In 1974, Australia became the first dialogue partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and then the regional grouping’s first Comprehensive Strategic Partner in 2021. This paper explores the key lessons from this history relevant to European diplomats, policy-makers and analysts, with reflections on the creation of a strong, shared culture of ASEAN-Australia diplomatic engagement. For Australia this culture means embracing ambiguity and complexity, learning from new foreign policy concepts that emerge in the Southeast Asian region, and evolving joint diplomatic infrastructure. ASEAN and Australia have also worked carefully to ensure an inter-generational commitment to consistent and increasingly wide-ranging engagement, including on sensitive geostrategic issues. In 2024, Australia hosted the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit in Melbourne, established the ASEAN-Australia Centre, and also expanded trade relations with a new Southeast Asia economic engagement strategy. The notion of Indo-Pacific diplomacy described in this paper seeks to encapsulate the multiple strands of cultural, political and economic entanglement that have supported ASEAN-Australia ties for more than half a century, and through many different strategic contexts, including this decade’s turbulent period of heightened geopolitical competition.

Introducing ASEAN-Australia ties

Over fifty years ago, in 1974, Australia became the first dialogue partner of what was then a young and modestly endowed Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Australia, many years later, became the regional grouping’s first Comprehensive Strategic Partner in 2021.^[1] Over these decades, a joint Southeast Asian and Australian commitment to expanding political, strategic, economic and cultural linkages has created a model of diplomatic engagement which offers lessons for other countries and institutions working in the Indo-Pacific region. As a strategic concept, the Indo-Pacific draws together major centres of 21^st century power and trade, spanning South, Southeast and East Asia, as well as Oceania. Australia, in this respect, along with Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, sits at the fulcrum with ready access to both the Indian and Pacific Oceans. While interpretations of this region may vary, and the strategic concept itself is open to politicisation, it now forms a central part of Southeast Asia’s diplomatic architecture through the formal statement of the “ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific”.^[2] What is less well developed is any collective appreciation of how ASEAN and its key dialogue partners have evolved their diplomatic engagement, and how these experiences can help shape broader understanding of Indo-Pacific diplomacy.^[3]

This paper explores some of the lessons from Australia’s ASEAN history relevant to European diplomats, policymakers and analysts, with reflections on the creation of a strong, shared culture of ASEAN-Australia diplomatic engagement. The development of these ideas is, itself, part of a broader conversation between ASEAN scholars and diplomats, their counterparts across the European Union, and the Australians who are similarly interested to learn from the comparison of institutional and cultural practices of diplomacy in what is recognised as a tumultuous and dangerous moment in global history.^[4] Responses to the second Trump Presidency, with the erratic treatment of long-time friends and allies often indistinguishable from how the US government deals with antagonists, and even its enemies, diminishes confidence in some of the basic practices of diplomatic trust-building.^[5] The power politics practiced by Russia, under President Putin, and by China, led by President Xi, ensures that regional bodies such as ASEAN need to manage a range of complex and, in part, irreconcilable, priorities. Astanah Abdul Aziz, currently the ASEAN Deputy Secretary-General for political-security affairs, and Anthony Milner, a longstanding Australian academic advocate for greater engagement with ASEAN, have previously introduced the notion of “inclusive regionalism” to capture these dynamics.^[6] In Southeast Asia, the relentless flexing of Chinese economic muscle is, worryingly, now accompanied by persistent efforts to undermine the sovereignty of ASEAN members. Chinese strategy appears, in part, to be predicated on the disruptive potential of damaging specific bilateral relations, most often with the Philippines and Vietnam in recent years, where it judges, often correctly, that ASEAN “solidarity” and the related expression of “ASEAN centrality” are insufficient to generate a properly joined up response.^[7]

    It is in this context that reflections on how Australia has developed its shared culture of diplomatic engagement with Southeast Asia, multilaterally and bilaterally, may offer useful lessons for other countries and groups anticipating the expansion of their diplomatic work in the Indo-Pacific. The Australian experience, grounded in its own history, and subject to complex cultural and economic forces over time, is not, in this sense, a model that makes sense to replicate. Indeed, some of the lessons may point to aspects of vulnerability which could be better managed in the Australian context, and by others in their specific situations. What is arguably most important about the evolution of ASEAN-Australia diplomacy is the mutual appreciation that embracing ambiguity and the resulting complexities is itself a primary strategy for diplomatic work in the Indo-Pacific.^[8] As part of this, Australians have sought to learn from new foreign policy concepts and architectures that emerge in the Southeast Asian region, including from, for instance, the ASEAN Regional Forum, and the East Asia Summit.

Moments of Upheaval

While there are – across this fifty year history – regular enough moments of political and geostrategic upheaval, much like the ones we experience today, the other reality is that ASEAN and Australia have also worked carefully to ensure an inter-generational commitment to consistent and increasingly wide-ranging engagement.^[9] This commitment has expanded, not always in a linear fashion, to cover sensitive geostrategic issues. While the lack of ASEAN consensus on key points of concern, including the South China Sea, potential war between China and Taiwan, and the ongoing crises in Myanmar diminishes its global political weight, these inconsistencies are a further reality which should not be simply wished away because practical compromises do not match some, often distant, ideal. The management of these distances, between what is possible, practical or even acceptable, and what may be theoretical or indeed desirable, is an essential component of the art that makes it worth reflecting on how ASEAN and Australia work together.

