The ASEAN Regional Forum has been, since 1994, a useful forum for foreign ministers and for senior officials, both from the foreign ministries and the defence and other security agencies, to get together periodically for discussions on regional security in the Asia-Pacific. In these gatherings, national positions on security issues, broad or specific, long-term or shortterm, traditional or non-traditional, are presented and clarified, if not reconciled. There, valuable networks are formed. Knowledge is shared. Common problems are identified. International cooperation on those problems is promoted. Participants and observers express the hope that these processes help build mutual confidence and diminish mutual suspicions and thus reduce the risk of miscalculation and ultimately of conflict.

However, some in the academic world and a few in government press the ARF to go beyond its current minimalist role and do something directly to prevent conflict and even resolve disputes between states or between warring factions within countries. Failing in this, the ARF is derided as a “talk shop”, as if an opportunity for rival powers to hold regular discussions and consultations had no value. Some profess to want to see results rather than be content with mere “process”, which is what they consider the ARF to be.

For example, Bryan J. Couchman, a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, asserted:

On the other hand, one could argue that participation in the ARF could serve as a deterrent to a unilateral act of aggression. An ARF participant would think twice before upsetting a security environment from which it presumably benefited unless it felt that its core interests were threatened.