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ASEAN: The Asian strategic player that stinks
The truth is that, whether it's the region's economic crisis of 1997, the Rohingya refugee crisis of today or anything in between, ASEAN is next to useless.
Peter Hartcher is the political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. He is a Gold Walkley award winner, a former foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Washington, and a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. His latest book is The Sweet Spot: How Australia Made its Own Luck and Could Now Throw it All Away. His 2005 book, Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing Seven Trillion Dollars, foresaw the collapse of the US housing market and the economic slump that followed.
The truth is that, whether it's the region's economic crisis of 1997, the Rohingya refugee crisis of today or anything in between, ASEAN is next to useless.
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