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The geographical and geopolitical approach is particularly well suited to the study of Southeast Asia. Indeed, the region cannot be analyzed properly without an understanding of its exceptional geographical characteristics: 4.5 million km2 and 653 million inhabitants. Its maritime space is larger than its total land area, itself made up of numerous peninsulas, straits, and archipelagos containing thousands of islands and islets. The region’s geopolitics are also worthy of study: located between two oceans—the Pacific and the Indian—it plays a central geostrategic and economic role in global maritime traffic. This issue of Hérodote is centered around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), whose political and economic influence has increased to the point where it has become a fully-fledged player in the geopolitics of this vast region, and even, in the longer term, on the global stage, given the geopolitical and geostrategic issues at stake.