Photo: AFP/Tang Chhin Sothy
By Dr. Phar Kim Beng, Expert Committee Member of CROSS
Barely 10 days before the ASEAN and Related Summits in Vientiane, on Oct. 9-11, China agreed to unleash a stimulus package of US$1.3 trillion.
Almost instantly, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange began to experience the fastest bull run the stock market has ever seen, compelling traders in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Shanghai to cancel their week-long vacation that was starting on Oct. 1.
The leaders of Australia, Canada, the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom, all of whom had flown into ASEAN to meet with various leaders, especially Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim who will lead ASEAN all through 2025, could not have been unimpressed with China’s impeccable timing.
To be sure, the Nomura Research Center in Japan warned that a huge stimulus that is too big and too fast can potentially trigger a bubble. The fact is China prompted all the countries that were concerned with the developments in the South China Sea to take a more nuanced approach toward Beijing too.
While the Philippines was adamant that China’s maritime behavior must change, Vietnam was surreptitiously quiet. In turn, China did not trouble the waters openly in ASEAN.
This despite Vietnam’s attempt to enlarge several features in the Paracel Islands based on reclaimed land that China had originally pioneered. If anything, China and ASEAN all concurred with Anwar’s assertion that all sensitive issues should be discussed bilaterally, if need be, multilaterally, but more than anything else, behind closed doors.
Perhaps issues such as the Rohingya and southern Thailand need to be addressed in the same manner to make them practical for resolution.
While Anwar promised that Malaysia’s chairmanship of ASEAN would focus on resilience and sustainability, a theme that has been around since 2019 when Thailand was then the chair, Anwar could not have ignored the importance of 2026 too.
The latter will be the year when the Philippines is the chair of ASEAN; followed by Singapore in 2027. For Anwar 2026 and 2027 are important as he has the option to call the 16th general election in Malaysia to get a second tenure of another five years in office, having become the 10th prime minister of Malaysia on Nov. 24, 2022.
Indeed, Anwar told MNBC two weeks prior to the summit that in order to be a “statesman, one cannot ignore the importance of being a politician.”
Anwar was being candid. Politicians, especially a Muslim democrat, must know how to win elections; notwithstanding the fact that Anwar has a two-thirds electoral majority based on the support that has been pledged to the coalition government.
What makes Anwar confident that he can ensure a strong and resilient ASEAN that extends not merely from the security of the member states’ supply chain but can handle the tensions that emanate from the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea and finally the South China Sea?
A good way to understand the statecraft of Anwar is his deep belief in alliance building, sometimes even reaching out to countries that are deemed to be opposed by the Group of Seven and EU such as China, Russia and Iran; of which the last three can be plainly described as a triple axis.
This is where Anwar’s strategic and economic statecraft is based on alliance building and a loose amalgamation with the axis of China, Russia and Iran has to be broken down into six levels of analysis.
First and foremost, Malaysia under Anwar practices a dynamic yet quiescent diplomacy. Reliable sources have confirmed that Anwar did not try to build strong bridges with the US during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in November 2023 in San Francisco.
In California, Anwar was even willing to drop all mention of the war in Israel, hoping that this could reduce the tensions between Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah and Israel. If one were to examine the speech of Anwar at APEC, he did condemn violence from all sides in the Middle East.
This was not merely an overture to Washington, to which Anwar admits “cumulatively the US remains the largest trading partner of Malaysia”, and by extension ASEAN. The US has been in Southeast Asia for a long time since its first annexation of the Philippines in 1898.
But it is not necessarily Malaysia that wants the foreign direct investment (FDI) of the US. The whole of ASEAN wants it to complement its FDI from China, the EU and UK too.
To the degree, more relationships need to be built with the triple axis of China, Russia and Iran, of which Iran is increasingly a pivotal power that can decide the geopolitical stability of the world, Anwar has agreed to guide ASEAN beyond its old allies to reach out to BRICS too.
Secondly, Anwar has also emphasized the importance of the ASEAN-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Plus China initiative. In October last year ASEAN already had one inaugural summit in Riyadh.
Granted the existence of Malaysia’s Look East Policy that includes China, Japan and South Korea. The latter became the comprehensive strategic partner of ASEAN in Laos, leaving Japan as the lone polity out for now.
Very soon Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, if he leads the Liberal Democratic Party to another electoral victory in November, will want to join the ASEAN-GCC Summit.
Third, Anwar did not leave out the importance of the EU. If anything, Anwar emphasized the criticality of ASEAN and the EU enhancing their mutual trade.
This would be music to the ear of Prime Minister Lawrence Wong of Singapore, whom Anwar will meet again in early December to consolidate the Johor-Singapore Economic and Financial Zone. Why would Singapore be pleased with Anwar? For the longest time since the mid-1990s, Singapore has always supported, even convened the first, Europe and ASEAN Meeting (ASEM).
Fourth, Anwar has called for the admission of Timor-Leste into ASEAN by 2025. As and when, Timor-Leste succeeds, after more than two decades of waiting as a mere observer, ASEAN will extend its reach into the South Pacific Forum (SPF), which gathers 16 Micronesian states.
The Indo-Pacific rivalry that is so important to the Quad (Australia, US, India and Japan) cannot expand its influence into the South Pacific without first consulting ASEAN, since Timor-Leste would be a key member of Southeast Asia.
The “convening power” of ASEAN, all of which adds up to the centrality of Southeast Asia to the great powers, will be enhanced by Anwar with the tacit and open endorsement of all countries.
In sum, all geopolitical strategies could come to naught if Malaysia, for that matter ASEAN, does not know how to tackle economic issues jointly.
But beyond the quadruple alliance cum axis strategy to allow ASEAN to engage with the Global South and Global North, Anwar has explained the necessity of enhancing the intra-regional trade of ASEAN. This is to go beyond the 25 percent threshold currently in place to attain a regional self-sufficiency to be the fourth-largest economy in the world by 2030.
This could potentially still see Anwar and Wong and soon-to-be-inaugurated president-elect Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia all remaining in office.
With Malaysia focused on digitalization, renewable energy and manufacturing as some of the key planks of its growth strategy, all of which are shared by other members of ASEAN, Anwar is not short of the strategic depth to be the major statesman of Southeast Asia in the first half of the 21st century.
This article was published in thejakartapost.com on 15 October 2024
