediate note and a continued key area of concern pertained to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, where the latest rounds of fighting have seen a resurgence of energy supply concerns and a rebound in energy commodity prices. ASEAN’s concerns not only centre on the conflict’s immediate implications but also the more broad-based, longer-term socioeconomic effects of a drawn-out conflict. The call for greater cooperation and coordination amongst ASEAN Member States (AMS) surfaced in the JC of the meeting as a driving theme for the success of key initiatives earmarked to achieve greater energy security. In terms of a short-term response to these energy supply shocks, the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Petroleum Security (APSA) has returned to the forefront after limited traction in its first iteration. ASEAN has called for some urgency on this; it has become a bellwether of how effective and deeper regional cooperation could be operationalised in times of crisis, with the revamped framework focused on information-sharing and mutual assistance. The first step towards strengthening the necessary coordination mechanisms would be the required domestic ratification of APSA by AMS, however, before any benefits can accrue from this framework. The ASEAN Power Grid (APG) has also been a high-profile regional initiative which has had some success on a cluster basis; this is now seen as an imperative. The Lao PDR-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project (LTMS-PIP) and the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines Power Integration Project (BIMP-PIP) are the prime examples, but further work to expand this to a regional mechanism, addressing challenges in project financing and regulatory alignment will be needed. Overall, the gap between attaining consensus and practical delivery captures the wider lesson from the recent meetings in Manila. ASEAN remains central to the regional architecture, but the grouping’s credibility will increasingly depend on whether it can turn convening power into tangible outcomes against global geopolitical and geoeconomic headwinds.