Thinking of such a moment, and its practical diplomatic management, 2024 was a year of reinforcement, and then further evolution, for Australia’s long history of engagement with Southeast Asia. In 2024, Australia hosted the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit in Melbourne, established the ASEAN-Australia Centre, and also expanded trade relations with a new Southeast Asia economic engagement strategy, led by senior Australian business figure, Nicholas Moore. Further political changes in the region, including new leaders in Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia, are part of the permanently dynamic conditions that are managed nationally and bilaterally, and then regionally and multilaterally, through all the many different personal, institutional and structural connections that exist between Australia and its Southeast Asian neighbours.^[10]

The notion of Indo-Pacific diplomacy described in this paper seeks to encapsulate the many strands of cultural, political and economic entanglement that have supported ASEAN-Australia ties for more than half a century, and through many different strategic contexts, including this decade’s turbulent period of heightened geopolitical competition. Where there are lessons for Europe, they point towards a need to consider Southeast Asia, and therefore ASEAN, on its own terms, without undue comparison to other models of regionalism and diplomacy, including Europe’s own.^[11] There is limited ambition, and certainly no practical pathway, towards the style of economic integration embraced over decades by the European Union.

In political and security terms, the response of the EU to the Russian invasion of Ukraine also has only limited relevance, by analogy, to Southeast Asia’s strategic conditions. If a war over Taiwan happens, then that will obviously change quickly. In the meantime, the management of simmering disputes between ASEAN members remains imperfect, but the lack of recent large-scale inter-state conflict is certainly one of the precious results of ASEAN diplomacy.^[12] The management of internal conflict, on the other hand, is much less well-developed and effective, with the civil wars in Myanmar a long-term problem for ASEAN, presenting growing risks for overall regional stability.^[13] Where Southeast Asia, Australia and Europe can learn from each other, there will need to be a mutual appreciation of these inter-locking contexts and the constraints on diplomatic ambition that exist everywhere.

Peripheral diplomatic contexts

Australia’s dual inheritances of geography and history define the country’s long-term approach to diplomacy, especially in the context of an Indo-Pacific region always subject to great power attention.^[14] While from a European vantage, Australia can be judged the periphery, and a place like Tasmania even defined as the “periphery’s periphery”, Australia’s location is best understood on its own idiosyncratic terms. Originally a colonial outpost of the British empire, where there were only modest trade and other links to the countries of Southeast Asia, Australia was re-shaped in the 20^th century by its adoption of a reliable model of constitutional democracy supported by a globalised, trade-based economic model.

Vast resource endowments – especially iron ore – have created what is widely considered a successful 21^st century society, regularly leading assessments of quality life and liveability. Australia also long ago dispensed with racial restrictions on migration; its early history saw preference for “white European” settlers, and for models of strict economic protectionism. Australia is now one of the world’s most multicultural societies, with Australians from every corner of the world now joining together to create a vibrant and usually outward-looking culture, which is relatively informal, non-hierarchical, and focused on practical outcomes. In recent decades, very large migrant flows from East, South and Southeast Asia have helped to grow the national population to 28 million. With most of the population in a small number of coastal cities, Sydney and Melbourne both have around 5 million people, there is an increasingly urban tilt to the national culture. The other large cities – Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide – account for a similar number together, meaning that well over half of Australians live in these five largest cities. Outside the major cities, Australia’s main centres cling to the more fertile, and temperate, coastal areas. The tropics, and much of central Australia, have more extreme climates, with long dry-spells and periods of prolonged high temperatures.

It is in this set of unique geographical, economic and environmental conditions that shape Australia’s role strategically positioned at the southern fulcrum of the Indo-Pacific, with expansive maritime claims, and large numbers of offshore islands, most notably Tasmania, which sits at the southeastern edge of the Australian continent. From Tasmania’s capital, Hobart, Australia exerts its long-term claim to 42 per cent of Antarctica. For a country of such a modest population, fewer than 30 million people in total, adjacent, across the seas, to some of the most populous countries on earth, Australia seeks to shape its own region in ways that support Australian interests and values. While Australia’s foreign policy, and its approach to diplomacy, is not strictly bipartisan, and increasingly there are differences of ambition or emphasis apparent in domestic political debate, this paper is framed by an Australian’s appreciation of what is, over time, identifiably Australian about the diplomatic tradition.

That tradition emerges, like so much else in institutional Australia, from British colonial heritage. It was not until the Second World War that Australia began to think more creatively, and then independently, about its place in the world.^[15] The formation of an increasingly autonomous Department of External Affairs was part of this evolution, as was the further development of what is now the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, with its global network of diplomatic and economic missions.^[16] While in the 20^th century much of the weight of Australian diplomatic ambition may have been directed towards the United Kingdom and United States, and still to Europe, over recent decades, as part of what could be deemed the “ASEANisation” of Australian diplomacy, the balance has changed dramatically.^[17] Today, most of Australia’s significant diplomatic missions are in the Indo-Pacific, with Tokyo, Beijing, Bangkok, Hanoi, Manila, Jakarta and New Delhi all among the largest, busiest, and most prestigious in the network. Deputy Secretary level appointees are commonly posted as Ambassadors in most of these cities, reinforcing the judgment that Australia sees both significant risks and opportunities across this region.

