Previous chapters in this analysis considered the historical implications and contemporary challenges of domestic instability in Myanmar. This has included an analysis of such issues as human rights and environmental exploitation, various transnational security challenges, and the strategic impact of Myanmar's relations with Thailand and China. In particular, the analysis identified that while the likelihood of wide-scale armed conflict between Myanmar and Thailand is currently little more than a remote possibility, it is not unforeseeable. This possibility in itself excludes the existence of a security community. Further, the analysis has also suggested certain difficulties as far as the community aspect of the theory is concerned. In this context, this chapter explores how the failure of the SPDC to respond to a policy of constructive engagement has affected both ASEAN's international stature and, more specifically, its cohesion. As later analysis will demonstrate, the Myanmar issue has forced some elites within ASEAN to question the primacy of the ASEAN Way, including its principle of non-interference. In turn, this has exacerbated the divide between those who want reform in the Association and those who wish to retain the status quo. Given the fundamental nature of the principle of non-interference to the operation of ASEAN, continued normative divisions will also inhibit the emergence of an elite-level collective identity. An understanding of these consequences is vital to the concluding analysis in the final chapter.

THE ASEAN WAY AND NON-INTERFERENCE — A NORMATIVE SYNOPSIS

Regional scholars such as Kusuma Snitwongse have interpreted the language of the Bangkok Declaration that established ASEAN — including the members’ “stability and security from external interference” — as an elite move to deepen the salience of a number of normative rules that provide the basis of what has become known as the ASEAN Way. The core components of the ASEAN Way are (i) consensus-based decision making; (ii) a respect for national sovereignty; and (iii) non-interference in the domestic affairs of others. Such an interpretation, at least as far as the rhetoric of ASEAN is concerned, is also supported by the Bangkok Declaration's reference to the principles of the United Nations Charter which, among other things, includes the principle of non-interference — a well established principle of the modern Westphalian state system.