This thesis examines the diplomatic strategy adopted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in response to the 1978 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the subsequent shift in the regional distribution of power with regard to the security of the ASEAN nations. I argue that ASEAN has demonstrated considerable success in preventing a collapse of regional order in Southeast Asia. It is important to understand that ASEAN is a product and tool of its members' foreign policy and should therefore be assessed in the foreign policy, rather than in the regional integrationist, context. This will be examined from the point of view of a group of relatively weak, insignificant states within the international arena, historically plagued by conflict and intervention by external powers, exacerbated by a history of intra-regional enmity rather than cooperation, military weakness, and no collective tradition of diplomatic expertise. Yet, despite these shortcomings and ASEAN's previous inability to come together on issues of economic integration, ASEAN's response to the Third Indochina conflict has allowed its member nations to maintain their independence, preserve their freedom of action, rally international support, and confront the great powers involved in this issue through the use of a regional organization. This thesis will also counter the prevailing view that existing intra-ASEAN differences regarding the primary external threat in the issue (namely Vietnam, China or the Soviet Union) have seriously divided its members to the point of potentially threatening the organization's existence. Instead, I will argue that the combination of ASEAN's curious mode of "conflict resolution" through "conflict avoidance", as well as its diplomatic "division of labour," have effectively incorporated existing intra-ASEAN differences as bargaining assets for the organization's political viability. These internal cleavages have been far from resolved or reconciled, but rather skirted over by a web of unwritten laws, implicit rules and mutual understandings regarding one another's accepted role within the organization. This implicit "regime" has served several purposes: it has allowed ASEAN to sustain its image of unity, boosted its political visability in the international forum, and prevented the "loss of face" of fellow members on points of contention. Research for this thesis was conducted in part at the ASEAN Secretariat and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta, and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

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The theme of this study is that seven major East Asian less developed countries (LDCs) have experienced "dependent development," and that some internal and external intervening factors mattered in that process. Utilizing a framework of "dependent development," the data analysis deals with the political economy of development in these countries. This analysis supports the fundamental arguments of the dependent development perspective, which emphasize positive effects of foreign capital dependence in domestic capital formation and industrialization in East Asian LDCs. This perspective assumes the active role of the state, and it is found here to be crucial in capital accumulation and in economic growth. This cross-national time-series analysis also shows that the effects of external dependence and military spending on capital accumulation and economic growth can be considered as a regional phenomenon. The dependent development perspective offers a useful way to understand economic dynamism of East Asian LDCs for the past two decades.

University of Macau / Faculty of Business Administration / Department of Finance and Business Economics