Intro: Hello everyone.
Southeast Asia is navigating a far more contested and uncertain strategic environment. Military tensions, major power rivalry and territorial disputes are growing, while transboundary challenges from economic shocks to cyber risks, are testing the region's resilience.
For ASEAN, this raises a critical question: How can the region remain stable, resilient and relevant as global power structures shift? In this episode, we'll examine how changing global dynamics are reshaping the Asian regional order and what this means for ASEAN's role going forward.
I'm Selina Ho from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and joining me today are Professor Khong Yuen Foong from the Lee Kuan Yew School as well and Associate Professor Tan Hsien-Li from NUS' Law School. Let's begin.
Let me ask the first question to Yuen Foong. You are an expert on American foreign policy towards Southeast Asia during the Cold War. And we know all about your work on the Vietnam War.
How have historical power dynamics in Southeast Asia influenced current geopolitical trends?
Khong Yuen Foong: Southeast Asia has always been subjected to great power dynamics. The two major "hot wars", Korea and Vietnam in the Cold War, occurred in Asia. The great powers involved then with the US, the Soviet Union and China, and the US felt compelled to intervene in Korea to prevent North Korea from taking over the South. And because it felt it was a Soviet China proxy.
In Southeast Asia, Northern Vietnam was seen as the proxy of China. And the Johnson administration believed that if South Vietnam fell, it would lead to the expansion of Chinese communist power, per the domino theory. And which would mean that the rest of Southeast Asia might also fall in due course. That was the major reason for the US decision to fight in the Vietnam War.
Interestingly, the current geopolitical trend is still very much about US-China rivalry. The Soviet Union has dropped out basically. The US is in relative decline and China has risen. And all things considered, closing in on the US in terms of comprehensive power. In other words, there is a bipolar competition with the US and China as the superpowers going on in Asia. China seems to be challenging the US position.
The US has caught on to this, and this helps explain the intensity of the China-US rivalry in the last years. The distrust between the two powers, in my view, is rooted in this structural condition. And in such a competition, both sides will want to persuade the non-aligned to align with them. East Asia, with the exception of North Korea, I think it's basically spoken for. Think of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. They're basically US allies. Things are more fluid in Southeast Asia. Those who are not aligned, the superpowers would like to get them onto their side.
During the Cold War, virtually all the non-communist countries of Southeast Asia, especially the original ASEAN, basically aligned with the US and the West. Today, the situation is rather more complex.
In the study that Joseph Liow and I just completed, we found that the direction of travel when it comes to the strategic alignments of the ASEAN countries is trending away from the US and towards China. I recommend viewers who are interested in this trend to check out the Alignment Index website of the school.
Selina Ho: Thank you very much, Yuen Foong, for painting such a historical and yet, bringing it up to the present, of the challenges that actually face the region because of geopolitical rivalry.
Let me now turn next to Hsien Li. And you know, you're a real expert on international law and particularly your work on ASEAN soft laws.
So this is where I'm going to ask you: could you say something about the relevance of ASEAN soft law to our regional order? How have they helped small states?
Tan Hsien-Li: Thank you very much, Selina. And thank you for inviting me to this panel. So, before I start on ASEAN law and ASEAN soft law, I think we need to take a step back and realise that ASEAN as a regional organisation, as a regional order, is part of that international legal order. Or in contemporary terms, the rules-based international order, which everyone is castigating right now.
But the fact is, even in strategic struggles or bipolar struggles, or multi-polar power struggles, law is very, very important, right? So for ASEAN as a grouping of small states, and really for small states all over the world, in the world order, international law is very important. And particularly, if we look at the behaviour of small states, they use soft law very, very much.
So in the ASEAN context, yes, we use soft law a lot. ASEAN was established with the Bangkok Declaration. And that is a soft law, right? We didn't have our first treaty, our first hard law in ASEAN till years later with the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. So, you know, looking at ASEAN as a whole, treaty law is important. Treaty law in the international law body. But soft law is our modus operandi.
Selina Ho: Thank you, Hsien-Li. But I think we should actually ask the, I’ll let the audience know. And I'm going to ask you, how do we define soft laws?
And can ASEAN soft laws… because they’re specific to ASEAN, actually be a model for other regions in the world?
Tan Hsien-Li: Right. So I think this is a bit of the Global North and Global South divide, where small states in the Global South have used soft law a lot in their regional orders and their interactions. So soft law is, as part of the body of international laws, is used very widely as well.
I think the spotlight on small states' usage of soft law is very much hidden or less spotlighted. And if we look at not only ASEAN, but also the Pacific Islands Forum, and maybe the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, soft laws are the main modality of cooperation and action forward.
So soft laws could be a combination of declaration, blueprints, action plans which set out firm commitments but without litigation, right? So if there's a violation, they discuss and then they move forward. But there will not be like a treaty violation where there is recourse to litigation or arbitration.
Selina Ho: Let me turn back now to Yuen Foong. You painted for us a wonderful picture about how major powers actually affected our strategic landscape.
Now, let me follow up with that, and with a deeper question, which is: what impact does this have? What role do major powers have on regional integration and resilience?
