This paper consists of three parts. The first part is an overview of the ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC), one of the three major pillars of the ASEAN Community (AC), including its objectives, blueprints, and mechanisms of cooperation. This part of the paper places particular emphasis on a fundamental advantage of the APSC, compared with that of the two other pillars of the AC, which is the availability of the ASEAN mechanisms of cooperation in the political-security area. The second part of the paper presents APSC's initial achievements according to the assessment of the 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting, held in Laos in July 2016. Based on the analysis of the APSC's initial achievements in the context of the political and security developments in Southeast Asia, the third part of the paper identifies opportunities that the APSC enjoys, and challenges that the body may meet in the future. The author of the paper suggests some tentative recommendations for the APSC in particular and for ASEAN in general.