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Last week, the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met on the island of Flores, Indonesia, for the annual ASEAN summit and related meetings. Once again, the post-coup conflict in Myanmar was at the top of the agenda.

To highlight ongoing difficulties for ASEAN policymakers, at the start of the week staff from the Indonesian and Singaporean embassies in Yangon and personnel from an ASEAN humanitarian assistance centre travelling in Myanmar’s Shan State were shot at by unknown assailants.

By the end of the week reports were appearing of a massacre by the military of 19 civilians, including four children, in a village in the central Bago Region. This followed an airstrike with a ‘thermobaric’ munition on 11 April that caused over 160 deaths, including children, in the village of Pa Zi Gyi in northern Sagaing Region, which Human Rights Watch called an ‘apparent war crime’.

In response to the conflict in Myanmar, the statement at the end of the Summit again called for an ‘immediate cessation of violence in Myanmar’ and reiterated support for the failed ‘Five-Point Consensus’, even though the Summit’s Chair, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, admitted there had been ‘no significant progress’ on the plan. Such a mild diplomatic response to the unfolding crisis is a consequence of the need for consensus among ASEAN members and represent the lowest common denominator of concern about Myanmar.

Still, some members of ASEAN have been forceful in their criticism of the Myanmar military. The fact is that the Myanmar chair has remained empty at most ASEAN meetings since the Summit of 2021, to which the military were politely disinvited. Other ASEAN members have been somewhat more forgiving, but no more successful at building consensus, with Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen, who chaired ASEAN in 2022, failing in his attempts to rein in the Myanmar military.

It has also become apparent that Thailand, as well as India, have been engaged in Track 1.5 diplomacy—hosting meetings with the military and representatives of neighbouring countries, with the anti-coup National Unity Government (NUG) a noticeable absentee.

The Thai government, led by 2014 coup-leader Prayuth Chan-ocha, has been less interested in engaging the NUG than the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia, and more concerned with placating the Myanmar military and coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. Prayuth’s intimate understanding of the dilemmas facing another coup-maker-in-chief is hardly surprising.

This is where the Thai election of last Sunday could hold the key to a more substantial shift in ASEAN policy. After a phenomenal showing at the polls, the liberal Move Forward party looks likely to be the largest party in the new parliament. If constitutional impediments designed by the Thai military junta can be overcome, the charismatic young leader of the party, Pita Limjaroenrat, may well be the next prime minister.

Move Forward has been the most outspoken of the major parties in rejecting any compromise with the military and its proxy parties in Thailand, and Pita is unlikely to be amenable to the military junta in neighbouring Myanmar. His election success also highlights the widening chasm between established, and often authoritarian, Southeast Asian powerbrokers and the aspirations of a rising generation of more progressive and internationally oriented young people.

In Thailand, that generation made their feelings known in large-scale anti-military and anti-monarchy protests in recent years. Now they are flexing their muscles at the ballot box.

And now, if Pita, an eloquent business figure with a strong understanding of the global system, takes the top job then he will likely want to shake up the conservative priorities of ASEAN too.

Of course, in Bangkok there will be the usual heavily contested coalition politics to navigate, as well as the ever-present threat of a future military intervention. Nevertheless, a Move Forward-led coalition would want to quickly leave its stamp on foreign policy, including the management of the long border with Myanmar.

Could such a Thailand shift the weight of ASEAN concerns from state stability to these intractable humanitarian crises, and even towards the democratic will of the Myanmar people? Bangkok’s foreign policy thinkers understand perhaps better than anyone that there are major risks, for all, in the further entrenchment of Myanmar military rule. Young people in Myanmar will also look to the Thai election as an example of what patient but relentless activism can ultimately achieve.

For now, there is still much negotiation required after the poor electoral showing of Thailand’s military-aligned parties, and good reasons to remain watchful of what could prove a further period of violence and brinksmanship. But if Move Forward can use its ballot box success as a path towards power, then all of ASEAN will take notice.

