The decision by the Asean Defence Ministers Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus) gathering in Malaysia last November to scrap a planned joint statement was a stark reminder of persistent differences among some of its member states over the South China Sea issue.

The ADMM-Plus is made up of 18 countries: the Asean 10 and Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the United States.

That decision late last year fostered the impression that the ADMM-Plus could go the way of the Asean Regional Forum, an older and more established regional experiment in security cooperation, which many today feel has grown moribund.

… The writer is Professor of International Relations at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, and Deputy Director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at RSIS.