Continental Drift: Southeast Asia Amidst Regional Wars, Great Power Rivalry, and Globalization at Risk

Abstract

Amid an intensifying major power rivalry and polarizing regional wars in Europe and the Middle East, the search for direction in Southeast Asia, as Chong Ja Ian described in the previous issue, has become an individual pursuit by nation-states rather than a collective one in 2024. Despite shared objectives of economic growth and regime security, Southeast Asian states have taken different, and at times divergent, foreign policy paths to realize them. A slow but not imperceptible continental drift is under way as their economies and politics shift along with global trends of protectionism and centrifugal forces of great power competition. Southeast Asians resolutely insist on not “choosing sides”, but their different reactions to wars waged abroad and tensions at home bear out the subtle gradients in their political and strategic outlooks. Whereas tensions in the South China Sea continue to shape US relations with Vietnam and the Philippines, frustration towards the West over the Gaza crisis has seen Indonesia and Malaysia gravitate towards China. The pull of economics remains the fundamental force behind their relations with great powers, but the push of politics can act as an enabler—or mitigator—as well.

The noticeable absence of ASEAN and its centrality from geopolitical and geo-economic conversations over the past year accentuate these divergences. In the face of several major crises that have accelerated in the past twelve months, ASEAN has not mustered adequate voice. With Indonesia and Thailand occupied with internal dramas during and after their respective elections, little attention from regional states, not to mention ASEAN as a whole, was given to the civil war raging in Myanmar, which has now entered its third year.