Upon ASEAN's official website, the AEC is described as:
The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) shall be the goal of regional economic integration by 2015. AEC envisages the following key characteristics: (a) a single market and production base, (b) a highly competitive economic region, (c) a region of equitable economic development, and (d) a region fully integrated into the global economy.The AEC is an unquestionable inevitability - and more alarmingly - an inevitability absolutely none of the many hundreds of millions of Southeast Asian citizens have asked for, voted for, or have any direct say in regards to. So inevitable is AEC's unfurling in 2015, that few have even bothered to ask "why?" "for what?" and "by whom?"
A Cheap EU Knock-Off Destined for Catastrophic Failure
If AEC's premise as described by ASEAN itself sounds suspiciously similar to the European Union (EU), that's because it is. It is not only driven by the same immense global spanning corporate-financier special interests that consolidated Europe's economies, currencies, and institutions, but for the very same goal of collectively looting the region if and when it is successfully consolidated.
The EU now writhes in debt, endless proxy wars fought on behalf of Wall Street and London, and socioeconomic strife caused by EU regulations forced upon various populations against their will. While it was always difficult for citizens of respective European nations to have their voice truly represented within the halls of their own respective national governments, it is more difficult still for the EU's ruling elite assembled in Brussels to be held accountable and made to actually work for the European people.
