In almost every capital around the globe, piracy, terrorism, poaching, illegal immigration, pollution, and trafficking of every kind are slowly climbing in priority as government security experts become increasingly concerned with threats of a transnational nature. In areas affected by the Sulu Arms Market, ongoing territorial disputes, shifting political alignments, and an extremely dynamic social fabric make multilateral initiatives slow to form and difficult to implement. For this reason, the trend in cooperative countertrafficking policy clearly favours bilateral agreements, although regional and global politics lend growing impetus to multilateralism. Since the end of World War II, there have been eight bilateral agreements between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines that affect the Sulu Arms Market in some way. By contrast, there are only five similar multilateral agreements and of those, only two include concrete measures that can make a direct impact on traffickers.

The regional politics that confound multilateralism in Southeast Asia suggest that making progress will require strong leadership. Regional bodies like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and powerful neighbours Australia and the United States, can influence initiatives against transnational threats in the region but within ASEAN there is no single, paternalistic national power that can assume this role. Instead, member states share responsibility in a uniquely Southeast Asian system of rotating leadership. The “ASEAN way” as it is commonly known, is slow and patient and demonstrates a preference for letting states come to consensus over time rather than subjecting them to direct persuasion by others. There is little doubt that the ASEAN way has been very positive for the region up to this point but it has not yet been tested by conflict between member states. In the eyes of most external observers, transnational crime has a tremendous head start on the plodding Southeast Asian policy machine; ASEAN, they say, must take action now to avoid pain in the future.