Author: Alice Malvezzi
The admission of Timor-Leste as the eleventh member of ASEAN in 2025 represents a significant turning point in the political landscape of Southeast Asia. After formally applying for membership in 2011, Timor-Leste endured over ten years waiting at ASEAN’s doorstep, as the organization consistently framed its accession as conditional upon the country’s “readiness” across political-security, economic, and socio-cultural. (Azis & Safira, 2024, pp. 1-2) Yet, ASEAN ultimately moved forward, admitting Timor-Leste as the official eleventh member. (ASEAN, 2025) This shift inevitably raises significant questions: why did ASEAN move decisively when it did? What changed?
The narrative of readiness
Officially, the admission of Timor-Leste is framed by the organization as a successful result of a gradual, criterion-based process. (Seixas et al., 2019, p.150) Following the 2022 decision to grant “admission in principle”, Timor-Leste was offered the position of observer status in all ASEAN meetings and placed under a Roadmap for Full Membership aligned with ASEAN’s three Community pillars (Azis & Safira, 2024, p.3). Hence, the narrative appears clear: accession was postponed until Timor-Leste satisfied all the ASEAN’s technical and institutional criteria.
However, this account is challenging to align with the current situation. Numerous structural vulnerabilities identified as previous barriers to Timor-Leste’s accession, such as weak administrative capacity, economic fragility, and enduring developmental gaps, continue to characterize the country today. (Gomes, 2025, pp. 4-5) Although gradual ameliorations have undoubtedly taken place, (Seixaset al., 2019, p.166) there appears to be no clear evidence why such prolonged hesitation has shifted to this sudden acceptance. Building on this, if “readiness” were truly the determining factor, ASEAN’s timing appears questionable at best.
Thus, the persistent reliance on the readiness narrative implies that it functions less as a genuine causal explanation and more as a legitimizing discourse, thereby using it as a politically neutral vocabulary while covering strategic motives (Ibid, pp.150-151).
Strategic Geography and Great-Power Rivalry
Crucially, it becomes essential to understand Timor-Leste’s accession within the geopolitical situation of Southeast Asia. Situated between Indonesia and Australia and positioned along strategic maritime routes, Timor-Leste plays an incredibly important role amid the escalating rivalry between the United States and China.( Strating, 2019, pp.136-138).
Over the past decade, China has expanded its economic presence in Timor-Leste through infrastructure projects and development assistance. (Ibid, p. 134) Concurrently, Timor-Leste has maintained strong ties with Western partners, maintaining “excellent bilateral relations” with the U.S. (U.S. Embassy in Timor-Leste, n.d.), celebrating its Portuguese identity, and consistently presenting itself as a “friend of everyone” (Strating, 2019, p. 133). This foreign policy stance is not an opportunistic one, but rather it mirrors a country’s vulnerability: being a small state with limited capacity, to guarantee its own security, Timor-Leste found itself in the vulnerable position of diversifying its external alliances (Smith, 2005, pp. 16-17).
From an ASEAN perspective, a continued exclusion could have carried strategic risks. By keeping Timor-Leste outside the institutional framework of the organization, a strategic vacuum would have been created, resulting in a scenario where external powers could expand their influence without ASEAN’s moderating presence. In this light, ASEAN’s delay should be best analysed as a liability, and not as a protective measure. This strategic logic can be more clearly understood through the concept of hedging.
Accession as Institutional Hedging
Hedging refers to a strategic behavior adopted under conditions of uncertainty, in which actors pursue multiple, partially contradictory policies simultaneously to minimize risks associated with future power shifts (Kuik, 2008, p. 165, Goh, 2006). Rather than choosing between balancing against or bandwagoning with a dominant power, hedging allows actors to preserve flexibility while avoiding irreversible alignment choices.
ASEAN’s approach reflects a broader strategy of institutional hedging, whereby regional inclusion is used to manage geopolitical uncertainty by incorporating target states into shared norms and rules, while avoiding the risks associated with overt balancing or bandwagoning with any major power (Koga, 2018, p. 55). Through this approach, ASEAN seeks to preserve strategic flexibility while limiting the risk that external actors gain disproportionate influence over states operating outside its institutional framework.
From this perspective, ASEAN’s decision to admit Timor-Leste is better understood as an act of institutional hedging than as a reward for completed readiness. In this case, membership represents a tool to navigate uncertainty amid the rivalry of great powers.
Firstly, institutional inclusion facilitates socialization. Through Timor-Leste’s observer participation in ASEAN meetings, ASEAN can socialize Timor-Leste into its diplomatic norms and working practices, which may help keep the country’s external engagements anchored in an ASEAN-centred framework (Lin et al., 2024, pp. 9, 15–17). This does not hinder interactions with external powers, but it allows for maintaining such engagement within an ASEAN-focused diplomatic environment.
Secondly, accession serves as a mechanism of dominance denial. (Kuik, 2008, p.167) ASEAN refrains from overtly balancing against China or aligning with the United States, while simultaneously ensuring that no single external actor gains excessive institutional influence. This strategy perfectly embodies ASEAN’s historical preference for strategic ambiguity over binary alignment (Kuik, 2015, p.12)
Thirdly, and perhaps most crucially, the inclusion of Timor-Leste reinforces ASEAN’s centrality. (Azis & Safira, 2024, p.17) Specifically at this time, more and more characterized by bilateral deals and initiatives driven by great powers, expanding membership demonstrated an institutional vitality that positions ASEAN as an architect of regional order.
The Limits of Inclusion
However, institutional hedging should not be seen as the main solution. ASEAN’s institutions predominantly function in a consultative capacity and lack strong enforcement mechanisms (Setiawan, 2025, pp. 1567–1568). The accession of Timor-Leste does not resolve its systemic vulnerabilities, nor does it remove external influences. Additionally, there is the possibility that symbolic inclusion may advance beyond material capability, (Seixas et al., 2019, p. 151) and this could ultimately strain ASEAN’s consensus-driven processes.
Yet, these constraints do not invalidate the strategic rationale underlying ASEAN’s decision. Institutional mechanisms are not designed to eliminate uncertainty or external influence altogether, but to manage them in a way that reduces systemic risk (Kuik, 2008, p. 165). In this sense, Timor-Leste’s accession reflects a pragmatic recalibration: a recognition that, in an increasingly contested regional environment, strategic inclusion might provide more benefits than extended exclusion.
A Choice for ASEAN
In conclusion, Timor-Leste’s accession exposes a broader truth about ASEAN today: the organization finds itself at a pivotal moment between two potential paths. One direction views expansion as procedural tasks strictly subjected to technical criteria, reinforcing delays that risk strategic irrelevance. The alternative recognizes that in a contested geopolitical environment, uncertainty necessitates actions, and not delays.
By welcoming Timor-Leste, ASEAN has opted for the latter: using institutional inclusion not as a ceremonial conclusion, but as a strategic tool. Whether this choice strengthens ASEAN’s unity or merely postpones deeper contradictions remains to be seen.
What is clear, however, is that Timor-Leste’s accession was not simply about readiness. It was about power, uncertainty, and the broader scenario ASEAN found itself in, continuing to seek to remain central in this rapidly shifting regional order. In this sense, Timor-Leste’s accession may mirror a more flexible attitude; a more geopolitically responsive approach to regionalism in ASEAN’s future decisions.
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