In 2020 the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) moved quickly during a global pandemic to halt the spread of Covid-19, with impressive mobilization at local, national and regional levels. Across such an economically and politically diverse group of countries, some fared better than others. The response to this ongoing crisis highlighted several important institutional strengths across this region of 650 million people. It also emphasized the range of financial, cultural, strategic and administrative vulnerabilities within the ASEAN region. This paper explores the response to the pandemic as a framework for understanding how ASEAN may handle future crises. It presents a brief analysis of the potential for improved regional responses to damaging health, conflict and natural disaster scenarios. In this context, ASEAN’s tentative answer to Myanmar’s February 2021 coup is a critical example of the regional body’s limited capacity for large-scale collective response. As potential partners for crisis response in Southeast Asia, the United States, China, Japan, the European Union, and Australia are all relevant to this discussion.