Lingering ties to other English-speaking nations are seen most directly in the emergence of the AUKUS security partnership, which is predicated on the transfer and development of nuclear-powered submarine technology, and also perhaps in the special set of ties that Australia has to the former British colonies of Southeast Asia.^[18] There are particularly warm ties between Australia and Singapore, and Brunei. Relations with Malaysia, which have sometimes suffered from strident comments on both sides, have improved at a time when both countries are seeking to manage their complex Indo-Pacific ambitions. The creation of deeper economic connections with these three countries, which are the wealthiest per capita in ASEAN, is a key part of Australia’s Southeast Asia-oriented economic strategy. In one of the other harsh realities inherited from the 20^th century, Myanmar has remained very marginal in Australian calculations. The one period of exception, from around 2011 to 2021 when Myanmar briefly flirted with a more democratic and inclusive political system, saw much greater connections built than ever before. Frustratingly, for Australia, those investments in people-to-people, cultural, educational, scientific and strategic links are very difficult to maintain under the current military regime.^[19]

ASEAN-Australia Engagement Over Time 

For more than fifty years, successive Australian governments have sought to build long-term diplomatic engagement with the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). What was initially a five-country group in the 1960s and 1970s – with Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines – has grown far beyond its original ambitions to limit the expansion of communism in Southeast Asia.^[20] It now includes Brunei, which joined in 1984, and the mainland Southeast Asian countries of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. As a diplomatic grouping it does not share a common language, although English is used at the official level in most contexts, nor is there a single economic, political or strategic model. The countries of ASEAN advance their own interests, regularly in competition with each other, and also manage to create a basis for ongoing cooperation in cultural, economic and political-security spheres. For ASEAN members, there are inevitable frustrations in this model, and yet it has proved resilient and remarkably successful. Timor-Leste, which was made independent from Indonesia in 2002, is seeking to join ASEAN as its 11^th full member.^[21] Australia, for its part, has been a strong supporter of this further expansion at a time when Myanmar’s status, represented by an “empty chair” while the military dictatorship remains in-charge, creates friction within and beyond the ASEAN group. With no immediate prospect of better conditions in Myanmar, there will be more questions about how ASEAN, and its key dialogue partners, including Australia, manage these tense and tragic circumstances.

  One of the reasons that ASEAN membership is attractive for Timor-Leste, and that so many other countries seek closer ties with Southeast Asia, is that it has enjoyed a multi-decade economic boom, with significant improvements in living standards since the 1980s. Globalisation and greater trade flows have benefited all of Southeast Asia although the distribution of wealth is probably now also more starkly unequal than ever. Singapore, and some of the region’s other major cities, including Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Chiang Mai, Jakarta and even Phnom Penh, now stand out for their commercial success.^[22] In relative and absolute terms, these cities, and their sprawling metropolitan hinterlands, draw talent, capital and other resources from near-and-far. Other pockets of great wealth, including beachside pockets like Penang, Phuket and Sihanoukville, connect to global flows of resources in different ways. The region’s black economies, most notable in various borderlands, also have important outlets in leisure hotspots in almost every country. It is a complex picture which, in more metaphorical terms, means that the Southeast Asia of sunshine also casts some dark shadows.

Civil wars, drug and human trafficking, unregulated weapons markets, scam centres, terrorist networks: Southeast Asia gets regular attention for all of these social and economic harms. National and multilateral responses are a regular topic of discussion and coordination through ASEAN mechanisms. This century the emergence of Islamist terrorism, the persistence of heroin and methamphetamine production in the borderlands of mainland Southeast Asia, especially Myanmar and Laos, and the more recent proliferation of scam centres across the region, have motivated major policy and operational responses. In many cases, these responses are defined by ASEAN and its dialogue partners at both the bilateral and multilateral levels, with opportunities to secure policy outcomes, and credit, at both levels. On such sensitive matters, the limits of supranational coordination are often apparent, and there is great reluctance, among ASEAN members, for too much attention, risking interference, in their domestic affairs.

For Australia, the approach to ASEAN diplomacy requires deft balance between creative ambition for better outcomes and greater cooperation, while also deftly handling what are, in day-to-day diplomatic practice, usually conservative instincts among ASEAN members. The development of joint diplomatic infrastructure, with common mandates for further cooperation, has proved over more than 50 years to be the primary way that these issues are managed. The creation in 2024 of the ASEAN-Australia Centre is the most example. It inherits, in recent times, a mandate from the Australia-ASEAN Council, which itself pulled together earlier bilateral engagements between Australia and Thailand, Australia and Malaysia, and the more informal connections that existed at that level with countries like Vietnam and Singapore. The constellation of different forums and approaches means it can prove difficult, even now, to determine all of the different mechanisms and touchpoint – official, semi-official, informal, etc – that together create the conditions for Australia’s diplomatic work.

