The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace - Hardcover

Kishore Mahbubani is dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University of Singapore and author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. Jeffery Sng is a writer and former diplomat based in Bangkok. He is the coauthor of A History of the Thai-Chinese.

“This book, by two eminent scholar-practitioners of the region, celebrates ASEAN’s fiftieth anniversary by making a detailed, thoughtful, readable, and in many ways provocative case for seeing the association in a very positive light.” (Pacific Affairs)

“Big power snubs and missteps in Southeast Asian diplomacy are recounted with professional polish—and a splash of relish—in The ASEAN Miracle. . . . It is its savvy treatment of the question of ASEAN and the Great Powers that breaks such important ground. The book lays out almost everything important about the current state of Southeast Asia, especially a well-documented portrait of major-power geopolitical myopia, in China but especially in the US.”

(Tom Plate South China Morning Post)

“Kishore Mahbubani argues that the ASEAN's policies of consultation, networking, engagement and non-interference in national sovereignty have stood up well compared to the EU's supranationalist integration.”

(Paul Gillespie Irish Times)

“This book’s claims for ASEAN are gigantic, and this makes it all the more readable. . . . Mahbubani and Sng stress the way it created ‘conducive environments for the great powers to talk to each other’—an ‘ecosystem of peace’ that moderates ‘aggressive impulses.’” (New Straits Times)

“ASEAN is a remarkable success story. The narrative should continue.” (Forbes Asia)

“This book contains the best overall summary of ASEAN that this reviewer has seen in forty years, and is great for related introductory or graduate courses. This reviewer . . . originally had reservations about the repeated claim that ASEAN deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. However, after reading the entire volume, he came to agree that the Association is as successful as Kishore Mahbubani claims it is.” (Jim Placzek Southeast Asian Studies)

“The ASEAN story is hugely instructive and this book tells it very well.” (Lawrence W. Summers, president emeritus of Harvard University, and former US Secretary of the Treasury)

“It is hard to overstate ASEAN’s contributions to peace, prosperity and transnational cooperation across South East Asia. Its positive impact is felt by millions of peoples in what has traditionally been one of the more complex and divided regions of the world.” (Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations)

“As ASEAN begins a new, possibly perilous, journey into the next fifty years, we should read this book as an indispensable guide to ASEAN’s future. We cannot take our success for granted. We have to work even harder to strengthen and, if necessary, reinvent ASEAN. This book explains how.” (Dr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, sixth president of Indonesia)

“ASEAN has successfully maintained regional peace and security for almost five decades. There is much more ASEAN Member States can do together, particularly to strengthen our cohesion in addressing regional challenges. Mahbubani and Sng’s book makes concrete proposals for ASEAN’s way forward: It’s a good read for those concerned with geopolitics and regional cooperation.” (Goh Chok Tong, emeritus senior minister, Singapore)