Wilfried A. Herrmann, Peter Lehr (Hgg.): ASEAN Looks West. ASEAN and the Gulf RegionLukas Maximilian Müller

ASIEN – Nr. 146 (2018) pp. 133–35

Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2016. 280 S., 20 USD

This anthology, whose production was prominently sponsored by the Thai Human Development Forum Foundation, funded by the Thai Prime Minister’s Office, tries to assess the potential for closer engagement between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Community and the states of the Gulf region. Coining the term Southern Asian Maritime Corridor (SAMCO) which includes all littoral states along the Northern Indian Ocean Rim between the Strait of Malacca to the Persian Gulf, the two editors Wilfried Herrmann and Peter Lehr advocate that the Gulf region may be an important area for future ASEAN foreign policy in fields as diverse as transborder disease and disaster risk management or maritime security. The development of the book appears to be correlated with a large Thai industry delegation visit to Iran, which had as its goal the scaling up of Thai-Iranian trade…