Honestly, did anybody not see this–the failure of ASEAN defence chiefs to issue a joint statement on the current tensions in the South China Sea–coming???
I have always maintained a cynical view on ASEAN’s capacity to maintain peace and stability in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea: too many meetings in any given year, no time to wage war. Clearly that does not apply to the current situation in the South China Sea, where China is, at least in my opinion, telling all of Southeast Asia that China is the new bully on the block. Recently, the Chinese ambassador to Malaysia issued some pretty dodgy statements concerning political demonstrations in Malaysia.
Now, China has managed to lobby enough ASEAN members to not mention the South China Sea. Wanna guess which countries were successfully lobbied???
ASEAN has, in my opinion, always been a pretty useless security organisation. It is about time individual Southeast Asian countries recognised this. What we as individual Southeast Asian countries need to do is to formulate our respective national security policies and strategies ABSENT ASEAN!
bernardloo64 
Prof, off topic. What is your take on the recent leasing (for 99 years) of a portion of Darwin Port to PRC ?
James, thanks for the question. Not sure about this, but my preliminary thoughts are that this demonstrates the bind that countries like Australia find themselves in: liking their traditional relationship with the US, but also increasingly dependent on good economic ties with China