Thailand has much at stake in Myanmar’s future, and, if its own military strongmen now relinquish control, the weekend’s election could spark a change in the region’s approach to its most pressing strategic and humanitarian crisis.

The headline news for Australia out of last week’s G20 summit in Bali was the meeting between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The prospect of repairing relations between Australia and China is an overdue development and in the interests of both countries.

But while China tends to dominate the foreign policy debate in Australia and elsewhere, there’s more to our engagement with Asia than getting on with Beijing. The Albanese–Xi meeting appropriately took place in the midst of three of the biggest leaders’ summits on the international calendar—which, as it happens, were all held in Southeast Asia.

If Australia’s relationship with China is to have a sustainable recovery, it will be built in large part on demonstrating a strong diplomatic presence in ASEAN, which straddles the region of greatest strategic importance to us. ASEAN also has a record of convening ‘inclusive’ meetings that bring all sides, not just the like-minded, into one room.

Sure, the Albanese government has promised a continued commitment to the Quad—and to AUKUS—but talk of Australian and ASEAN futures being ‘tied together’, and the recent appointment of a high-profile special envoy for Southeast Asia, suggest some fresh strategic thinking. We cannot assume, however, that moving closer to ASEAN will be uncomplicated.

Australia has lost ground with Southeast Asia. At a recent seminar commemorating our leadership in bringing a form of peace to Cambodia 30 years ago, discussants doubted whether Australia could play such a regional role today. The strategic context has changed; our great ally, America no longer possesses unrivalled power and China is becoming recognised across Southeast Asia as the regional leader.

A second challenge we face is that Australia–ASEAN relativities have changed dramatically. Australia has continued to grow, but much of Southeast Asia has developed more quickly. For Australia, ASEAN is second only to China as a trading partner. But we are less important to Southeast Asian countries, accounting for well under 3% of their trade.

Our economy is also now smaller than Southeast Asia’s. Three decades ago, Australia’s GDP was larger than the combined GDP of the ASEAN countries. Today, their GDP is far greater than ours—more than double by some measures—and also larger than the GDP of India, a country we often call a potential great power. ASEAN has also become China’s number one trade partner.

Economic capacity plays into defence capability. Australia easily outspent ASEAN three decades ago, but today ASEAN spending on defence is some 60% greater. With benchmarking against US forces, and recent combat experience, Australia still has a capability edge in key areas, but our lead is now less conspicuous.

A third challenge in strengthening ASEAN relations is that we now face far more competition for Southeast Asian attention. China isn’t the only nation to have risen meteorically as an economic partner. South Korea, once a country of little economic significance to Southeast Asia, is now well over twice as important as Australia as an ASEAN trading partner—and a serious investor. Australia—unlike Japan, the Netherlands and Switzerland, as well as Korea—isn’t listed among the main investors in ASEAN.

The findings of the 2022 ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute survey of the region’s opinion leaders are sobering. Australia does well enough as a place for university education—equal to Japan and well ahead of Korea—and as a provider of Covid-19 support. But we now rank low against other ASEAN partner states in terms of economic and security influence—as well as in providing leadership in ‘maintaining the rules-based order’ and ‘championing global free trade’.

Three or four decades ago, apart from the Cambodia initiative, Australia was spearheading the Cairns Group of Fair Trading Nations and was central in the creation of APEC.

A fourth challenge relates to contrasts in political culture. In the decades following the Pacific War, Australia was the local representative of the dominant global ideology, liberal democracy. Today—with the relative decline of US influence—we must take distinctive Asian perspectives far more seriously.

In foreign policy, Southeast Asians tend to be uncomfortable with military alliances. Rather than automatically balancing against a rising power, they prefer working through regional organisations that are ‘inclusive’—seeking to ‘socialise’ rising states, such as China. They are wary, too, about interference in the internal affairs of another country. China’s ideology is seen as China’s business—and Vietnam’s ideology hasn’t prevented it from becoming a leading ASEAN state.

Sometimes to Australia’s frustration, the unity of ASEAN is viewed as more important than decisive action—for instance, in pursuing political or even human rights issues. Although Southeast Asians are political gradualists, in economic development they favour dynamism—and increasingly lack respect for Australia in this area.

