Southeast Asia | Council on Foreign Relations

Southeast Asia

Cambodia’s Election is Pre-Determined, but What Happens Afterward?

In the run-up to Cambodia’s national elections, due in July, Prime Minister Hun Sen has taken no chances of an upset, of a political shocker similar to the opposition win in Malaysia in early May. Just to make sure that the long-ruling prime minister and his party triumph, Hun Sen has overseen a ban of the opposition party, harassed many opposition politicians into exile or tossed them in jail, and torn apart the independent Cambodian media over the past year. The latest casualty of Hun Sen’s crackdown, which dates to early 2017, was the Phnom Penh Post, a groundbreaking and independent news outlet that was sold last month, under apparent pressure from the government. The Post’s editor was quickly fired, many prominent staffers quit, and the new management has shown little commitment to maintaining the Post’s standards as a quality independent news outlet. There is, then, little question that Hun Sen and his party will triumph in a July election that likely will be neither free nor fair. The bigger question, then, is what happens after that likely victory, which could leave younger Cambodians, who tend to support the opposition, seething, and which still offers no clear signs about who come after Hun Sen. For more on the Cambodian election, and the day after, see my new World Politics Review article.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick June 11, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia Between the United States and China: A CFR Workshop Report

Although the Barack Obama administration rhetorically made Southeast Asia a centerpiece of its “rebalance to Asia” strategy, the administration still largely focused on the Middle East and Europe, and Southeast Asia remained a low U.S. policy priority. The Obama administration did try to boost U.S. economic ties with Southeast Asia in 2016 by forging the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but that trade deal was broadly unpopular in the United States. The following year, the Donald J. Trump administration ended U.S. participation in the TPP, and it also suggested launching punitive economic measures against Southeast Asian states currently running trade surpluses with the United States. Many Southeast Asian leaders now worry that Washington has no clear security or economic strategy for the region, other than applying pressure on Beijing to respect freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. In this perceived void of U.S. leadership and strategy, the Council on Foreign Relations recently held a workshop to assess the direction of the U.S.-Southeast Asia relationship from the present to 2030. Workshop participants assessed how Southeast Asia might change as China becomes an increasingly dominant regional security and economic actor. They also discussed the future of U.S. strategic and economic relationships with important partners in the region, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. They analyzed how China might use its growing leverage in Southeast Asia, and whether Beijing’s tactics could backfire. The workshop also examined how the United States, China, and Southeast Asian states could cooperate on at least some nontraditional security issues, such as combating piracy and terrorism. The complete workshop report can be read online here.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick May 31, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

