ASEAN’s Collective Resilience Agenda: Can It Deliver Under Pressure?

The 48th ASEAN Summit in early May took place amid prolonged military action in the Middle East and growing risks to global trade. These pressures have exposed ASEAN’s vulnerability to external shocks, but they have also created a rare moment of policy convergence. At the summit, leaders renewed their focus on energy security, food resilience, trade facilitation, maritime cooperation, and crisis coordination. The ASEAN Leaders’ Statement on the Response to the Middle East Crisis provides a clear political anchor for these priorities.

Yet ASEAN has never been short of mechanisms or declarations. Over the years, it has introduced many initiatives in energy cooperation, maritime cooperation, trade facilitation, disaster response, and food security. In the not-so-distant past, the region attempted collective responses during Covid-19, from regional vaccine procurement to coordinating public-health measures and keeping goods and people moving across borders. Many of these efforts, however, eventually fell short due to limited institutional coordination and the tendency of member states to prioritise national responses during crises. The real test now is whether ASEAN can turn these statements into practical action and use this crisis to build a more credible collective agenda to respond to emergencies.

Deeper regional cooperation can be a means of strengthening resilience in the face of global risks. This has been a resounding theme in ASEAN, and has grown stronger in recent years. In the State of Southeast Asia Survey 2026 (SSEA2026), strengthening regional integration among the ASEAN Member States (AMS) was the overwhelming preferred response to rising protectionism and nationalism, cited by 42.2 per cent of respondents. ASEAN also stands as the perceived leader in championing global free trade as well as maintaining a rules-based order and upholding international law.

Yet, the same survey also points to ASEAN’s credibility problem. Despite the high regard for ASEAN, the top concern among respondents is that ASEAN is slow and ineffective, and thus, unable to cope with fluid political and economic developments. The Middle East crisis brings these perceptions into sharp relief. While Southeast Asians want ASEAN to act collectively, they remain unsure whether it can deliver quickly when crises unfold.

The crisis cuts across several pillars of ASEAN cooperation. It is simultaneously a foreign policy issue, an energy security issue, a maritime security issue, a food security issue and a supply-chain issue. These are exactly the kinds of cross-cutting crises ASEAN says it wants to manage better under ASEAN 2045: Our Shared Future. Yet they expose an inherent ASEAN weakness: the grouping can convene, consult and issue statements, but it often struggles to coordinate quickly across sectoral tracks and deliver follow-through at speed.

Energy security constitutes the sternest test. The ASEAN Petroleum Security Agreement (APSA) is important, but it also illustrates ASEAN’s delivery gap. APSA has been discussed for years but has yet to enter into force because not all member states have completed ratification. Calls for its expeditious ratification and interim operationalisation are effectively an acknowledgement that ASEAN’s formal energy-security architecture needs to catch up with reality. Regional mechanisms underpinned by greater collective arrangements among AMS, such as an energy-sharing agreement, will always be challenging when member states are facing the same shock.

Although countries are facing the same supply source shock, their relative vulnerabilities vary in degree. The Philippines is more exposed given that 95 per cent of its crude oil imports are derived from the Persian Gulf whereas, for Indonesia, crude oil imports from these producers are relatively lower at 25 per cent. Singapore and Thailand also have higher oil reserves than other countries in the bloc. Thus, despite strong intentions to support fellow member states, providing large-scale assistance remains difficult largely due to domestic constraints. As such, negotiations for additional oil supplies to plug shortfalls have so far taken place with countries outside the bloc, such as Russia, rather than within ASEAN itself. In the meantime, proposed interim coordinated emergency response arrangements, real-time information sharing and voluntary commercial mechanisms will be necessary.

The more strategic answer lies in reducing ASEAN’s exposure over time. If ASEAN can diversify its energy mix and build stronger regional interconnections, it will become less vulnerable to external shocks from any single region or chokepoint. This is why the ASEAN Power Grid (APG) deserves more political attention. Such a grid will help to facilitate green transition and enhance resilience. Its cross-border nature, primarily facilitating energy trade through more interconnected grids, would allow ASEAN to manage volatility more effectively, especially as demand grows and the region’s energy systems become increasingly complex.

However, despite years of discussion, progress in the APG remains uneven due to regulatory differences, financing gaps, infrastructure constraints and national energy-security concerns. The lesson from the Middle East crisis is that ASEAN cannot wait for perfect conditions. It should prioritise commercially viable interconnection projects, pool financial resources, harmonise technical and regulatory standards and treat energy connectivity as both an economic and security priority.

The crisis also gives ASEAN a reason to think more strategically about maritime cooperation. The Strait of Hormuz is outside Southeast Asia, but the lesson from the current crisis is directly relevant to ASEAN. Maritime chokepoints are arteries for energy, food, industrial inputs, data cables and trade. Disruption in one chokepoint can quickly become a region-wide economic shock.

This should push ASEAN to widen its maritime agenda beyond dispute management. The South China Sea will remain central, but maritime resilience is also about freedom of navigation and overflight, port connectivity, safety of seafarers, submarine cables, critical underwater infrastructure, maritime cybersecurity and logistics continuity. The ASEAN Leaders’ Declaration on Maritime Cooperation is significant in this regard because it places maritime cooperation within a wider framework of peace, security, connectivity, sustainable development and resilience.

The proposed ASEAN Maritime Centre can help bring these issues together. However, the test is whether these platforms produce practical cooperation rather than simply more dialogue. ASEAN needs to connect maritime discussions on security, trade, energy, infrastructure and the blue economy more coherently, rather than treating them as separate tracks.

The proposed foreign ministers’ crisis communication and coordination protocol is another useful step. ASEAN does not lack meetings or statements, it lacks faster coordination when crises cut across different sectors. The Middle East crisis showed how foreign, economic, energy and agriculture tracks can respond actively, but not always in a synchronised way. A protocol could help by setting out clearer triggers and consultation between foreign ministers and other sectoral bodies. For example, if conflict in the Middle East continues to disrupt oil shipments or global shipping routes, ASEAN relevant sectoral bodies could convene rapid virtual consultations to assess regional exposure, coordinate strategic messaging, monitor supply-chain disruptions, exchange data on food and fuel reserves, and recommend temporary trade or logistics policies.

Singapore has a particular stake in this agenda. As a small and almost entirely import-dependent economy, Singapore is highly exposed to disruptions in energy flows, shipping routes and supply chains. It also has a strong interest in keeping ASEAN open, connected and rules-based. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s emphasis on deeper ASEAN integration, energy security, resilient intra-ASEAN supply chains and the swift ratification of APSA reflects this reality.

The 48th ASEAN Summit showed that ASEAN is not short of mechanisms or declarations. What it lacks is faster coordination and stronger implementation. The Middle East crisis should not be seen as a one-off external shock, but as a sign of the more complex disruptions ASEAN will face in the future. This offers a glimpse of the challenges Singapore may inherit when it assumes the ASEAN Chairmanship in 2027. Ultimately, ASEAN’s credibility will depend not on what it puts out in declarations, but on how effectively and quickly it can act together.

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Editor’s Note:
ASEANFocus+ articles are timely critical insight pieces published by the ASEAN Studies Centre.