Noting Australia’s regional relations, an influential Singapore commentator warns that, with American decline, Australia may become isolated—a type of ‘Cuba in Asia’. The answer is not to become ‘Southeast Asian’, but it is unwise to express disdain for Southeast Asian preferences, as some of our leading commentators have done.

A fifth challenge to an ASEAN priority is that the wider Australian community connects only weakly with these countries. Amazingly, there’s little stress on the languages and societies of Australia’s neighbours in our university and school system. The Lowy poll on ‘Australian attitudes’ suggests a lack not only of knowledge, but also of interest and warmth. True, we take an increasingly positive view of Japan, but the one distinct theme in our international outlook is dedication to the US alliance. Half the Australian population hasn’t even caught up with Indonesia’s ‘remarkable transition to democracy’—a development which PM John Howard highlighted time and again.

Over two centuries, Australians have engaged in the great project of building a liberal democracy on this continent. With some important exceptions, we have been less creative in our international relations. Southeast Asians and others suspect that Australia has not yet come to terms with its geographic setting. To do so may require some reimagining of Australia’s identity, as well as foreign policy.

The UK government’s Integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy presents the Indo-Pacific as a region of increasing geopolitical and economic importance over the next decade and suggests that competition will play out in ‘regional militarisation, maritime tensions and contest over the rules and norms linked to trade and technology’.

The contested and congested oceans and connectivity links that make up the Indo-Pacific form an epicentre of great-power competition in which Southeast Asia is central.

Closer engagement with ASEAN states is therefore an essential part of a strategy that seeks to position the UK as a global actor in the era of strategic competition. But Britain is not alone, and an increasing number of other European countries are reasserting their positions in the region too.

Following the British government’s announcement of its Indo-Pacific tilt, in 2021 the UK became the newest ASEAN dialogue partner (Australia was the first, in 1974) and deployed a carrier strike group  to tour the Indo-Pacific. Operation Fortis was the UK’s largest operational naval deployment to Asia since the 1997 handover of Hong Kong.

In the wake of the AUKUS announcement and in light of the UK’s broader maritime ambitions, how can the UK work with Australia to contribute to maritime security in the Indo-Pacific? What can they jointly bring to this crowded space? And how can ‘external powers’ engage with ASEAN states in areas of common interest while circumventing sensitivities and avoiding raising tensions?

In a new ASPI report, released today, UK, Australia and ASEAN cooperation for safer seas: a case for elevating the cyber–maritime security nexus, we identify cybersecurity and technology capacity-building as priorities for UK–Australia–ASEAN cooperation in maritime security. This is a value-adding area that draws on the strengths of the UK and Australia to foster partnerships with non-military actors and addresses civilian-related aspects of maritime security.

The list of cyber incidents affecting maritime security is slowly but steadily growing and includes the malfunctioning of critical control systems, the exfiltration of sensitive data, the manipulation of systems to allow trafficking and smuggling to occur unnoticed, commercial and military espionage, spoofing of navigation systems, and manipulation of identification transmissions. While digitisation and automation of processes have been a priority for the maritime industry, cybersecurity has been lagging other comparable critical sectors of the global economy.

A first steppingstone for cybersecurity capability is access to incident-response resources. Some initiatives have been undertaken, including by Singapore’s port authority and maritime-focused cybersecurity companies, but altogether these efforts are just a drop in the ocean, given the magnitude of Southeast Asia’s maritime activity and the lack of an industry- and region-wide approach to and apprehension of the risk.

Risks aside, digital and emerging technologies are presenting marine industries with huge potential. Access to ‘maritime big data’, in combination with applications based on artificial intelligence and machine learning, will help to inform decisions on the most efficient routing; precise and reliable forecasting of scheduled arrivals; docking, off-boarding, load forwarding and reloading; and insurance of risks related to maintenance and accidents.