The U.S.-Southeast Asia Relationship: Responding to China’s Rise

In May 2018, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Southeast Asia program convened a workshop to examine the direction of the U.S.-Southeast Asia relationship from the present to 2030. The workshop was held at the Council on Foreign Relations and was made possible by the support of the Henry Luce Foundation. The views described here are those of workshop participants only and are not CFR or Luce Foundation positions. The Council on Foreign Relations takes no institutional positions on policy issues and has no affiliations with the U.S. government. Introduction Although the Barack Obama administration rhetorically made Southeast Asia a centerpiece of its “rebalance to Asia” strategy, the administration still largely focused on the Middle East and Europe, and Southeast Asia remained a low U.S. policy priority. The Obama administration did try to boost U.S. economic ties with Southeast Asia in 2016 by forging the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but that trade deal was broadly unpopular in the United States. The following year, the Donald J. Trump administration ended U.S. participation in the TPP, and it also suggested launching punitive economic measures against Southeast Asian states currently running trade surpluses with the United States. Many Southeast Asian leaders now worry that Washington has no clear security or economic strategy for the region, other than applying pressure on Beijing to respect freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. In this perceived void of U.S. leadership and strategy, workshop participants assessed how Southeast Asia might change as China becomes an increasingly dominant regional security and economic actor. They also discussed the future of U.S. strategic and economic relationships with important partners in the region, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Participants further considered how China might use its growing leverage in Southeast Asia, and whether Beijing’s tactics could backfire. Finally, several workshop participants posited that the United States, China, and Southeast Asian states could cooperate on at least some nontraditional security issues, such as combating piracy and terrorism. The Changing Regional Strategic Balance Participants agreed that the strategic relationships between the United States and many Southeast Asian partners remain strong, while the economic relationships are increasingly troubled. Participants still questioned, however, whether U.S. strategic policy is nimble enough to adapt as the regional situation evolves dramatically over the next decade, with Beijing likely to achieve near-total control over parts of the South China Sea. Many participants concurred that China is determined to be the dominant power in Southeast Asia and that it faces fewer obstacles to this goal than in any other region in Asia. Several participants argued that Chinese officials believe the Trump administration has no clear plan for U.S.-Southeast Asia security relations and that Beijing thinks the administration’s “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” idea is going to be rejected by many Southeast Asian states. They further noted that Chinese officials even believe that diminished U.S. interest in Southeast Asia could influence domestic politics in the region, as seen by the ascent of pro-China members of the Communist Party of Vietnam to the leadership at their 2016 party congress. Some participants argued that China sees Southeast Asia as eventually accepting what Chinese officials call hegemonic stability, in which the region is stable but China dominates regional strategic and economic institutions. In addition, some contended that China had identified Cambodia, Thailand, and, to a lesser extent, Malaysia as pivotal partners in Southeast Asia; China could use these states’ influence to sway other Southeast Asian countries and make China’s regional dominance appear unstoppable, and also promote China’s model of development. These participants maintained that Beijing is increasingly using not only assertive militarization of regional waters but also economic coercion—through promised or scuttled Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aid projects and investments—to force Southeast Asian states to accept a China-dominated regional order within the next decade. Several participants asserted that the Philippines is an example of a state that has acceded to this economic coercion. Obstacles to Beijing’s Regional Strategic Dominance Other participants argued, however, that there are flaws in Beijing’s strategies to achieve hegemonic stability in Southeast Asia and that several states will not accept Chinese dominance between now and 2030. For one, some countries that China views as potential partners are politically unstable. Cambodia is a highly authoritarian state with no clear succession plan beyond Prime Minister Hun Sen; Thailand’s junta eventually will give way to some form of elected government, which may not be as pro-China; and, after the opposition coalition’s victory in Malaysia, China may face senior politicians more skeptical of Chinese economic policies. Moreover, participants noted that Southeast Asian states have growing concerns that, as they accept China-financed BRI projects, they are not only amassing excessive debt but also possibly ceding sovereignty over critical rail, road, port, and telecommunications infrastructure to Beijing. Several participants further identified a core group of countries most concerned about the changing regional strategic balance that are likely to hold out against Chinese dominance, using several forms of deterrence. Multiple participants argued that the United States should recognize that the Philippines and Thailand, U.S. treaty allies, will be unreliable partners and instead should focus on three states—Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam—and to a lesser extent Malaysia. These four countries are pursuing differing approaches to minimize China’s coercive abilities. One approach, favored by Vietnam and somewhat by Singapore, is to ramp up strategic ties with India and, to a lesser extent, Japan and Europe (particularly France), as counterweights to China’s increasingly powerful naval forces and assertiveness in regional waters. Another strategy, pursued most assertively by Indonesia and Vietnam, and also quietly by Malaysia, is for Southeast Asian nations to build up their own naval and coast guard forces, and use them in displays of deterrence in territorial waters where Chinese vessels have encroached, like those around Indonesia’s Natuna islands. Finally, participants generally agreed, these four countries are still optimistic that the United States will remain the major offshore balancing power in Southeast Asia. If the United States continues in this role, it could help these countries avoid being dominated by China. One participant noted that the United States strongly supports Southeast Asian states’ autonomy of action and defense of their territorial waters. This support for Southeast Asian states’ autonomy remains a major U.S. strategic asset. At the same time, some participants who remained optimistic about U.S. strategic influence expressed serious concern about whether the current Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept, initially imagined by Japan, had real relevance for Southeast Asian states. The Evolving Economic Relationship Participants generally agreed that the U.S.