Yet Southeast Asia is where most Asian regional organizations originate and whose structures and procedures are determined by Southeast Asian preferences. The primary goal of this article is to explain how this has happened, what the implications are for Asia's future and whether Southeast Asian states organized for the past forty years through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will be able to maintain their pivotal position in Asian affairs. For the past several decades, the Asia-Pacific region has been marked by a difficult asymmetry: the most dangerous disputes lie in Northeast and South Asia while the region's multilateral institutions designed to manage and reduce conflict have originated in Southeast Asia.