Good mates

Happy birthday, Asean! Fifty-eight years young, though it’s wearing the years better than most alliances. Not bad for a bloc born in the Cold War, now tossing birthday confetti while juggling China’s moods and everyone’s Gross domestic product targets.

Also blowing candles: Asean’s partnership with New Zealand, now in its golden year. Fifty years of dialogue, trade, and a surprising number of students swapping sheep for sambal. It’s the sort of relationship built less on fanfare, more on policies and polite resilience.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon: “Asean nations are working together to build a stable, secure and prosperous future.”

Sturdy. Then a little more candid; he’s seen the “energy, the innovation and the opportunity” in Southeast Asia.

He also mentioned the 10,000 Southeast Asian students in New Zealand, which means someone in Wellington knows the real soft power lies in classrooms, not mere trade deals.

The ANZJCC meeting recently read Peace, Prosperity, People, Planet. The Plan of Action, that bureaucratic lovechild of ambition and compromise, is almost done.

Every box ticked, we’re told. Whether those boxes meant actual change or just consensus on paper is another story.

But they’re working on it.

Both sides now eyeing the future: climate change, blue economies, smart cities (whatever that still means), and something called the “Second Protocol” to the AANZFTA: an agreement that could make or break how many pineapples or AI chips go where and when.

RCEP, the behemoth trade deal stitched together mid-pandemic, still hovers like a promise and a migraine.

There’ll be a commemorative summit, naturally. And a new five-year plan because long-term vision is the opiate of multilateral diplomacy.

Happy Asean Day. Pass the cake. Keep one eye on the Indo-Pacific. Smiles for the cameras. Teeth clenched everywhere else.