-Southeast Asia economic relationship is increasingly challenged not only by the U.S. withdrawal from the TPP but also by regional economic integration within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states, which the United States has mostly ignored. In addition, most workshop participants concurred that, while the United States and partners in Asia may attempt to create an alternative to China’s BRI, such an alternative is likely to fail, as it would be unable to mobilize the capital available in the BRI. Other than Japan, potential partners in such a U.S. scheme, such as India or even Australia, have minimal funds to provide a BRI alternative. U.S. companies and other major multinational corporations also clearly see opportunities arising from the BRI, especially companies in the shipping, logistics, construction, and finance industries. They may be unwilling to partner with any initiative that is framed as a clear alternative to BRI. One participant, however, cautioned that some of the rhetoric about the BRI’s financial size and potential consequences may be overstated. Other participants observed that the BRI is driven as much by a need to reduce overcapacity in the Chinese domestic economy as it is by foreign policy concerns, and so BRI planners may wind up making decisions that make little foreign policy sense for Beijing. Another participant noted that, regardless of the BRI’s existence, China is now ASEAN’s biggest trading partner, and that other than the Philippines, no Southeast Asian state has embraced the Trump administration’s preference for negotiating bilateral trade deals over multilateral regional trade integration. Participants further observed that any possible U.S.-Philippines bilateral deal was unlikely, since there were huge regulatory and political obstacles on both sides. In addition, participants generally agreed that China is effectively utilizing economic tools to maximize its strategic influence in Southeast Asia, such as by doling out aid deals piecemeal to ensure that countries only receive the full amount of promised assistance after they accept Chinese regional foreign policy aims. In general, participants believed that the U.S. political climate has become so opposed to multilateral trade deals that, no matter who wins the 2018 midterm and 2020 presidential elections, the United States is unlikely to rejoin the TPP. As a result of the United States’ absence from the TPP, one participant noted, China does not feel much pressure to push Southeast Asian states to accept the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the Beijing-centered multilateral trade deal China promoted extensively in 2015 and 2016. Instead, Chinese officials appear satisfied that, without the United States in the TPP, China can largely determine the rules and norms of trade in Asia through a range of other deals it is negotiating besides RCEP, as well as through its actual trading practices. Several participants noted, however, that the United States could utilize aspects of the hard-line approach to trade favored by the White House and get Southeast Asian support for a tough trade policy against China. One participant mentioned that many Southeast Asian states, despite their robust trade relationships with China, share the Trump administration’s complaints about China’s unfair or even illegal trade practices, including forcing investors in China to turn over intellectual property to local partners. Recommendations Workshop participants generally agreed that the United States’ strategic and economic relationships with Southeast Asia are deteriorating faster than U.S. officials had foreseen only a few years ago and may be seriously diminished by 2030. However, the United States can take several measures to bolster its strategic and economic ties with Southeast Asia. Prioritize U.S. Relations With Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam These four Southeast Asian states are generally the most willing to push back against China’s growing strategic power in Southeast Asia. Several participants believed that the United States should prioritize these states in its relations with Southeast Asia over the next decade. It could do so by upgrading security cooperation with these states, increasing arms sales, and encouraging them to take on joint patrols of the South China Sea with other Southeast Asian states or with Australia or India. They also concurred that the United States should make only modest efforts to work with ASEAN as an organization, since the organization seems increasingly hobbled. For instance, several participants agreed that ASEAN, which has begun negotiating with China on a code of conduct for operations in the South China Sea, is already so divided internally that it is unlikely to conclude the negotiations with any agreement that actually protects freedom of navigation. Enlist Partners to Combat Trade Cheating Many participants believed that the United States would get strong support from Southeast Asian nations if it reached out to allies who have been victimized by China’s unfair trade strategies and then worked together to push China to end such practices. However, participants agreed, targeting China makes Southeast Asian states fear a U.S.-China trade war that could damage regional economies. Yet, failing to enlist Southeast Asian states as allies against China’s trade strategies would be counterproductive. Participants argued that, if the United States wants to pursue a tough trade policy with China that enjoys Southeast Asian support, the Trump administration should end its complaints about running trade deficits with states like Indonesia, which have not been credibly accused of unfair trade practices. Make the Free and Open Indo-Pacific More Than Just a Concept Participants generally agreed that the Trump administration still needs to more clearly define what the Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept means for Southeast Asian states. At present, the concept lacks a real structure. Participants noted that a plan should include activities that will take place in 2018, 2019, and 2020 to “put meat on the bones” of the idea. Without a clearly defined set of actions that will come from the Free and Open idea, and expectations for how these actions will affect Southeast Asian states, countries in the region will remain skeptical that U.S. policymakers will make Southeast Asia a priority. With a clear set of actions stemming from the idea, however, the Trump administration could convince some Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam, to embrace the concept and work more closely with the United States to deter China’s military buildup in the South China Sea and other areas.

