Learning to Coexist: Russia-ASEAN Ties from Enmity to Enmeshment

Over the course of their mutual history, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Russia have progressively moved from a background of enmity and distrust to a framework of burgeoning cooperation. To a large extent, this gradual shift has embodied a direct by-product of the Association’s deliberate efforts to envelop Moscow in a growing net of interactions, so as to socialize the Kremlin in the highly distinctive normative architecture centred on the ‘ASEAN Way’ and turn it into a responsible regional stakeholder. Accordingly, by drawing upon Evelyn Goh’s conceptualization of ‘enmeshment strategy’ the present article sheds light on the tools and initiatives put in place by the Association not only to engage Russia and maximize the positive returns of a cordial relation with Moscow, but also to influence its conducts, perceptions and regional agenda in a way that is consistent with the ideas of ‘inclusive regionalism’ and ‘ASEAN centrality’ professed in Southeast Asia. In doing so, the analysis will be structured around a three-staged periodization, covering the long era of animosity under Soviet rule (1967-1989), the embryonic and tentative exchanges established after the end of the Cold War (1989- 2004), and the blossoming of the Russia-ASEAN partnership that materialized during the second, third, and fourth terms of the Putin presidency (2004-2019), which also coincided with the unravelling of his ambitious ‘Asian pivot’ aimed at countering Moscow’s increasingly strained relations with the West. As a result, the article argues that the remarkable trajectory experienced over the course of the last two decades by the ASEAN-Russia dyad provides a further evidence of the successful legacy achieved by the Association’s enmeshment blueprint in turning a former ‘outsider’ of Southeast Asian politics into a staunch supporter of regional stability.