As economic groupings go, ASEAN defines dysfunction. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is a disparate collection of 10 places with little more in common than longitudinal and latitudinal lines on a map. Gathering democrats, communists, authoritarians and a sultanate, it purports to speak with a unified voice for a population of 625 million and a region of vast resources.
In reality, it's the geopolitical equivalent of a broken family's occasional reunions where everything's left unsaid behind forced smiles and all eyes are on the clock — and the door. As Phnom Penh-based writer Caitlin McCaffrie put it: "ASEAN is a strange beast. In many ways it represents not so much a coming together of like-minded states but an alliance of necessity formed to counterbalance the larger regional powers of China and India." And like all fragmented families, she adds, it "remains stubbornly divided."
Human rights abuses tarnish several ASEAN members, while the democratic principles Americans claim to hold so dear often die a slow and public death. Yet this is the crowd President Barack Obama invited to the United States this week for a summit, and a terribly awkward one at that.