ASEAN's "The Strategy Of Balancing Major External Powers" After Cold War

The end of the cold war rang out the death knell for the Soviet - American bipolar world and also indicated that the international political powers came into a period of adjustment. At the same time, relative changes have taken place in the power structure of Southeast Asia, in which America, China, Japan and India are playing an important role. The rise and decline of those four great powers determine the Southeast Asia's strategic environment to a large extent. Thus ASEAN has realized it's hard to ensure its own stability and prosperity only by itself. Great powers are needed, too. And security, stability and prosperity may be achieved by the balance of those great powers from each other. The situation of the politics, economy and security in Southeast Asia provides a historical chance for ASEAN to carry out the strategy of balancing major external powers . ASEAN makes good use of the complicated strategic relation to balance all of the powers by themselves in order to maintain the peace and stability of Southeast Asia and remain its particular position. Politically, it balances the great powers' relations in order to buck for its dominant position in this region. In security area, it ensures the peace and stability of Southeast Asia by the balance of great powers and multilateral security mechanism such as PMC and ARF. Economically, it advances the regional cooperation from strength to strength by the "10+3" cooperation mechanism. By a series of balancing of powers strategy, not only does ASEAN preserve peace and stability in Southeast Asia, but also it builds up its international influence and gains enormous economic interests.