Lean Dale A.

Igos

AB Foreign Service 301

International Negotiations – INNN17F

Mr. Jumel Estrañero

The instability of International Negotiations and the Role of ASEAN

International Negotiations in an overview is the practice of the different

international actors on formulating constructive strategies and analysis as well as
studying the different cultural beliefs around the world in order to perform negotiation
with specified goals and eventually come up with mutual understanding and benefits.
On negotiation itself, it is one of the exercises even in the daily lives of people that uses
bargaining and persuasion with others. Its main purpose is to develop the situation of
the international arena as the world constantly changes through providing agreements
and forming cooperation with other actors. It is also done to avoid disputes or wars and
promote peace and cooperation. In addition, it is practiced with the viewpoint of liberalist
ideology wherein to prosper world peace, the countries must have an interdependency
in solving world’s conditions.

On the other hand, digging deeper in the context of negotiations, in today’s news,
it is undeniable that the presence of different international trading and territory disputes
exists. Few of the scenarios are the vaccine diplomacy which tackles the distress and
confusion of the world particularly in the perspective of the developing countries on the
slow-moving production and distribution of vaccines all-over the world. Another is the
decade long dispute between the Philippines and China over the West Philippine Sea
matter. In these scenarios, the ability of the International Organizations as well as the
idea of negotiations receive backlash. They are questioned if these strategies are still
effective in solving disagreements or do these methodologies are only favoring the
powerful regions or countries.

Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of organizations that continued despite
of the doubt in international negotiations (considering on what happened in Brexit). One
of them is the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), it remained still even if
it was one of the first regions who was affected by the Corona virus. It served as the
mediator among the member countries to regulate the flow of trading and tourism. It
also stood still in protecting the countries’ economy despite the different issues outside
the region, by continuing the external trading particularly on one of its biggest partner,
China, in spite of its issue in the Philippines. Thus, the organization is one of the living
evidence that international negotiations is still one of the ways for the world to attain
peace and cooperation as well as to revive the global economic stability due to the
pandemic.