Why Asean deserves a Nobel Peace Prize

Try imagining a world where the Middle East is at peace. The thought seems almost inconceivable. Imagine a world where Israel and Palestine, two nations splintered from one piece of territory, live harmoniously.
Impossible? This is what Malaysia and Singapore accomplished. After an acrimonious divorce in 1965, they live together in peace.
Imagine a world where Egypt, the most populous Islamic country in the Middle East, emerges as a stable and prosperous democracy.
Impossible? Then ask yourself how it is that Indonesia, the most populous Islamic country in Southeast Asia – with more than four times as many people as Egypt – has emerged as a beacon of democracy. Egypt and Indonesia have many other parallels. Both suffered from corruption. Both experienced decades of military rule under strong military rulers – Suharto (1967-98) and Mubarak (1981-2011). Yet, Egypt remains a troubled country still under military rule while Indonesia has emerged as the leading democracy in the Islamic world.
What explains the difference? The one-word answer is Asean.
The obvious retort to this is that the Middle East has long been a region of war while Southeast Asia has been a region of peace. 
Yet, more bombs have been dropped in Southeast Asia than in any other region of the world since World War II. Southeast Asia has experienced larger and longer wars than the Middle East. The Vietnam War, which spilled over into Laos and Cambodia, lasted from the fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 until the fall of Saigon in April 1975, when American diplomats and soldiers beat an ignominious retreat.
This was followed by the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978, which in turn triggered a decade-long struggle between China and Vietnam.
In simple numerical terms, the number of military casualties in Southeast Asia between 1946 and 2008 (estimates range from 1.87 million to 7.35 million), has exceeded the military casualties in the Middle East during the same period (estimates range from 530,000 to 2.43 million).
When then President Barack Obama visited Laos last September, he reminded us that America had “dropped more than two million tonnes of bombs” there – more than were dropped on Germany and Japan combined during all of World War II. It made Laos, per person, the most heavily bombed country in history. As one Laotian said, the “bombs fell like rain”.
This is precisely why it cannot be denied that Asean is a miracle. It has brought durable peace to a region that experienced great conflicts. A Nobel Peace Prize for Asean is long overdue.

Region of hope and peace
Deep pessimism and fear of the Islamic world seem almost hard-wired into the body politic of the Western world. Donald Trump exploited this to the hilt when he called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”. Even though Trump was roundly condemned for this, he still won the presidential election. He had tapped into a deep lode of anxiety about Islam in the American psyche.
There are more Muslims in Southeast Asia, as a percentage, than any other region outside the Middle East. If the large Muslim population of Southeast Asia – almost as numerous as the entire population of the Arab world – can live in peace with their non-Muslim neighbours and also continue to progress economically, they provide hope that the world is not destined for a clash of civilisations.
About 25,000 young people from all over the world, including the West, have joined the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Yet, should we focus on these 25,000 Muslims or on the 8,000-times-larger number of 205 million Muslims who live peacefully in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Islamic country? As the most successful democracy in the Islamic world, Indonesia reinforces Southeast Asia’s status as a haven of peace, in contrast to the troubled countries at the heart of the Arab world.
The influx of almost a million Syrian refugees into Europe in 2015 has made Europe acutely aware that its fate is closely linked to the Islamic world. Europe seems particularly troubled by the emergence of radical Islamism within its borders. The Paris attacks of 13 November 2015 were carried out mostly by young Muslims who were born and brought up in Europe, not in the Middle East.
Few of today’s European intellectuals see a way for Europe to work out a peaceful coexistence with Muslims within and just beyond its borders. The impulse today in Europe is to build walls and put up border controls.
Trump demonstrates that even within the relatively open society of America, there is this impulse to build walls and bar Muslims.
The American and European intelligentsia need to make an intellectual pilgrimage to Southeast Asia. They need to immerse themselves in a region of hope and experience a world where different civilisations live in peace and progress together.
Europe has been the most successful continent for the past four centuries, especially in economic and social development. Similarly, the United States has emerged as the most successful society in human history. No other society can match America’s track record of economic productivity and cultural creativity (or its exceptional military power).
Yet despite being the world’s most successful society, the American middle class is falling prey to a European-style pessimism. The ongoing politics of pessimism in America and Europe is dangerous. There is no doubt that this pessimism is killing the prospect of sensible centrist leaders. The destruction of Jeb Bush in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and the even more stunning defeat of Hillary Clinton in November 2016 demonstrated this clearly.
So does pessimism mean that we cannot produce positive transformational leaders? Here, the story of Asean can bring some hope to our troubled times. The five brave men who came together to sign the founding Asean declaration on 8 August 1967 were a Buddhist Thai, a Christian Filipino, two Muslims and a lapsed Hindu. They could not have come from more diverse cultural universes.
If one had to put together a cast of characters to launch the second-most successful regional organisation in the world, one would not have started with this cast of five characters from five countries.
Now imagine a world where Donald Trump (a Christian), Xi Jinping (a Confucian Communist), Vladimir Putin (an Orthodox Christian), Ayatollah Khamenei (a Muslim) and Narendra Modi (a Hindu) came together to sign a declaration for peaceful collaboration. Given the many political divisions among these five leaders, it seems clearly inconceivable. Yet the political divisions among the five founding fathers of Asean were equally great, if not greater.
If we remember the organisation’s 1967 starting point, Asean’s achievements are nothing less than spectacular. If Asean can keep up its current momentum, there is no limit. The higher it soars, the brighter it will become as a beacon for humanity.

This is an excerpt from the new book “The Asean Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace”, by Kishore Mahbubani and Jeffrey Sng.
Mahbubani is dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.
Sng is a former diplomat.