The creation, almost 20 years ago, of a designated Australian Ambassador to ASEAN is itself part of this process. Initially this was a “non-resident” position (see Bird, 2010), but since 2013 the Australian Ambassador to ASEAN has lived in Jakarta, maintaining close connections to the community of ASEAN diplomats, and to the ASEAN Secretariat.^[23] The Australian Mission to ASEAN, which is in the same secure compound as Australia’s bilateral Embassy to Indonesia, is now a large and complex organisation, headed by a senior Australian diplomat with a large Australian and locally-engaged staff. There is now also a significant Australian development assistance program that is managed by the Mission to ASEAN. A small number of Australian staff are based in the ASEAN Secretariat compound where there is a designated “Australian office”. These warm and now enduring ties ensure that Australian diplomacy, within the ASEAN architecture, is consistently focused on maintaining appropriately joint ambitions for the future.

One further set of changes relate to the development of Australia’s Southeast Asian diaspora communities. Connections between Australia and the countries of Southeast Asia have a strong people-to-people dimension. Over 1.1 million Australians have Southeast Asian family heritage, with what are now very large diaspora communities from Vietnam, Philippines and Malaysia. Members of these communities are also increasingly prominent in Australian public life. A few examples will be sufficient. There is the political theorist Tim Soutphommasane, whose family is originally from Laos. He is the Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Oxford, after holding senior positions at the University of Sydney. Mimi Tang, the newly appointed Chair of the ASEAN-Australia Centre Advisory Board is another example. She is a leading paediatric immunologist and biotechnology company founder, with a family background in Singapore and Malaysia. Others with Southeast Asian heritage include Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong (from Malaysia), Audra Morrice, a chef and tourism advocate (Singapore), Huong Le Thu, a leading political analyst (from Vietnam), and Su-Lin Ong, a top capital markets analyst (with family from Malaysia), and Lydia Santoso (from Indonesia) who is a senior lawyer based in Sydney and the Chair of the Australia Indonesia Institute.

Complicating ASEAN-Australia Relations

Within Australia there is a persistent commentary about the relative inattention to the countries of Southeast Asia, and the need to build greater capability. There are obvious gaps, and the precipitous decline of Indonesian (and other Southeast Asian) language learning in Australia is a serious issue. It is not clear that in the era of machine translation and artificially intelligent interpretation tools that there will be further demand for these skills. Australia currently lacks a national strategy for language education and instead relies on a relatively unique arrangement of cultivating and then accrediting the skills of bilingual speakers from diaspora communities. Outside specific communities, and a small number of government organisations, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, only modest value is put on language skills and the advantages they offer in a wide range of cross-cultural contexts.

And yet, for than half a century, Australian diplomats, academics, businesspeople and civil society advocates have worked hard to develop enduring relationships with the countries of Southeast Asia. There efforts have usually been warmly reciprocated, building deep connections between institutions and across generations. Time-after-time, Australian leaders, of almost all political persuasions, have opted to re-double efforts to work collaboratively with our neighbours to the north.^[24] The tapestry that results is a defining feature of Australian diplomacy and one of the most significant distinguishing features of Australia’s place in the world. The fact that, at its heart, these relations are defined by contradictions is one of the reasons, perhaps, that their evolution has proved successful over such long periods of time.

As the first dialogue partner for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Australia has worked hard to support the success of the regional body and its commitments to a more peaceful and prosperous region. The tally of achievements for Southeast Asia since its establishment in 1967 is worth recalling in what two senior Singaporean analysts simply call the “ASEAN miracle”.^[25] Back then, Southeast Asia – and much of the rest of the world – was divided, starkly, by ideology. ASEAN, in its early version, was only Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. At the time they each grappled, in their own fashion, with communist insurgencies. It was a bloody time. The Vietnam War raged, as did battles in Cambodia and Laos. Burma was an isolated socialist dictatorship. Brunei, still not independent from Britain, would wait until 1984 before it joined ASEAN.

Apart from Thailand, which has been part of ASEAN since the beginning, the countries of mainland Southeast Asia only joined the regional body in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and during a period of profound re-alignment in patterns of global power, trade and ideas. The emergence of the Internet, rapidly expanding regional shipping and aviation networks, mass education, including at the University level, and the rapid creation of English as Southeast Asia’s lingua franca, and the primary language of its elite, are some of the trends that have accelerated the creation of this century’s ASEAN diplomacy.

ASEAN is now famous for its high and regular tempo of meetings – with around 1400 each year. The rotating national chair, this year is Malaysia, next will be the Philippines, and then Singapore, means that every country’s bureaucracy, once a decade, is tested by the demands of hosting endless preparatory and regular meetings, followed by the Summit season – with Senior Official, Minister and then Head of Government engagements. Where a government is out of favour, like the Myanmar military regime this decade, extra care is taken to ensure that ASEAN’s credibility is maintained. Myanmar has been skipped as chair, and its political representatives are not welcome at ASEAN meetings; in a dramatic symbol there is only an “empty chair” at the “political level”. Senior officials attend some ASEAN functions in their stead.

A further complication is that, for the foreseeable future, Myanmar will remain one of the most sensitive issues for the grouping, with everyone’s credibility and the ASEAN grouping’s value as a regional broker, all now increasingly tested by hard questions about how such a dramatic negative turn has occurred. The February 2021 military coup, the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior figures in the duly elected government, the popular backlash against this military intervention, and then the wide-ranging civil war, motivated ASEAN to declare a 5-point consensus on Myanmar.