The Verumar project in the Philippines identified nine groups of technologies that are disrupting conventional fishing and other marine economic activities. Collecting and analysing meteorological, oceanographic and hydrographic data is helping efforts to support responsible fishing and combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing; track of maritime pollution; and monitor maritime economic resources and biodiversity.

Strengthening capabilities for maritime domain awareness through the adoption of digital technologies serves joint UK–Australia–ASEAN interests and their respective industries. The UK and Australia would be well placed to take responsibility for standard-setting in the development and deployment of these emerging technologies so that they reflect shared norms and the needs of the Indo-Pacific maritime community.

Maritime supply-chain resilience is emerging as a significant economic and security concern. The incident in 2021, in which MS Ever Given obstructed traffic in the Suez Canal, immediately reverberated through global supply chains and demonstrated the dependence of the world economy on accurate forecasting. Delays and disruptions in the shipping of critical rare-earth minerals prompted Australian mining company Lynas Rare Earths to charter its own vessel and secure a continuity of supply to customers through a processing facility in Malaysia.

Overall, the industry is expected to need to meet demands for faster and more accurate and predictive shipping. As Southeast Asia continues to ride the wave of e-commerce, major manufacturers will require logistics partners that are more flexible and agile. An ‘Uberisation’ of maritime transport is already taking shape that may soon involve a greater number of shippers operating with more small and medium-sized transporters.

Southeast Asia is not a chokepoint only for maritime trade but also for internet connectivity. With a high concentration of fibre-optic cables landing in and through the region, Southeast Asia is gradually developing into a hub for hyperscale data providers in the region’s digital economy.

Marine-based infrastructure such as communications cables and relay stations on the ocean floor is often overlooked, but is responsible for transporting 95% of the world’s data. While deliberate disruptions to undersea cables may occur, especially when exact locations are known, they are more likely to be damaged as a result of natural disasters or accidental collisions. The Indonesian government recognised that vulnerability when it tasked the navy’s Hydrography and Oceanography Centre to map and potentially rearrange its underwater geophysical landscape of cable and pipes to mitigate potential threats.

By exploring the cybersecurity and emerging technology dimensions of maritime security, the UK and Australia enter largely uncharted territory. Both countries, however, possess a demonstrated track record of maritime, cyber and tech expertise, experience and resources to partner with ASEAN countries in building further regional capacity in technology-enabled maritime security.

Managing the advent of new technologies in Southeast Asia’s maritime operations—military, civil and commercial—and ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and availability of systems and networks will increasingly underpin the safety and security of the maritime domain, including the legal aspects of maritime borders.

As this year’s ASEAN chair, Brunei Darussalam finds itself operating in an increasingly precarious and unpredictable region.

While Southeast Asia begins to heal from the Covid-19 pandemic that brought the region to a standstill for most of last year, Brunei has the formidable task of guiding it towards a post-recovery era. With the theme of ‘We Care. We Prepare. We Prosper’, Brunei has largely concentrated its chairmanship on strengthening the regional healthcare infrastructure in a post-pandemic landscape.

However, early this year, the ASEAN chair was forced to focus on an entirely unexpected challenge—the military coup and accompanying violence that erupted in Myanmar. Brunei has since become engaged in a series of regional consultations, quiet diplomacy and concerns about major-power intervention amid fears of domestic spillovers and recurring waves of the pandemic.

It now confronts an entirely different set of challenges to those it anticipated.

Last month’s ASEAN Leaders’ Meeting at the organisation’s secretariat in Jakarta became a point of tension. In a bid to de-escalate the crisis, ASEAN invited coup leader Min Aung Hlaing to the meeting but that drew a mixed reaction from civil society groups and Myanmar citizens concerned that the invitation recognised him as his country’s legitimate representative.

The summit produced a joint statement and a five-point consensus through which ASEAN leaders hoped to address the spiralling violence in Myanmar.

In Jakarta, Min Aung Hlaing displayed an apparently conciliatory attitude. He did not reject calls to end the violence and he met with the United Nations Special Envoy for Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener.

But in Myanmar the bloodshed continues.

