Why Asean is failing

MUCH attention has been focused on Europe and its real and imagined shortcomings - particularly since Britain's June vote to leave the European Union.

Asia is habitually declared to be winning a global economic contest. Indeed, one of the factors fuelling Brexiteers' desire to withdraw has been the wish to tilt British business towards the east.

However, not everything in this part of the world is as successful as popularly imagined. In particular, Asean - the 10-nation Association of South-east Asian Nations, which forged a vaunted common market last year - is not working in the way grand declarations have proclaimed. In a pattern of self-deception which has become a regional characteristic, Asean and its intellectual apologists continue to deny what is plain for all to see.