With the imminent return of Donald Trump to the White House and intensifying superpower rivalry in the Indo-Pacific, the year ahead will be crucial for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its place in the global security spotlight.
Trump’s defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, drew mockery across the region for failing to cite a single member of ASEAN during his confirmation hearing this week.
But the seeming cluelessness of the Pentagon’s incoming chief only underscores ASEAN’s growing geopolitical irrelevance among Washington’s strategic elite.
Packed with China hawks, including incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Undersecretary for Policy Elbridge Colby, the second Trump administration is widely expected to place growing pressure on regional states to toe the line on Beijing or risk Washington’s ire.
Accordingly, ASEAN will increasingly struggle to effectively “hedge” between competing powers as both the US and China press for advantage in the vital and strategic region.
That puts Malaysia, this year’s rotational chair of the regional bloc, in the geopolitical hot seat. Amran Mohamed Zin, secretary-general of Malaysia’s foreign ministry, said there will be 357 ASEAN-related meetings, including 14 high-level meetings featuring heads of government and state, this year.
The ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat in Langkawi, gathering more than 200 foreign delegates and diplomats this weekend, will officially launch Malaysia’s ASEAN chairmanship.
Although the regional body operates on a consensus-based decision-making modality, ASEAN’s rotational chair has tremendous influence in terms of shaping its agenda and policy direction.
Nominally the head of government of the host nation, the chairman can also issue an independent “Chairman’s Statement” whenever there is a deadlock or dissensus over a sensitive regional issue, as seen with the ongoing civil strife in Myanmar.
Malaysia chose “Inclusivity and Sustainability” for this year’s theme, underscoring the centrality of trade, investment and economic issues for the regional body.
Not long ago, buoyed by decades of rapid growth and regional peace, ASEAN leaders felt confident enough about finalizing a regional common market by the year 2025 and, crucially, serving as an anchor of regional stability throughout the 21st century.
Officially, Malaysia’s chairmanship this year broadly echoes such aspirations despite dramatic changes in the regional geopolitical, geo-economic and global trade landscapes.
“We must be ambitious and set the right priorities with specific deliverables. What we want to deliver must create value,” said ASEAN Business Advisory Council (BAC) Malaysia chairman Tan Sri Nazir Razak during the ASEAN Economic Opinion Leaders Conference: Outlook for 2025.
“Another idea is the notion of an ASEAN business entity, a more complex, more contentious, but I think it could be the single-biggest move forward in ASEAN business…This initiative would bring our markets closer together, and I believe it could be very productive,” he added during the event hosted by Malaysia’s Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI) earlier this month.
Crucially, the prominent Malaysian business leader underscored the importance of geopolitical “neutrality” and even welcomed “decoupling” between the US and China as an opportunity for ASEAN states to attract maximal investment from competing great powers.
Earlier, prominent Malaysian political scientist Cheng-Chwee Kuik argued along similar lines by insisting that the best course of action for ASEAN states is to “hedge” their bets and, accordingly, shun alignment with any of the superpowers.
“Hedging is about reducing risks and for us here in ASEAN, it is essential…Hedging is a product of uncertainty. You may gain some and you may lose some, but no one does it because of naivety,” he said during the same conference.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, however, has stretched the notion of ASEAN “hedging.” On one hand, he has largely avoided criticizing China on any major issue, including the South China Sea disputes.
“There should be no involvement of other parties because it would (then) be deemed to be more complex and will complicate the matter,” Anwar told the Asia-Pacific Roundtable in Kuala Lumpur last year when asked about festering maritime disputes between China and the Philippines.
“[M]y personal view is that we (Malaysia) take a more aggressive way of engaging diplomatically and we have been rather successful in that regard. There have been some very serious issues, too, with Malaysia, but we have been relatively more successful in that regard. We are deemed to be really neutral in the engagement,” Anwar said when asked about the Philippines’ growing security cooperation with Western partners to check China.
While declining to stand in solidarity with the neighboring Philippines, Anwar has also stepped up his criticism of the West. Throughout the past year, he has accused Western nations of “hypocrisy” on the Gaza conflict as well as “Sinophobia.”
“We do not want to be dictated [to] by any force. So, [while] we remain to be an important friend to the United States or Europe and here in Australia, they should not preclude us from being friendly to one of our important neighbors, precisely China. That was the context. And if they have problems with China, they should not impose it upon us,” he told the Australian media during the ASEAN-Australia Summit last year. “We do not have a problem with China. So, that’s why I referred to the issue of China-phobia in the West.”
Meanwhile, Anwar has actively promoted China as an indispensable partner for regional development. After all, Malaysia has been a major beneficiary of a massive influx of foreign investments, including from China. And with the Southeast Asian nation on the cusp of achieving the much-vaunted “high-income” status, Anwar has every reason not to rock the boat at ASEAN this year.
The incoming Trump administration, however, will likely have little patience for ASEAN dithering or any hint of China-friendly opportunism dressed up as diplomatic “hedging.” During his confirmation hearing for defense secretary position, Hegseth made it clear that China is “front and center” among foreign threats to the US.
In his opening remarks, Hegseth emphasized the need for strengthening deterrence and, accordingly, working with key regional allies and partners to check China’s assertiveness in adjacent waters.
He also criticized the outgoing Biden administration for not doing enough to reorient America’s strategic focus from traditional theaters, such as Europe and the Middle East, in favor of a China-focused Indo-Pacific strategy.
During his confirmation hearing as secretary of state, Senator Marco Rubio also focused on China, warning the Asian superpower “to stop messing around with Taiwan and with the Philippines because it’s forcing us to focus our attention in ways we prefer not to have to.”
“I think that’s critical, not just to defending Taiwan (but) to preventing a cataclysmic military intervention in the Indo-Pacific,” Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a five-hour-long hearing.
Rubio emphasized the need for reestablishing “a proper geopolitical balance between the United States and China” as a central thrust of the incoming Trump administration’s foreign policy.
Although it engaged ASEAN as a critical partner, the first Trump government openly opposed any major decision by the regional body that could favor China’s revisionist goals.
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton, for instance, openly warned ASEAN against any regional Code of Conduct in the South China Sea that restricted America’s military access and legitimized China’s sweeping claims to the sea in contravention of international law.
Facing an even more potent and influential China, a second Trump administration will likely show even less patience for inaction or dithering by ASEAN, setting the stage for potentially fraught diplomatic relations this year with the regional bloc and its Beijing-friendly and outspoken chairman Anwar.
Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on X at @RichHeydarian