Report May 23, 2018 Asia Program

Malaysia

The Strategic Implications of Malaysia’s Election Stunner

By Richard Javad Heydarian Malaysia’s recent national election was a stunner for many reasons. Not only did the election return a nonagenarian to power, but it also ended the six-decades-long one-party hegemony of Barisan Nasional (BN). For the first time in Malaysia’s post-independence history, the opposition is in power. Crucially, long-time opposition leader and democracy activist Anwar Ibrahim has been pardoned and released from prison, enabling him to eventually take the helm of the Malaysian state, paving the way for deep political reforms. Yet Mahathir Mohamad’s return to power is not only potentially transformative for Malaysian domestic politics. It also has far-reaching strategic implications. First of all, Malaysia may revisit its increasingly cordial, if not acquiescent, bilateral ties with Beijing, which heavily invested in upgrading relations with the previous Najib Razak administration. Similar to the case of the Philippines during the Benigno Aquino III administration, domestic anticorruption initiatives in Malaysia could have a significant impact on external relations with China. Former President Aquino III’s good governance reforms primarily targeted Beijing-backed projects launched under the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration. These anticorruption efforts against China-backed projects, along with Aquino III’s tough South China Sea policy, led to an overall deterioration in Philippine-China bilateral ties, which reached its apotheosis in 2016 as the Philippines won a decision at an international tribunal in The Hague against Beijing’s claims to an expansive “nine-dash line” of territory in the South China Sea. Malaysia under Mahathir may quickly implement anticorruption reforms; he has already apparently barred Najib from leaving the country, and vowed that the government will reopen investigations into the 1MDB state fund scandal. A major issue driving the Mahathir-led Pakatan Harapan coalition victory was the nationwide uproar against the 1MDB corruption scandal. The former prime minister and his associates have been accused of embezzling as much as $1 billion from the state fund. The 1MDB debacle also sparked international investigations into the Najib government, as the United States, Singapore, and Switzerland, among other countries, froze accounts and launched investigations against Malaysia’s investment fund body. But as Western governments began threatening criminal probes against top Malaysian officials, Najib began to fortify strategic and economic relations with China, which became a key source of investments for Malaysia. And the former prime minister was unapologetic about it. As the new Mahathir government moves towards potentially prosecuting Najib after placing him under a travel ban, greater scrutiny of Chinese investments could be coming. Before the election, Mahathir complained about the potential for rising housing costs for Malaysians triggered by an expansion in real estate projects by Chinese companies, and a potential influx of Chinese property buyers. “Here we gain nothing from the [Chinese] investment… [W]e don't welcome that,” he recently lamented. Mahathir also has repeatedly expressed concerns about over-reliance on Chinese technology, engineering and labor for Malaysian infrastructure projects. Among China-led projects that could be reconsidered is the $13 billion East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) railway, connecting Kuala Lumpur with less developed eastern regions. Mahathir has indicated that he may scrap the whole project. He has also warned about the threat of a debt trap, citing the case of Sri Lanka, which was forced into humiliating debt-for-equity deals with China due to its inability to repay ballooning debts to Chinese state firms. Secondly, Mahathir likely will take a stronger stance against China’s growing strategic assertiveness across Southeast Asia. Under the Najib administration, Malaysia remained reticent to openly highlight Beijing’s behavior in the South China Sea, eager to maintain booming economic ties with China. Under Mahathir, Malaysia’s policy of strategic acquiescence toward Beijing could change. Unlike Najib, Mahathir seemingly views China as a potential strategic threat. He has described the Xi administration as “inclined towards totalitarianism” and increasingly belligerent, a government that “like[s] to flex [its] muscles” and “increase [its] influence over many countries in Southeast Asia” in a “very worrisome” manner. Mahathir further has warned against growing militarization of the South China Sea, where Malaysia is one of the four Southeast Asian claimant states. Malaysia is currently occupying multiple land features, including the Swallow Reef, a reclaimed island with its own naval base. Historically, China has been less assertive within Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea than it has been in the economic zones of the Philippines and Vietnam, due to cordial bilateral relations with Malaysia. In recent years, however, Chinese navy and coast guard have been more active within Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone in the area. Nonetheless, the Najib administration adopted a softer tone than other Southeast Asian states such as Vietnam and the Philippines, which filed an arbitration case against China. Finally, Mahathir could place his country, once again, at the center of Southeast Asian affairs, where senior, high-profile figures tend to play an outsized role in setting the regional agenda. In fact, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional organization largely owes its existence as well as peaceful evolution over time to the efforts of powerful, often domineering regional leaders like former Singapore Prime Minster Lee Kuan Yew as well as Mahathir during his previous two-decades-long stint as Malaysian prime minister from the 1980s to early 2000s Mahathir shaped ASEAN’s relations with great powers, including China, and its response to regional economic and strategic crises, especially the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Mahathir’s return to the center of power in Malaysia could also provide leadership and foster internal coherence within ASEAN, which has increasingly lost its way in recent years due to in-fighting among member states and the growing influence of China in Southeast Asia. Mahathir is expected to build on the efforts of his predecessors, who managed to improve historically tense relations with neighboring Singapore, the current chairman of the ASEAN, over the past two decades. His personal gravitas, as a regional elder statesman, could also mean greater deference among his significantly more junior colleagues in the regional body. In recent years, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has a dominant figure within ASEAN. Yet Duterte has been mired in controversy, coming under fire for his human rights record and, especially, too cozy relations with China. Last year, with the Philippines holding the organization’s rotating annual chairmanship, ASEAN kept largely silent over South China Sea disputes as well as the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, probably the two largest regional challenges. As a result, ASEAN often appeared irrelevant in shaping regional affairs. Notwithstanding his age (ninety-two years old) and his need to focus on domestic political challenges including the 1MDB scandal, rising inequality, and rebuilding political institutions, Mahathir’s return to the stage could give more purpose and substance to the ASEAN. Throughout the decades, Mahathir has been a constant fixture in regional meetings, seen as a regional bigwig and an indispensable source of strategic wisdom across Southeast Asia. Indeed, it is likely that Malaysia’s prime minister will once again try to leverage his influence within ASEAN to advance not only his country’s interests, but also make the regional body a more relevant player in addressing key challenges, including in the South China Sea. Mahathir’s unlikely and stunning return could be not only a game changer domestically, but for the whole Southeast Asian region. Richard Javad Heydarian is a nonresident fellow at ADR-Stratbase Institute, Manila, and the author of The Rise of Dutere.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Asia Unbound May 16, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