While this document, and other policy responses, have yet to create a pathway for political change in Myanmar, there is now significant nervousness, usually expressed quietly, among ASEAN diplomats, policy-makers and political figures that there are newly existential questions for ASEAN to consider. The situation is complicated by the diversity of external perspectives with China and Russia, both long-term ASEAN dialogue partners, both also key suppliers of military, technical, economic and diplomatic support to Myanmar’s regime. In these contested ways, ASEAN has many balances it needs to strike.

The practical management of such fraught situations is an ongoing challenge for ASEAN. For instance, in the week in 2025 that ASEAN hosted the Joint Cooperation Committee for Australia, with a series of formal events and functions, it did the same for Russia. The two countries are both ASEAN dialogue partners, and there is a broad requirement that these arrangements are symmetrical in their composition. Of course, on all of the key international issues of any relevance to ASEAN there is almost no common position between Canberra and Moscow. They both are prepared, however, to continue investing in their relationships with the ten countries of Southeast Asia, and to accept the many different contradictions that this presents. In this context the layers of history, personal connection, changing economic and political priorities, and the ever-present diplomatic real politic, keep big teams of diplomats and advisors busy. Delivering on ASEAN priorities requires a mix of collaboration and competition.

Being able to offer resources, in the way that Australia does, is a big advantage. Yet the relative economic contribution of Australia, anywhere in Southeast Asia, is dwarfed by China and potentially by other countries with few of the idealistic impressions that, at least in theory, shape Australian engagement with its Southeast Asian neighbours. The balance of today’s realities and tomorrow’s aspirations is what ultimately determines the success, and some of the permanent but tolerable frustration, of the Australian approach to working with ASEAN in its dynamic evolution.

Select Lessons for Europe

The Australian experience of long-term engagement with ASEAN offers some lessons about diplomacy, and perhaps there are some useful suggestions for those, like in Europe, that are considering the next steps in their strategies for Indo-Pacific engagement.

First, there is the expectation that any partners with ASEAN work with everyone, in the ASEAN way. ASEAN itself includes various sub-regional components, ideological cleavages, economic disparities, and personal and sometimes institutional preferences. The presentation of a joined-up handshake at summits and meetings can easily miss the hierarchies, arguments, priorities and, in essence, politics that define the work of the grouping and its interaction with the wider world.^[26] To simply suggest, as some do, that ASEAN’s preferences for non-interference in domestic affairs and for relatively smooth public communication is the entire story is to miss, quite profoundly, the range of contentions that shape ASEAN strategy and direction. ASEAN’s partners can best manage these complexities by seeking, as a start, to understand them, and to appreciate the changes which inevitably occur over time. Working with everyone does not mean there are not specific conditions of engagement, and the management of Myanmar’s pariah status under the current military regime is an excellent example. ASEAN also identifies, on a three-yearly cycle, a country coordinator for each of its dialogue partners. This is a further mechanism, when well-managed, to carefully advance both bilateral and multilateral interests.

Second, there is the need for anyone working closely with ASEAN to embrace ambiguity and complexity. In practical, day-to-day diplomatic terms this means there will be a complex system to navigate, with multiple layers, gatekeepers and potential brokers of access. The investment of time in considering these arrangements is the real arbiter of whether a country, or organisation, can effectively manage its connections to the countries of Southeast Asia. Working on an exclusively bilateral basis is fraught as it misses the requirement on all ASEAN countries, their leaders, bureaucracies and, most acutely, their Foreign Ministries to work with, through and, sometimes, around ASEAN and its plethora of mechanisms. The ambiguities that can result are a significant part of the diplomatic process, and the requirement is that all parties, internal and external, maintain sufficient awareness of what is happening, and why.  The only way that this level of understanding and, ideally, mutual appreciation can emerge and be sustained is through the regularity of interaction.

The third lesson is therefore the simplest: keep turning up. The annual cycle of diplomatic engagement managed on ASEAN’s terms is demanding on resources, people, ideas and, from time-to-time, patience. There is a need to sit through long meetings, seeks moments of genuine clarity and potential action, and also remain prudently watchful of the different types of diplomatic activity that can be happening simultaneously. There are also those times when, perhaps, very little will be on the formal agenda, and where there will be a need to wait for further opportunities. These are common experiences, certainly among ASEAN diplomats, and the appreciation of the pace and tempo of diplomatic activity cannot be ignored.

Fourth, those who want to engage with the countries of ASEAN need a proactive approach to learn from new concepts that emerge in the region. Southeast Asian diplomacy is not a facsimile of what has been found elsewhere, and the changing priorities of each nation often require constant study. This means that, for Australia at least, the academic and policy engagement with the countries of ASEAN needs to be a major intellectual undertaking. Whether appropriate resources are, in all respects, allocated to this task is a question best dealt with elsewhere, but it is apparent that without ongoing attention there will be gaps in what is known, by whom, and with what potential contribution to the national diplomatic undertaking. Looking closely at vernacular concepts, and each Southeast Asian nation has developed local concepts to explain its strategic circumstances, is part of this process. The intermingled histories that now shape the future of the ASEAN region are also deserving of serious study, although even Australia’s best universities have largely de-prioritised this “area” knowledge. It will likely only be through future shocks to national security or prosperity that this will change to any great extent.