ASEAN’s approach has been based on its political desire for cooperation rather than enforcement, so the fact that the five-point consensus offered neither a timeline nor a plan to apply pressure on the coup leaders is not surprising. While Brunei and other ASEAN leaders are still working on nominating a Myanmar envoy, critics believe the summit offered Myanmar’s armed forces, the Tatmadaw, an opportunity to seek legitimacy externally while continuing to repress the people.

The Myanmar crisis is a test that Brunei, and everyone else in the region, were not prepared for. With its ‘We Care. We Prepare. We Prosper’ theme, Brunei sought to protect the ASEAN community by prioritising treatment to ensure swift recovery, expediting vaccine distribution and protecting online services.

This led to the Strategic and Holistic Initiative to Link ASEAN Responses to Emergencies and Disasters (ASEAN SHIELD) and the establishment of a taskforce to preserve digital safety and ensure accurate information flows. A second pillar of this strategy sets out to ensure a stable post-pandemic regional future by managing changing major-power relations and security threats, including spillovers from the instability in Myanmar.

Here, Brunei finds itself upholding priorities it has long championed such as a rules-based architecture and constructive relations between major powers as demonstrated by ASEAN’s first invitation to attend the G7 ministerial meeting with partners such as the United States.

Given changing security dynamics, there’s also a broader push to maintain ASEAN’s relevance, especially with the release of documents such as the ‘ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific’.

In the third pillar, seeking prosperity, Brunei advocates for more opportunities through a people-centred approach that focuses on 10 economic priorities including recovery, digitalisation and sustainability.

This year, the region is likely to see Brunei building on the recently signed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership to support more non-tariff measures on trade, revive industry sectors, optimise e-commerce and promote sustainable growth.

By beginning the year with a business advisory council meeting and a retreat for senior economic officials, Brunei clearly seeks to vigorously support a broader multilateral trading and security system. Indeed, since taking the chairmanship, Brunei has engaged with long-standing partners such as the United Kingdom by welcoming Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to Brunei and supporting the UK’s admission as an ASEAN dialogue partner.

Brunei’s three priorities are clearly complementary and, carried out consistently, would help provide a stable post-pandemic order amid regional challenges.

But with the spotlight on the ongoing instability in Myanmar, the test for Brunei’s chairmanship has largely been framed as its ability to lead an effective regional response to the atrocities there. Crafting a peaceful resolution in Myanmar would not only mark the legacy of Brunei’s 2021 chairmanship but would also form a milestone for ASEAN.

It may be a tall order for this gargantuan task to fall upon the shoulders of Brunei, but this country offers the potential for compassionate leadership that the Myanmar crisis desperately needs.

US–China, US–China—the commentary goes on and on. Who will be dominant? Must rising powers always go to war with established powers? Can the US assemble an Indo-Pacific alliance to balance China? Might the US agree to share primacy?

These are urgent questions—but some recent Asian perspectives (including from a Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific survey) suggest a growing impatience with what a Japanese analyst calls these ‘bilateral dynamics’. There is talk of the need to reinvigorate multilateralism—and one line of thought suggests that the often-denigrated ASEAN could lead a multilateralism effort that transcends the US–China contest.

The performance of both China and the US has disappointed. Covid-19 started in China, and Beijing has been seen as bullying several neighbours. Regarding the US, the ‘appearance of incompetence in managing the pandemic’ is one factor in the judgement (of a senior Philippines observer) that the ‘post–Second World War order built around US hegemony … is ending’.

The interesting point, however, comes from Japan. Analyst Tsutomu Kikuchi reminds us that Asia is ‘more than the US and China’—and that numerous countries and institutions in ‘the rest of Asia’ have ‘substantial political, economic, military and sociocultural power’. The continued agency of ‘small and medium-sized countries’, in fact, is often stressed by regional analysts—and Kikuchi suggests their ‘prime goal’ ought to be ‘to sustain and further enhance the rules-based order’, because such states tend to be protected by ‘strong binding rules’.