Malaysia’s Stunning Election Creates More Questions Rather Than Answers

In a result few pollsters and analysts (including myself) predicted, last week the Malaysian opposition coalition, led by nonagenarian former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, defeated the ruling coalition in national elections, leading to the first transfer of power in independent Malaysian history. To the previous government’s credit, despite rumors on election night and the following morning that the Election Commission and former Prime Minister Najib tun Razak would take measures to defraud the voters, or prevent a change of government, the transition process was completed in an orderly and largely peaceful manner. The Election Commission, seemingly stacked with Najib loyalists, announced that the opposition coalition had won a majority of parliamentary seats, and the Malaysian king provided an audience to Mahathir and named him prime minister. But amidst jubilant scenes in many parts of Malaysia, hard questions now face the opposition coalition, which unites an array of parties that draw on widely different groups of voters and have different platforms. For more on these hard questions, see my new World Politics Review article.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick May 14, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

Can Mahathir Mohamad be Malaysia’s First Democratically Elected Prime Minister?

By Thomas Pepinsky On May 9, Malaysian voters delivered a stunning defeat to the incumbent Barisan Nasional (BN, “National Front”) regime. Since independence in 1957, Malaysia has been ruled by a prime minister from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). UMNO was the largest party in the Alliance, the predecessor to the BN. Since the transition from Alliance to the BN after the suspension of Parliament from 1969-1971, UMNO has played an increasingly dominant role in the ruling coalition. The era of BN rule is now over. On the evening of May 10, Mahathir Mohamad from the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (a.k.a. BERSATU), a member of the opposition Pakatan Harapan (PH, “Alliance of Hope”) coalition, was sworn in as Malaysia’s seventh prime minister. PH, which holds a simple majority in Malaysia’s parliament, now forms the country’s government. UMNO is now an opposition party, one of the two main opposition parties representing peninsular Malaysia (the other is the Islamist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party). Anyone with a sense of Southeast Asian history will find the previous paragraph jarring. Mahathir Mohamad, after all, is Malaysia’s most famous UMNO politician—at least he was until he broke with the party several years ago. As an UMNO member, he was Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister, from 1981 until 2003. He has also long been a voice for ethnic Malay interests in a multiethnic country, having authored The Malay Dilemma, an explosive book in Malaysian politics that outlined a stark economic and political agenda that used legislation and government action to boost the economic and political power of ethnic Malays. How can he lead a democratic government comprised of his own party and a coalition of former opposition parties such as mostly ethnically Chinese Democratic Action Party and the People’s Justice Party, which draws support from urban areas, each of which is vocally multicultural in its platform and has long opposed UMNO? Malaysia watchers also will remember that Mahathir has a history of acting aggressively against his political opponents. He has no reputation as a committed democratic or civil libertarian. In 1987, the anti-opposition crackdown known as “Operasi Lalang” saw opposition Democratic Action Party head Lim Kit Siang detained without trial for over a year. After more than five decades in opposition politics, Lim Kit Siang will sit in Parliament as a member of the majority headed by Mahathir. Even more famously, Mahathir ousted his former Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, in 1998, and subsequent events saw Anwar jailed for corruption and sodomy. Although he is no longer imprisoned for the same reason, Anwar remains in custody, and had to watch Mahathir’s swearing in from prison. Anwar’s wife Wan Azizah Wan Ismail is now Malaysia’s deputy prime minister. How can Mahathir rule in a coalition with his former political enemies, against whom he showed no mercy in the 1980s and 1990s? The answer to these questions is to recall that democracy is not government by democrats. As I have argued elsewhere: The better way to think about political regimes—the general term for democracies and dictatorships—is to think about them as systems. Systems may have features that are independent of the features of the actors who work within them. Political regimes are comprised of individuals arranged into parties, bureaucracies, factions, movements, organizations, and other collective actors that interact with one another and with the individuals that comprise them. The key point then is that ‘democracy’ is a feature of a system—the regime—rather than a feature of the individuals who comprise it. By a simple test of was there an election, did the incumbent government lose, and has it respected the results and turned over power to its opponents? Malaysia appears to have democratized. That Mahathir is the new prime minister is perhaps a paradox; with the benefit of history it is certainly a shocking development. His Malay chauvinism and authoritarian tendencies may have mellowed, or not, but it does not actually matter. As of the time of writing, Mahathir appears to be the first democratically elected prime minister of Malaysia. Now the question is how the PH will rule. PH will need to find a way to contain both an ethnic Malay-first party—which is what BERSATU is—and other, multiethnic parties that hold far more parliamentary seats than BERSATU. If Malay voters abandoned the BN and jumped to PH because they thought it better able to represent their interest than UMNO, it remains to be seen how BERSATU will deliver on that promise, and how the other PH component parties will respond. But that is nothing more than the challenge of multiparty democracy in ethnically heterogeneous societies. Many Malaysians have waited for decades for this, and now we will see how it unfolds. Thomas Pepinsky is associate professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. He specializes in comparative politics and international political economy, with a focus on island Southeast Asia. He blogs about Southeast Asian politics at http://tompepinsky.com/blog.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Asia Unbound May 10, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

