As Malaysia prepares to take over the chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2025, skeptics are having a field day. One commentator suggests that the country “will have to balance its national interests with those of other member states while keeping to ASEAN’s consensus-based approach to handling regional issues,” suggesting that their aims may no longer be aligned. Maria Siow of the South China Morning Post was more blunt, arguing that Malaysia’s “evolving stance on the Israeli-Gaza war and strengthening ties with China could challenge the bloc’s unity.”
It does not help of course, that amidst growing U.S.-China rivalry, and the complicated nature of their relationship with each ASEAN member, a picture is emerging of a grouping that is less united than ever before, an issue that Malaysia will need to navigate carefully. If there is doubt that cracks have emerged, then a close perusal of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s latest State of Southeast Asia Survey is probably in order. The survey revealed how divisive the U.S. and China have become to ASEAN. The Philippines, Vietnam, and Singapore seem to strongly believe that alignment with the U.S. better serves their strategic interests, while Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos seem more aligned with China.
These mixed results are not unsurprising. China’s political, economic, and military might has resulted in its growing assertiveness, creating tensions with several of the ASEAN members, specifically in relation to the South China Sea. Nevertheless, China’s economic largesse, e.g., the Belt and Road Initiative, offers difficult-to-ignore economic candy for the region’s less developed members. This has been complicated by the fact that the U.S. remains an important security provider for some other nations, if still not an important source of high-value investments.
Disunity has certainly complicated the task of managing ASEAN’s relations with the U.S. and China, and addressing key issues such as the disputes in the South China Sea. Doubts persist over the conclusion of a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea, which appears increasingly unlikely to be resolved considering the major differences between ASEAN members and China, but also because China may lack the incentive to pursue anything that constrains its ambitions in the region. However, some commentators have suggested that ASEAN shares some of the blame. Rahman Yaacob believes that any outcome will be sub-standard at best. In the interim, China and some ASEAN members continue to strengthen their claims.
These differences are also impacting ASEAN’s ability to address the ongoing Myanmar issue. Introduced in 2021, the Five-Point Consensus has achieved very little, and ASEAN is currently undertaking a comprehensive review of the plan. The civil war has escalated, and if reports about the progress of anti-coup forces are accurate, then there will be little incentive for them to accept a cessation of violence when an opportunity presents itself to oust the junta.
Unity is certainly a major challenge for ASEAN today. The problem is partly due to its guiding principles i.e., non-interference, neutrality, and consensus-based decision making, which makes ASEAN at best slow, and at worse inadequate. While this “ASEAN Way” has often been described as a by-product of the Cold War, it is also, and perhaps more importantly, borne from a fierce need to protect national sovereignty, a particularly sensitive matter considering member states’ experience with colonization, and their struggles with each other during the period of de-colonization.
As subtly hinted at by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in his opening remarks at the 44th ASEAN Summit in Vientiane earlier this month, to address this disunity, the causes of these weaknesses must be addressed. My own assessment is that one of its causes is the dependency that ASEAN members have on these external powers, either for security or economic reasons. Trade and investment data do not lie, nor do the establishment of military bases. This needs to be addressed if ASEAN is to be truly independent from the machinations of the great powers.
This is why we need to applaud Malaysia’s three-pronged strategy for ASEAN in 2025, aimed at strengthening regional value chains and regulatory cooperation, reinforcing member countries’ economic fundamentals, and reinventing, restructuring, and recalibrating their economies, while leveraging each other’s strengths. These strategies might be misconstrued as low-hanging fruit, a way of avoiding conflict, or worse, as safe initiatives. They do not even address directly the major issues that ASEAN is facing. What they do address, however, is one of the underlying causes of ASEAN inefficacy in dealing with these major issues.
Resilience is not a new concept for ASEAN. Prior to the establishment of the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality in 1971, Kei Koga stated that there were two proposed approaches on the table for dealing with the security vacuum left behind by the UK withdrawal “east of the Suez” and U.S. disengagement from Vietnam: Malaysia’s idea of “regional neutralization” and Indonesia’s idea of “regional resilience,” drawing from Indonesia’s own efforts strengthening “national resilience.” In the words of Adam Malik, Indonesia’s then-foreign minister, the objective was,
to enhance the capabilities and abilities of each member country and its people in all fields of national endeavor, in order to withstand and to overcome all kinds of outside interference and adverse influences, harmful to its sound and harmonious development.
According to Koga, Indonesia’s idea of regional resilience, while proposed as an alternative to neutralization, was not mutually exclusive to it. However, it would have introduced a level of coordination unfamiliar to the Southeast Asian states at the time. Resilience was eventually adopted by ASEAN, though the scope of cooperation and coordination was largely economic in nature.
This has largely been achieved with the establishment of the ASEAN Free Trade Area, and the bloc’s efforts to realize an ASEAN Economic Community. If based solely on intra-trade and intra-investment flows, ASEAN integration is progressing well. There is still room for further integration, and ASEAN is working on areas such as infrastructure development (both physical and digital connectivity), sustainable agriculture, and integrating ASEAN MSMEs into the global market.
Strengthening the resilience of its supply chain must be viewed within this context. The challenges of these past few years, particularly the U.S.-China trade war, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have revealed the fragility of our supply chains. The ASEAN Leaders’ Declaration on Enhancing Supply Chain Connectivity, adopted at the 2024 ASEAN Summit, is one step in the right direction, but focus should be on strengthening intra-ASEAN supply chain resilience since intra-regional trade remains a key driver of ASEAN’s total trade.
One area that is still lacking is bridging the development gap that exists between its members. Recognizing this, ASEAN established in 2000 the Initiative of ASEAN Integration, under which it would undertake measures and actions to narrow the development gap and enhance ASEAN’s competitiveness as a region. Nonetheless, there still exists a huge gap between the grouping’s more advanced members, like Singapore (GDP per capita of $82,794) and Brunei ($37,446), and its least developed, including Cambodia ($1,758) and Myanmar ($1,093).
Strengthening the resilience of our supply chains and addressing the developmental gaps between members may help ASEAN members, in Anwar’s words, to “reject overtures that are predisposed to causing division” and hence to further strengthen regional resilience.
However, all of this is easier said than done. Years of peace have bred complacency. It will take a lot of hard work and diplomacy by Malaysia to cajole other ASEAN members into supporting this goal, especially among members who feel that their own interests and concerns have not been adequately addressed by ASEAN, thus forcing them to look elsewhere. More importantly, it will also require Malaysia to also assess its own strengths and address any weaknesses, to be better able to walk the talk.