South China Sea Consensus: No ASEAN Chair Can Move It
Despite the Philippines' efforts to strengthen domestic legal frameworks and bilateral partnerships during its 2026 ASEAN chairmanship, the joint communique from the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting largely mirrored the previous year's text on the South China Sea. A decade after the arbitral ruling, it remains absent from official ASEAN statements, highlighting the constraints of the bloc's consensus principle.
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