Initial Questions About the Malaysian Election Upset

Part 1 Earlier this week, the opposition coalition in Malaysia pulled off a dramatic upset, ending the ruling coalition’s grip on political power, which has lasted since Malaysia’s independence from Britain. Mahathir Mohamad, a former prime minister who returned, in his 90s, to lead an unwieldy opposition coalition, was sworn in as prime minister again today, after meeting with the country’s king. But the election, although shattering in Malaysian politics, raises several questions immediately. First, can the unwieldy opposition alliance hold together and actually govern? The opposition turned to Mahathir as its leader as he came out of retirement, and after the longtime opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was jailed. Anwar and Mahathir have a long and complicated relationship—Mahathir was prime minister when Anwar was jailed previously, on dubious charges—but Mahathir has said he will push for a full pardon of Anwar, and for Anwar to soon run for an MP seat and join the government. For now, Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah Ismail, a veteran opposition politician, will likely be a deputy prime minister. How will these figures all get along, given historic enmities? In addition, the opposition is a coalition with multiple parties, many of which have starkly different views on key questions of economic and foreign policy. They were united largely by their desire to end the ruling coalition’s power and to rid politics of former Prime Minister Najib tun Razak. Can they work together? Will Mahathir eventually step aside as prime minister for Anwar, as he has promised? Many of Mahathir’s core supporters love him, but share little in the way of viewpoints about politics and Malaysian culture as supporters of Anwar and his party. Will that chasm matter once the coalition is governing? Second, how will Mahathir’s return to office affect Malaysia’s relations with China, which have grown noticeably warmer under Najib’s tenure? In the aftermath of the election, Mahathir announced that the new government might “renegotiate several agreements that had been struck with China,” according to CNBC. During the campaign, Mahathir had criticized Najib for pushing Malaysia’s economic and strategic relations too close to Beijing and it is likely the new government will apply strict scrutiny to several major Belt and Road Initiative projects, such as a rail line planned in peninsular Malaysia. Yet during his previous time as prime minister, Mahathir often showed that his harsh words toward many foreign states—including the United States and the United Kingdom—concealed a pragmatic willingness to cooperate on economic and strategic issues. Third, will the new government immediately step up investigations and/or pursue indictments in the 1MDB case? On the campaign trail, the coalition that now rules Malaysia vowed to make 1MDB investigations a priority, and there is certainly a high possibility that the new government will pursue a broad range of charges in the alleged corruption case, including possibly against Najib and his close allies. The government may also cooperate more closely with foreign governments investigating the 1MDB scandal, which had complained of stonewalling from the Najib government. Mahathir has said that Najib will have to face whatever “consequences” come from Najib’s time in office, but when Mahathir was prime minister, he was hardly an advocate for transparency at the highest levels of government, and Malaysia has no real tradition of investigating former prime ministers, who usually receive laurels and titles. We will have much more coverage of the impact of the election this week and next week.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick May 10, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

Would a Victorious Najib Remake Malaysia into Turkey?

On May 9, Malaysians will go to the polls in the first national elections since 2013. Prime Minister Najib tun Razak and his allies appear poised for victory on May 9, though the race is close. And if he wins, the prime minister could potentially transform Malaysia, which has been a semi-authoritarian state with some degree of the rule of law, into an Erdogan-style autocracy. For more on how Najib might remake Malaysia, see my new Washington Post article.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick May 7, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

ASEAN Meets, But Remains Mostly Silent on Major Regional Issues

ASEAN’s latest summit in Singapore produced little of substance on important issues like the ongoing crisis in Myanmar or the South China Sea.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick May 4, 2018 Asia Unbound
Indonesia