Fifth, the Australian experience shows that it is important to continue developing joint diplomatic infrastructure and culture. The original ASEAN-Australia dialogue partnership, now followed by countless agreements, both permanent and sometimes short-term, offers a complicated scaffolding on to which different themes and issues can be well-positioned. The evolution of Australian cooperation has meant that, almost without exception, every year for over half-a-century there have been changes, adjustments, refinements, shifts – some big, some small. The constant ebb-and-flow of close cooperation means that some changes are barely noticed, at least at the time, and yet it can become clearer, as the years pass, that major shifts have already occurred. The transformation of Australia’s commitment to the ASEAN architecture’s unique multilateralism is a good example. For almost four decades there was no resident Ambassador to ASEAN, nor a full-scale Mission. And yet not so many years later there are Australian officials working daily inside the ASEAN Secretariat and, nearby, a full diplomatic presence with well-trained and skillful staff advancing Australia’s partnership in what would, once, have been considered unlikely ways. The creation of trust through these practices offers optimism that, at a time of such global upheaval, there is still value in the tried-and-tested mechanisms of international cooperation.

Sixth, there is a requirement to ensure that young people, in this case from across ASEAN and around Australia, learn how to work together. Australian government funded scholarship programs like the Australia Awards (and the specific subset for ASEAN students to study at Australian universities) as well as the New Colombo Plan (which funds Australian undergraduates for academic and professional experiences across the Indo-Pacific region) are standouts. Yet there are still indications that not everything is going well in terms of maintaining the most strategic linkages.^[27] Other programs, like Westpac Bank’s Asian Exchange, also contribute to offering Australian students a chance to understand Southeast Asia on its own terms. The ASEAN Australia Strategic Youth Partnership is another initiative, started by young Australian and Southeast Asian professionals, which joins people together at the youth diplomacy level. Leaders in this initiative have gone on, like co-founder Hayley Winchombe, to further key roles in ASEAN-Australia engagement. She is now a member of the inaugural advisory board for the new ASEAN-Australia Centre.

 

Final Thoughts on These Lessons

For Australia, the peace and prosperity of its nearest neighbours, especially Indonesia, is a primary strategic concern, and will always be prioritised at the government level.^[28] Business links are still regularly questioned, with many commentors bemoaning the lack of concerted commercial activity between Australia and the growing economies of its near neighbours to the north. Geographical and cultural perspectives, and the enduring Australian links to northern American and European markets, and the incredible growth of trade with Japan, South Korea and, most especially, China over recent generations means that the imperative for stronger business links with Southeast Asia has been inconsistent. People-to-people links are a different matter, with the over 1 million Australians of Southeast Asian heritage now helping to support much deeper cultural ties. The popularity of Southeast Asian holiday destinations, especially Bali and now Phuket, are a further factor. Australia also welcomes very large numbers of Southeast Asian visitors, often for educational and family reasons. There is a great deal of connection even if, in Australia, there is a permanent assessment that it is, still, never enough.

These ambitions for further connection point to one of the most important aspects of Australian diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific, generally, and then, in particular, when it comes to working with ASEAN members. Australia states a permanent commitment to doing more. This is not a flourish of empty rhetoric. The record shows that for many decades Australia has generated the political and economic resources necessary to keep up its engagement with ASEAN. Brief periods of relative inactivity, or strained relations, have been followed by substantial decade-by-decade development of diplomatic relations in almost all directions. The lessons outlined in this paper point to some of the practical consequences for this approach to diplomacy. While it may not receive a great deal of public attention it is, by design, relentlessly cooperative, calibrated for mutual understanding, and has no obvious end point. As many ASEAN and Australian voices like to explain, especially in the constant cycle of informal gatherings in Jakarta and elsewhere, there is simply no escaping the geographical realities. “You are there, we are here”, everyone tends to say eventually.

In offering these reflections on lessons for Europe from Australia’s engagement with ASEAN, the fact that Australia’s relationships with Europe, collectively and individually, are also changing rapidly is a further factor that needs to be considered. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and years-long war, persistent violence in the Middle East, and the further threats to global order in the Indo-Pacific, are all highly relevant to any conversation about comparative diplomacy that seeks to consider how Australia, Europe and the countries of the Indo-Pacific can all work together more effectively. In shaping this discussion of Australia’s history of diplomatic engagement, this paper has offered an initial set of policy and practical guidelines which can be further developed. The prospect of Australia and Europe finding more common ground is one that should be looked at carefully.

Perhaps there is a future model where shared ideas about the value of peaceful and open regionalism – with ASEAN-Australia-Europe all in focus – can help to avoid some of the most obvious, and destructive, outcomes of less well-conceived diplomatic approaches. At a moment of such potential global disorder and fragmentation, despotic regimes find ASEAN’s subtlety and diplomatic finesse difficult to appreciate. Instead, they tend to look for dominance and the best possible deal. When they are aggrieved, the consequences are unpredictable. While China, Russia and the United States all inevitably remain important partners for ASEAN, it may be that the Australian experience offers better pointers on the direction we can all seek to take.