Khong Yuen Foong: As I mentioned earlier, the China-US rivalry, while intensifying, will put Southeast Asia at risk of becoming at the vortex of that struggle. On the question of choosing sides, for example, countries will pull in different directions and need to calibrate their relations with the two powers ever more carefully, and given their different national interests and capabilities, it has proved challenging to Southeast Asia, to ASEAN, to take a common position.
So in terms of cohesiveness, as the issue of resilience, that is being challenged. And ASEAN's mantra of not wanting to choose is in jeopardy in a sense. If we look at the policy choices over the last years or so, it is clear that some have chosen while others are still hedging or straddling between the two powers. In that sense, regional resilience is being challenged.
But I think the consolation or the saving grace is that the existence of ASEAN, the regional institution, may have a role to play in terms of agency, convening power and helping shape the security and economic architecture.
As you know, ASEAN was formed by the original at the height of the Vietnam War, in part to insulate them from the ravages of the war, in their backyard. And by emphasising regional reconciliation among former adversaries, political security, and national resilience, ASEAN gave less opportunities and made it more costly for the great powers to meddle in their affairs. In other words, by coming together, they avoided the fate of Vietnam.
And most interesting to me is how ASEAN extended its modalities and approach to regional diplomacy to the rest of Asia after the Cold War. I think in all the initiatives that ASEAN came up with post-Cold War, you can see a lot of potential for ASEAN to be agentic, to play a role consonant with its reputation in shaping the regional security and economic architecture. That is where I hope there'll be room for enhancing regional resilience.
Selina Ho: Great! I mean, I think at this point, we should probably introduce our project. The project that three of us are on, and a few others as well.
The project is called “Regional Resilience in a Changing World". And it is generously supported by the Social Science Research Council in Singapore.
As the Principal Investigator (PI), maybe you could help us tell the audience what the project is about.
Khong Yuen Foong: Very happy to. We are hugely excited and we are very grateful to the SSRC and the Ministry of Education (MOE) for awarding us the grant to study regional resilience.
As you and Hsien Li know, we are aware that scholars and policymakers have given a lot of thought to national resilience, but not regional resilience. Regional resilience is almost like an afterthought, right? And in the last few years, given the geopolitical upheavals, the more farsighted leaders of the region have seen the importance of regional resilience.
But so as scholars, we want to know what are the ingredients of regional resilience. This is the controlling question that animates our project. And we will be investigating six of the most important challenges faced by Southeast Asia today. And we want to try to figure out what regional resilience consists of in each of these challenges.
Let me just quickly run through the challenges.
Number one is the power translation and the emerging regional order. Number two is economic coupling, security of supply chains and deglobalisation. Number three is legal, institutional and normative resilience, which is Hsien Li’s challenge. Number four is technological security. Number five is health security. And number six, challenges coming from demographic translation.
We hope to come up with answers that, on the one hand, deepen our understanding of regional resilience, but also be able to identify the ingredients that make for regional resilience in each of the challenges, so that policymakers in Singapore and in the region can do something about it in their effort to make the region more resilient.
Selina Ho: Wonderful. Wonderful that you introduced the project to us. But maybe that's why I'm going to turn to Hsien Li now to talk about her slice of this project, which is in the legal and institutional realm. So maybe give us the viewers a little insight into what you're really thinking about.
So let me ask you this question: With the global rules-based order, international law and organisations, and multilateralism under threat, what do you think ASEAN can do in the legal and institutional realm to strengthen the region?
Tan Hsien-Li: Right. So this is, you know, I think this is not the first time that ASEAN is under siege by geopolitical pressures or geoeconomic pressures. But this is a new phase in the global order where we see heightened superpower tension. And now we have tariffs, we have realignment of supply chains.
So what ASEAN can do, I think the formula actually doesn't change because ASEAN has always faced different permutations of such political and economic power, but our tools have been modernised. So what ASEAN needs to do in a nutshell?
Two things: we really need to integrate more closely as ASEAN. Intra-regional order. So we have our ASEAN treaty laws, we have our ASEAN soft laws. And we need to make them more impactful within our national societies.
The second thing is, carrying on from what Yuen Foong said, ASEAN external relations. So ASEAN has been in the business of external relations for such a long time, and it is good at it.
So now our contemporary tool is comprehensive and strategic partnerships, and that has been intensified since the start of COVID, and in our project challenge three, we are looking specifically at the new forms of comprehensive and strategic partnerships with not only the two, with China as a superpower, but also middle power, dialogue partners.
Selina Ho: Great in helping us understand what ASEAN soft law can do for the region and also for the world. So now I'm going to turn to questions for both of you to answer. And these are broader types of questions.
The first question is: The benign environment that most of us are used to is changing. Danger lurks for the small and medium-sized states of Southeast Asia.
If you were an advisor to one of the top leaders of the countries in this region, what piece of advice would you give him or her as to how their country as well as Southeast Asia can be resilient, cohesive, and maintain autonomy and independence?
Maybe we'll start with Yuen Foong.