Contenders Shaping Up for 2019 Indonesian Presidential Election

Earlier this month, former Lieutenant General Prabowo Subianto, who ran for president against Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, in 2014, announced that he will be a candidate again in 2019, setting up a possible presidential rematch. Prabowo had seemed to waffle, until recently, on running again, and he still faces obstacles to actually getting into the race. He heads up the Gerindra party, but Gerindra only holds 13 percent of the seats in the national legislature. Under Indonesian law, any party that wants to nominate a candidate for president must show that the party, or the coalition of parties backing the nominee, currently hold at least 20 percent of legislative seats, or got at least a quarter of the popular vote in the last election. Still, Prabowo and Gerindra probably will find coalition partners to push them over the threshold and get Prabowo into the race. In a head to head matchup against Prabowo, the incumbent, Jokowi, starts with a lead in polls. In fact, a number of recent polls taken about a Jokowi-Prabowo matchup have given the incumbent a sizable lead. Jokowi’s reputation for being personally clean, his down-to-earth speaking style, and his (relatively modest) achievements in office probably account for some of the gap in the polls, while Prabowo’s often-bombastic, even demagogic style may also turn off some voters. Indeed, in the previous presidential race Prabowo repeatedly seemed to suggest that he wanted to roll back elements of Indonesian democracy, and to recentralize power, presumably in his own hands. Yet the race could still be tightly contested. Some studies show Jokowi’s electability rating below 50 percent. And Jokowi has not, to be sure, brought about as thorough a transformation of Indonesian political culture and institutions as some of his supporters had hoped when he was elected in 2014, becoming the first person to attain the Indonesian presidency in the democratic era who did not hail from Indonesia’s political elite. Jokowi has presided over decent growth and some initial upgrades of Indonesia’s decaying infrastructure, and he has boosted funding for health care and education. Yet he has made minimal headway in battling corruption, in politics or business, which remains a major drain on the economy and a hurdle for investors. Though Jokowi appears personally committed to Indonesian democracy, he has often been hesitant to push for improving the human rights climate, and in the past year he has increasingly relied on a group of former army generals as top advisors, worrying rights activists concerned about the military’s ongoing power in Indonesian politics. Some of his highly touted infrastructure projects are still just in the planning phases, and a string of accidents in the past year during construction on several new projects also has harmed Jokowi’s infrastructure vision. Still, Jokowi remains personally popular, and he also has proven a skillful builder of political alliances, despite the fact that he had not held a national level position before being elected president. When he was elected president, his party controlled a minority of seats in the legislature. Now, through effective coalition-building and consolidation of parties, Jokowi and his allies have a majority of seats in the national legislature. In the next presidential election, notes Tempo magazine, parties are scrambling to back Jokowi: “At least five parties have once again adopted him as their presidential candidate.” Prabowo, however, knows how to run a skillful campaign. In 2014, he and his team produced an effective communications strategy, one that paired positive, almost hagiographic portrayals of Prabowo with some of the dark arts of negative—and often false—attacks on Jokowi. In addition, as I noted in a recent CFR Expert Brief, Prabowo appears to be increasingly allying with one of the most powerful, rising forces in Indonesian politics—Islamist groups that have increasingly galvanized public opinion, at least in local races, and begun to develop strong get-out-the-vote operations. These Islamist groups could be major factors in the presidential election, but they will probably have more trouble rallying opinion against Jokowi than they did in the Jakarta governor’s race last year, when they held massive public rallies against—and demonized—the then-Christian and Chinese governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama. In addition, Jokowi could potentially pick a vice president who could neutralize some of the Islamist groups, boosting Jokowi’s chances of another five-year term.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick April 25, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

