INTRODUCTION

On 20 November 2007, the leaders of the ten states comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed the ASEAN Charter. After forty years of existence, the Southeast Asian intergovernmental organization codified the key principles and purposes of the association through the Charter. Then ASEAN Secretary General Ong Keng Yong declared that the Charter serves the organization in three interrelated ways: it formally accords ASEAN its legal personality; it establishes greater institutional accountability and compliance system; and it reinforces the perception of ASEAN as a serious regional player in the Asia-Pacific region.

Signed with the ASEAN Charter are three blueprints that serve as the pillars of the Association towards building and creating an ASEAN community. The first pillar is the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) blueprint, with the goal of forging economic integration within the region by 2015. The AEC is part of the Association's efforts to “modernise the group's commerce and economic systems to facilitate a better flow of people and goods between countries”. The AEC anticipates the following: a single market and production base; a highly competitive economic region; a region of equitable economic development, and; a region fully integrated into the global economy.

The second pillar of the ASEAN community is the ASEAN Political Security Community (APSC) blueprint. The APSC Blueprint envisages ASEAN as a rules-based community of shared values and norms; a cohesive, peaceful, stable, and resilient region with shared responsibility for comprehensive security; as well as a dynamic and outward-looking region in an increasingly integrated and interdependent world. With the APSC, the members of the community pledge to rely exclusively on peaceful processes in the settlement of intraregional differences. The APSC recognizes that each member country's political security is fundamentally linked to those of the other member countries, as the community is bound by geographic location, common vision, and objectives.