Khong Yuen Foong: I think the leaders of the region have already caught on to one of the things that needs to be done, and that is precisely the nature of our project. Enhance regional resilience. And I think you have identified some of the most important factors contributing to regional resilience, as you put it, cohesiveness, autonomy and independence. I would just say a few things on this.
I think the first thing that might be interesting to note is that regional resilience is more than the sum of the aggregate of the national resilience of the countries. That's the point of departure of our study, right? And to enhance cohesiveness and autonomy, it seems to me that in the economic realm, it would make sense for ASEAN to work towards a greater interdependence, economic interdependence, for example, in the security of supply chains of critical materials. And also enhanced cooperation. These are things that ASEAN have traditionally done pretty well.
If you think of ASEAN countries as initiators of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and so on. On the security front, I think the region can work towards a more inclusive and open security architecture. By bringing in the great powers and enhancing the role of the East Asian Summit, for example. So, I think on all these fronts, there is an opportunity to leverage on the ASEAN institution in order to achieve greater regional resilience.
Selina Ho: Great, how about you, Hsien Li? What do you think?
Tan Hsien-Li: So I think I wouldn’t address this to just one leader, but to all now leaders, that our national resilience is actually part of the entire collective regional resilience.
And it's very, very important that, in building the ASEAN intra-regional order, as well as cooperating with the external partners, we have to believe in the rules that ASEAN makes. ASEAN treaty laws and ASEAN soft laws, we shouldn't feel that ASEAN laws are inferior. No, they're not. They're part of international law and they actually work very well.
So, start believing in them, alongside working through them. I mean, we're already working through them, but start believing that ASEAN soft laws and treaty laws are really going to pave the way forward because they have built up our regional resilience so far, and they will do so even more into the future.
Selina Ho: Yeah, I think that regional resilience is something that we actually need to believe in to start with, and then the results will show for itself. Okay, let me ask you the last question for today:
What impact do you hope that the project can accomplish that will provide tools and ideas to researchers and policymakers to navigate the challenges ahead for the region?
Maybe I'll ask Hsien Li this time first.
Tan Hsien-Li: Alright, I think my answer is very straightforward. I think ASEAN, in using its rules, its laws, its soft laws, it will help build not only immediate regional resilience, but we are also reconstructing the post-liberal rules-based international order. So, that is a very important framework.
What Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney just said, the old rules-based order is gone. States are putting interests first. But I think that misses the point of what small states or smaller powers have always been doing since the end of the Second World War. Yes, we play by rules. We have to use international law. But we use them to help shore up our security, our resilience and our interests. So, I hope through the project, the role of small states, the role of ASEAN, the role of the Global South, the way that we use laws, international law and soft laws will come to the forefront.
Selina Ho: Great. I mean, I think that this is an opportunity for us and for other regions in the world, actually. And for other countries to actually have a chance to step in and step up and shape the rules-based order that we want and have an input in that.
And how about you? What do you think, Yuen Foong?
Khong Yuen Foong: I like your 'step in and step up' notion very much. Because I think it is very much the spirit of our project.
In his S. Rajaratnam lecture in April PM Lawrence Wong invoked the monsoon winds metaphor, to remind his audience of the regional and global challenges confronting Singapore. He spoke about the geopolitical and geoeconomic headwinds blowing in Singapore's and ASEAN's way, and how they have grown stronger, precisely as you and Hsien Li talked about. More threatening, as well as more unsettling.
So our project, by identifying and analysing the national and regional infrastructure that make up regional resilience, we hope that it will enable scholars and policymakers to have a deeper appreciation of the kind of 'buildings', to continue using the monsoon metaphor, that can withstand these monsoon winds so that they can keep their inhabitants dry, safe and warm. Or cool, you know, in tropical Asia.
For I think, resilience means not just the ability to withstand adversity and to overcome it, but is also to retain one's poise and composure, to recover quickly and to live, fight and thrive another day. Knowing what regional resilience consists of must be a first step in achieving these imperatives.
Selina Ho: Thank you so much, Yuen Foong, that's so inspirational. I mean, talking about monsoon winds and how we can build 'buildings' that we can withstand the storms. What else is there? Monsoon rains and the sea and whatever we have. That's wonderful. And I really appreciate it.
Thank you very much, Hsien Li and Yuen Foong. It's been a real pleasure to have you here. I learned so much and I hope that our audience will also learn a lot from what we said. I'm really excited about our project.
Khong Yuen Foong: Thank you for having us. Tan Hsien-Li: Thank you.
Selina Ho: Great, wonderful!
Now, today's conversation makes one thing clear. Southeast Asia cannot insulate itself from global power shifts, but it can shape how these shifts affect the region. ASEAN's challenge is no longer just about preserving stability, but about staying relevant and resilient in a more contested world. That will require adaptability, stronger institutions, and a clear sense of collective purpose.
Many thanks to Professor Khong Yuen Foong and Professor Tan Hsien-Li for your insights today. And thank you for listening to Policy Unpacked.
We invite you to join us at the earliest festivals in March, where we will host panel discussions to explore this topic in greater depth.
Until next time.