Looking beyond the US and China, who could lead such endeavours? Interestingly, Kikuchi notes the continuing capacities of ASEAN. It and other multilateral institutions, of course, have received plenty of criticism. From the United Nations downwards, their handling of the Covid-19 crisis has not impressed. An experienced Cambodian observer sees ‘individual initiatives at the national level’ but no ‘concrete actions’ from ASEAN or ASEAN+3. Even the EU has struggled to act in concert—despite the alarming rise in numbers of infection and mortality among its members.

This said, the current crisis has highlighted not sidelined multilateralism. As the Cambodian observes, the virus ‘crosses national borders, and a regional response makes a lot more sense’. A Chinese commentator adds that the actual ‘methodology necessary in responding to Covid-19 demands a level of international cooperation more comprehensive than we have achieved before’.

Mixed with criticism of ASEAN, Kikuchi is not alone in expressing a degree of optimism. Some analysts even believe the pandemic might inspire an ambitious ‘reset’.

A review of ASEAN’s potential does seem warranted—especially as there are no other obvious candidates likely to build a consensual regional order. Various ASEAN-led institutions do, after all, encompass the entire Asia–Pacific region. Also, the organisation’s track record throughout the challenging post–Cold War period is better than its many critics suggest. Recall that the East Asia Summit, which includes every serious player in the region, was an ASEAN initiative, as were the wide-membership security forums—the ASEAN Regional Forum and the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which seeks to promote open trade and investment, was launched in 2012, again by ASEAN—and incorporates every country in Southeast and Northeast Asia, as well as Australia and New Zealand.

The point is often made that ASEAN is no match for China. This would be hard to deny. In the South China Sea, the Southeast Asians are merely small countries invoking the rule of law to buttress their sovereignty. It is also true, however, that the ASEAN–China relationship contains positive elements—including investment inflow, and the fact that ASEAN became China’s largest trading partner in 2020. Also, as former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad often pointed out, Southeast Asians are used to negotiating with a powerful China—and they believe that China, unlike the US, is invested in their region for the long haul.

There is pride in the careful way Southeast Asia embraced communist China, commencing in the 1970s—and in the part ASEAN played in rehabilitating China internationally following the Tiananmen Square massacres of 1989. The initiation of the Asian-centric ASEAN+3 process in 1997, after decades of US presence and support of the economies of Southeast Asia, highlights ASEAN’s agency in engaging a multiplicity of players judged to be able to benefit the region. As leading Thai analyst Kavi Chongkittavorn has pointed out, the ‘Plus Three’ element was also an ASEAN contribution to bridge-building between the large, mutually hostile states of Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea).

Initiatives from ASEAN, therefore, would not be interpreted automatically in the framework of US–China rivalry. Even a greater ASEAN engagement with Japan and South Korea would not need to be viewed as Cold War alliance-building. Over the past year there have been various reports of improved relations between China and its Northeast Asian neighbours—and Kavi insists that although ‘historical grievances and border disputes will not disappear overnight’ the Covid-19 crisis has provided an opportunity to benefit from ‘shared anxieties and worries’.

Such a shift in Northeast Asian sentiments could be a game-changer across the Asian region. At the least, more relaxed interstate relations in Northeast Asia—fostered, in part, by ASEAN—would provide a more favourable setting for the further development of ASEAN-led rules-based regional building.

The fact that the Southeast Asian states (with the partial exception of Indonesia) are small in Asian terms is not a deterrent to ASEAN agency. It helps ASEAN to appear non-threatening; also, over many centuries, Southeast Asians have become accustomed to functioning in state-to-state hierarchies, developing strategies to handle those above them. Even a state growing in strength was not necessarily seen as a threat—was not automatically resisted or balanced against. Such a state might rather be embraced or socialised—in a manner beneficial to both sides.

Historically, this was the approach to China. With such a heritage of valuing agency while operating in a hierarchy, ASEAN may be better qualified than most in ‘the rest of Asia’ to promote a multilateral rule-structure—a structure that will not immediately be viewed as antagonistic to China, but may help to restrain China or any other major power capable of disrupting this region of the world. What is needed now from the ASEAN states is the creative leadership they have on occasion demonstrated in the past.