Landlocked and often overlooked, Laos -- the Land of a Million Elephants -- will find itself at the centre of world attention in the coming months. Last November, Malaysia handed to Laos the Asean chairmanship, shortly before the Asean Community (AC) was officially established. With this official role at the head of the grouping, Laos will host a series of top-level Asean meetings before a summit scheduled for September.
As it is the first year of the AC, there are expectations from the grouping and the international community that Vientiane needs to live up to.
Laos' organising ability is undoubted. It has plenty of experience, most recently with the 9th Asia-Europe Meeting (Asem) in 2012, which drew four dozen presidents and prime ministers. In 2004, Vientiane was the Asean chairman. But in the lead-up to the September summit, Laos has to prepare for some difficult issues.
The most obvious one is the South China Sea, where continuing territorial disputes have created a true flashpoint of international proportions. The issues are extremely complicated, and magnified by Vientiane's leaning towards the Chinese political camp. The group's leader will have to signal whether it favours Asean solidarity or China's interests, because looking to the summit for support are regional partners Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia, all of whom have had recent confrontations with China in the disputed waters.
This region was a knotty issue even before recent developments. China has turned several atolls into islands in the Spratlys and Paracels groups. It has militarised them with aircraft runway construction and deployment of anti-aircraft missiles. The United States and the Philippines, which has sued China in the court of arbitration, believe China may be about to formally declare an Air Defence Identification Zone (Adiz), which would be another destabilising step. Laos must decide whether to side openly with Beijing or try to provide leadership.
Another challenge is how to deepen AC economic integration. There is no shortage of controversy here. The issue will be helped, or perhaps complicated, by the presence of US President Barack Obama. He will be the first sitting US president ever to visit Laos. Just last month, he was the host of an extraordinary US-Asean Summit in California.
Mr Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), supposedly a free-trade group, has brought much complexity and controversy to the region, and the Asia-Pacific area in general. Years in the making, the TPP is a contentious issue within Asean. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore are in it. Thailand and the others are out. Japan is in. China isn't eligible.
China has been helping to form the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a trade pact involving the 10 members of Asean and its partners. The RCEP is slightly behind the TPP in getting off the ground. Another round of negotiations on the partnership was held last month in Brunei, where officials admitted work still remains to be done. There is some hope talks can conclude by end of this year.
As chairman, Laos must do its best to bring about higher integration within the economic scope of the community. Apart from the RCEP, the Asean bloc at its summit last November in Malaysia failed to finalise the new Master Plan on Asean Connectivity and the Initiative for Asean Integration work plan. Laos is expected to bring in final versions of these three instruments at the September summit which will test its diplomatic ability as never before.