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References

Abdul Aziz, A., Milner, A. (2024) “ASEAN’s inclusive regionalism: Ambitious at three levels”, Australian Journal of International Affairs, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2024.2313484, accessed 9 July 2025.

Acharya, A. (2012) The Making of Southeast Asia: International Relations of a Region, Singapore: ISEAS Publishing.Alexandra, L. (2021) “Building stronger relations between Australia and ASEAN”, Latrobe Asia Brief, 5.

Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2015) “Australia and ASEAN: Past, Present and Future”, speech by S. Merrifield delivered at the Foreign Service Institute, Manila, 27 March, available online at: SP150327: Australia and ASEAN: Past, present and future, accessed 9 July 2025.

Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2017) “Australia Today – What Does ASEAN Mean for Australia”, speech by J. Duke at the ASEAN 50 Years Celebration Business Forum hosted by the Council for International Trade and Commerce, Adelaide, 31 March, available online at: Australia today – What does ASEAN mean for Australia, accessed 9 July 2025.

Behm, A. (2022) No Enemies, No Friends: Restoring Australia’s Global Relevance, Perth: Upswell Publishing.

Cook, M. (2021) “ASEAN for Australia: Matters more, matters less”, Latrobe Asia Brief, No. 5.

Farrelly, N. (2025) “Myanmar’s desperate condition: fragmentation, drugs, money-laundering and more”, ASPI Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 18 March, available online at: https://www.aspi.org.au/strategist-posts/myanmars-desperate-condition-fragmentation-drugs-money-laundering-and-more, accessed 9 July 2025.

Farrelly, N., Alexandra, L. A., Seah, S., Ngoun, K. (2024) Comprehensive Strategic Partners: ASEAN and Australia after the first 50 years, Hobart, University of Tasmania.

Foreign Ministry, Indonesia (2023) “Indonesian Foreign Minister: Australia–ASEAN Anchoring Regional Stability”, speech by R. Marsudi, 13 July, available online at: https://kemlu.go.id/ portal/en/read/4953/berita/indonesian-foreign-minister-australia-asean-anchoring-regional stability   accessed 9 July 2025.

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Gyngell, A. (2022) “Testing ground: A new statecraft for South-East Asia”, Australian Foreign Affairs, 15, 6–27.

Ha, H. T. (2018) “ASEAN in Australia’s Indo-Pacific Outlook”, ISEAS Perspective, 2018/24, 20 April.

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Lim, R. (1984) “Australia and ASEAN — again”, Review, Asian Studies Association of Australia, 8(2), 20–27.

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Sukma, R. (2023) “Bringing more ambition to the Australia–Indonesia relationship”, East Asia Forum, 2 July, available online at: https://eastasiaforum.org/2023/07/02/bringing-more-ambition-to-the-australia-indonesia-relationship, accessed 9 July 2025.

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^[1] For ASEAN, and many others, in the hierarchy of diplomatic relationships a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” is currently the premier partnership vehicle. China, and a few other countries, are highly focussed in their diplomatic practice on advancing large numbers of these arrangements. ASEAN has, to that extent, absorbed an external process and concept. China was ASEAN’s second Comprehensive Strategic Partner.

^[2] Ha, H. T. (2018) “ASEAN in Australia’s Indo-Pacific Outlook”, ISEAS Perspective, 24, 20 April; Sukma, R. (2019) “Indonesia, ASEAN and shaping the Indo-Pacific idea”, East Asia Forum, 19 November, available online.

^[3] Natalagawa, M. (2018) Does ASEAN Matter? A View from Within, Singapore: ISEAS Publishing; Severino, R. (2008) ASEAN, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

^[4] Le Thu, H. (2018) “Australia and ASEAN: Together for the Sake of a New Multipolar World Order”, Security Challenges, 14(1), 26–32; Mahbubani, K. (2022) “Australia’s choice: Can it be a bridge to Asia?”, Australian Foreign Affairs, 15 July, 70–89;
Percival Wood, S. (2014) “Australia and ASEAN: A Marriage of Convenience?”, in Percival Wood, S., He, B. (eds) The Australia–ASEAN Dialogue: Tracing 40 Years of Partnership, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 13–32.

^[5] The early indications, in mid-2025, are that the Trump presidency has embarked on what will eventually be deemed unsustainable destabilising tactics. The flurry of commentary about the rapid and erratic imposition of tariffs, some of which are deigned to starkly penalise specific ASEAN members, is beyond the scope of this paper. However, the tensions and issues of this specific moment are an essential part of framing historical analysis at this time.

^[6] Abdul Aziz, A., Milner, A. (2024) “ASEAN’s inclusive regionalism: Ambitious at three levels”, Australian Journal of International Affairs, available online.

^[7] For two key Southeast Asian perspectives, see Sukma, R. (2012) “Insight: Without Unity, No Centrality”, The Jakarta Post, 17 July; Tan, S. S. (2013) “ASEAN Centrality”, in CSCAP Regional Security Outlook 2013, Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, 26–29, available online.

^[8] Cook, M. (2021) “ASEAN for Australia: Matters more, matters less”, Latrobe Asia Brief, No. 5.

