ABSTRACT
During the post-Vietnam era, Southeast Asians continue to deal with an unpredictable future. The security of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) rests upon finding successful solutions to internal challenges with which the current governments of the region are presently confronted. No less important is their willingness to negotiate measured responses to active external regional strategic penetration now conducted by Moscow and Beijing and largely carried out through their proxies - the Socialist Republic of Vietnam or Chinese-supported insurgency movements, respectively. Moreover, the ASEAN governments are striving to achieve economic stability as well as to deny to local communist parties social, economic and political issues which could be used to develop local party strength. With the exception of Thailand, which shares a border with a country (Kampuchea) occupied by some 200,000 Vietnamese troops, no ASEAN state actually fears an outright invasion of its territory. But external influences such as superpower economic pressures, radical Islamic ideology (Dakwah), and residual but unresolved differences among regional nations continue to plague the area.
