This study has sought to analyse the feasibility of ASEAN's security community project in a manner that will constructively delineate how to overcome the most significant obstacles to security community formation in Southeast Asia. The crisis in Myanmar has now escalated to a point where both ASEAN's cohesion and its stature as a diplomatic community have been seriously challenged. For Myanmar to become a part of a collective Southeast Asian security community, ASEAN will need to be able to assist it in what the study has referred to as a process of internal consolidation. In turn, Myanmar will need to cooperate with ASEAN and the international community by accepting this assistance and abiding by the principles of its new constitution in a manner that protects the welfare and human rights of its people. The achievement of this state of affairs will of necessity require the SPDC to allow greater political pluralism, including an active role for the National League for Democracy (NLD). Full reconciliation is unlikely to be achieved until the SPDC also allows for Aung San Suu Kyi's participation in domestic politics. The willingness of the SPDC to entrust ASEAN with an active role to help facilitate and aid political reform in Myanmar would evidence a common “we-feeling” and sense of reciprocity that is necessary to a security community.

While the completion of the national convention may have in part been a response to regional and international pressure, ASEAN has not yet been able to formulate policies that have tangibly addressed the causes of instability and human rights abuse in Myanmar. To date, the only concrete achievements concerning the consequences of domestic instability have been outside the ASEAN framework and concern a reduction in opium production (the United Nations in cooperation with the SPDC) and a temporary stay in cross-border armed skirmishes (the initiative of Thailand). In practice, part of the reason for ASEAN's failure lies in the fact that constructive engagement, as traditionally articulated by ASEAN, had translated into silently condoning the policies and practices of the ASEAN governments — no matter how good or bad, humane or inhumane, they are. In principle, if pressure was applied, it was done at the sidelines of ASEAN meetings through the practice of quiet diplomacy where there would not be a loss of face.