Abstract
This chapter examines the increasing visibility of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a norm entrepreneur in the international governance of nuclear non-proliferation. Since the Treaty on the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (SEANWFZ) was adopted in 1995, ASEAN and its member states have been engaged in promoting international recognition of the notion of SEANWFZ at multiple levels to ensure regional security. In particular, ASEAN is actively negotiating with nuclear weapon states to advance the prospect of their accession to the SEANWFZ Protocol. Drawing upon the ASEAN centrality and norm diffusion literatures, we argue that the viability of ASEAN as the driving force in norm development is underpinned by this regional grouping’s competent deployment of several mechanisms: (1) practicing the “ASEAN Way” to sustain the involvement of powerful actors in consensus-based confidence building processes; (2) constructing frames to build the legitimacy of ASEAN’s claims in advancing international peace and security as a group of non-nuclear countries; (3) issue linkage by associating SEANWFZ with the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and the maintenance of regional stability efforts and; (4) performing neutrality and a balancing act between major powers.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that when SEANFWZ was signed in 1995, ASEAN comprised only 7 member states—Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam. Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia were not yet ASEAN members then but signed on the SEANFWZ.
- 2.
The subject of the Protocol to the SEANWFZ Treaty are five nuclear countries recognised by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, namely, China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US. It is for this reason that this chapter focuses on investigating the diffusion of SEANWFZ to these five countries.
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Qiao-Franco, G., Nandyatama, R.W. (2023). ASEAN as a Norm Entrepreneur in International Cooperation on Nuclear Non-proliferation: Bases, Pathways, and Challenges. In: Kolmašová, Š., Reboredo, R. (eds) Norm Diffusion Beyond the West. Norm Research in International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25009-5_10
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