^[9] Alexandra, L. (2021) “Building stronger relations between Australia and ASEAN”, Latrobe Asia Brief, No. 5; Farrelly, N., Alexandra, L. A., Seah, S., Ngoun, K. (2024) Comprehensive Strategic Partners: ASEAN and Australia after the First 50 years, Hobart: University of Tasmania.

^[10] For some of the best descriptions of Australian diplomacy in this context see Gyngell, A. (2022) “Testing ground: A new statecraft for South-East Asia”, Australian Foreign Affairs, 15, 6–27.

^[11] Roberts, C. B. (2012) ASEAN Regionalism: Cooperation, Values and Institutionalization, Abingdon: Routledge.

^[12] As highlighted by Mahbubani, K., Sng, J. (2021) The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace, Singapore: NUS Press/Ridge Books.

^[13] Farrelly, N. (2025) “Myanmar’s desperate condition: fragmentation, drugs, money-laundering and more”, ASPI Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 18 March, available online.

^[14] Behm, A. (2022) No Enemies, No Friends: Restoring Australia’s Global Relevance, Perth: Upswell Publishing.

^[15] Although with limitations as explored in two key contributions by Allan Gyngell, the great Australian analyst and diplomat: Gyngell, A. (2021) Fear of Abandonment: Australia in the World since 1942, Melbourne, La Trobe University Press; Gyngell, A. (2022) “Testing ground: A new statecraft for South-East Asia”, Australian Foreign Affairs, 15, 6–27.

^[16] Okamoto, J. (2010) Australia’s Foreign Economic Policy and ASEAN, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

^[17] For useful context, Frost, F. (2013) ASEAN and Regional Cooperation: Recent Developments and Australia’s Interests, Parliamentary Library Research Paper Series, Canberra: Department of Parliamentary Services; Frost, F. (2016) Engaging the Neighbours: Australia and ASEAN since 1974, Canberra: ANU Press;
Lawe-Davies, J. (1981) The Politics of Protection: Australian–ASEAN Economic Relations 1975–1980, Nathan: Centre for the Study of Australian Asian Relations, Griffith University;
Lim, R. (1984) “Australia and ASEAN — again”, Review, Asian Studies Association of Australia, 8(2), 20–27;
Lim, R. (1998) “The ASEAN Regional Forum: Building on Sand”, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 20(2), 115–136;
Percival Wood, S., He, B. (2014) The Australia–ASEAN Dialogue: Tracing 40 Years of Partnership, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Richardson, M., Chin, K. W. (2004) Australia–New Zealand & Southeast Asia Relations: An Agenda for Closer Cooperation, Singapore: ISEAS Publications.

^[18] Hoang, T. H. (2022) “Understanding the Institutional Challenge of Indo-Pacific Minilaterals to ASEAN”, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 44(1), 1–30.

^[19] History suggests, however, that these investments will not prove wasted and that, eventually, Myanmar and Australia will enjoy further periods of greater connection and collaboration. After periods when Australia’s ties to Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, for instance, were particularly fraught, the long-term value of investment in connections and partnership is, in time, made very clear.

^[20] Acharya, A. (2012) The Making of Southeast Asia: International Relations of a Region, Singapore: ISEAS Publishing.

^[21] For discussion of the complexities, see Lin, J., Seah, S., Suvannaphakdy, S., Martinus, M. (2024) Timor-Leste in ASEAN: Is it Ready to Join? Trends in Southeast Asia, Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

^[22] The inequality between wealthy urban and impoverished rural areas, especially across the entire region, is one of the starkest socio-economic pictures imaginable. To compare, for example, the experiences of people living in central Singapore and those in small villages in rural Rakhine State in western Myanmar is to navigate almost the full spectrum of human experience in the world today.

^[23] See contributions from former Australian Ambassadors to ASEAN: Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2017) “Australia today – What does ASEAN mean for Australia”, speech by J. Duke at the ASEAN 50 Years Celebration Business Forum hosted by the Council for International Trade and Commerce, Adelaide, 31 March, available online; Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2015) “Australia and ASEAN: Past, Present and Future”, speech by S. Merrifield delivered at the Foreign Service Institute, Manila, 27 March, available online.

^[24] In May 2025, the newly elected Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, made his first international visit to Indonesia, where he was hosted by President Prabowo Subianto. This is now a habit of Australian leaders, across the political spectrum, although some conservative politicians appear much less comfortable with this vague tradition, opting instead to focus diplomatic and rhetorical energy on reinforcing ties to the US and UK.

^[25] Mahbubani, K., Sng, J. (2021) The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace, Singapore: NUS Press/Ridge Books.

^[26] In recent times, every major ASEAN function has a photo opportunity marked by the “ASEAN handshake” of interlocking, crossed-arms.

^[27] Patton, S. (2022) “Crumbling cornerstone? Australia’s education ties with Southeast Asia”, Lowy Institute for International Policy, November, available online.

^[28] For aspects of the Indonesian response see Foreign Ministry, Indonesia (2023) Australia–ASEAN Anchoring Regional Stability, speech by R. Marsudi, 13 July, available online; Sukma, R. (2023) “Bringing more ambition to the Australia–Indonesia relationship”, East Asia Forum, 2 July, available online.