After accompanying President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo for an ASEAN Summit plenary meeting one Saturday night in June this year, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi immediately called for a press briefing announcing the adoption of a five-page document that would come to be known as the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP). The document, which was already in the works for almost a year at that point, outlined the group’s shared stance in a region that straddled the Indian and Pacific oceans — the result of a shifting geopolitical landscape ushered in by the rise of China and a preoccupied United States. “From now on, when we discuss the Indo-Pacific, ASEAN as a whole has a perspective on what elements it should entail, what principles are used and what cooperation we want,” Retno said in Bangkok at the time. The adoption of the outlook document, ...