ABSTRACT
Southeast Asia stands out as perhaps the most diverse region in the world. It is home to a range of political systems (communism; absolute monarchy; democracy; soft authoritarianism; and, until recently, a military junta), levels of development (from least-developed countries to oil-rich Brunei and investment-rich Singapore), world religions (Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, and various other faiths), and scale (in terms of geographical size and population). Given these and other forms of diversity, it stands to reason that foreign relations in Southeast Asia would be marked by fragmentation. Though not entirely uniform, Southeast Asia, in fact, demonstrates a surprisingly cohesive regional approach to foreign relations, a harmony owed largely to common worldviews that have gestated through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