ASEAN Centrality in Managing a Geopolitical Jigsaw Puzzle

The tug-of-war between China and the United States, Australia, Japan, and India will define the geopolitical landscape of Asia and threatens to divide ASEAN.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for the Internationalist April 25, 2018 The Internationalist
Southeast Asia

Democracy Will Regress Further in 2019 and 2020

Globally, democracy has been retreating now for more than a decade. But since 2016, the pace of democratic regression has accelerated, and the rollback has spread from regionally powerful countries that had only recently established democracies to globally powerful states, and ones where democracy seemingly had sunk stronger roots. Indeed, 2016 and 2017 seemed to bring only misery for democrats. But if 2016 and 2017 looked bad, the next three years could well be worse. For more on how the global democracy recession will deepen, see my new piece on Aspenia Online.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick April 24, 2018 Asia Unbound
Japan

How Can Japan-UK Cybersecurity Cooperation Help ASEAN Build Cybersecurity Capacity?

Southeast Asia is a lucrative market for tech investment, and the United Kingdom wants access to it. Japan can help.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Net Politics April 16, 2018 Net Politics
Southeast Asia

Rodrigo Duterte’s Battle Against Philippine Institutions

Over the past three decades, since the end of the Ferdinand Marcos era in the Philippines, the country has often combined corrupt and semi-authoritarian elected politics with strong cultural and institutional checks on elected leaders. One of the most powerful checks has been the Philippines’ vibrant media and highly active civil society, including NGOs, unions, and many other actors. The Catholic Church, at times, also has pushed back against politicians’ graft and amassing of power. The judiciary, too, often has served as a firewall against allegedly corrupt presidents and lower-ranking politicians. So far, however, these checks on President Rodrigo Duterte’s power have displayed a mixed record. The Catholic Church continues to criticize Duterte’s brutal, extrajudicial war on drugs, but it is unclear whether the Church has the same power to sway Philippine society as it did in the past. Duterte’s administration has co-opted several prominent civil society figures. In other cases, Duterte has used his bully pulpit to personally threaten civil society activists, while his declaration of martial law on the southern island of Mindanao has hampered civil society organizations’ operations in the south. With the media, meanwhile, the Duterte administration has taken a harsh approach, and has had some success in taming news outlets. The Philippine judiciary, however, has not always been as cowed by Duterte. For more on the judiciary’s battles with Duterte, and how Philippine judiciary fits into a global movement of empowered judges, see my new World Politics Review article.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick April 13, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

Thailand’s Lessons for Democratic Regression: A Review of “Owners of the Map”

It may be hard to believe now, as blustery generals run Thailand, the army busts up gatherings of political opponents, and junta rule—in one form or another—seems like it might never end, but the country was once touted as an example of democratization. I myself made this argument in the 1990s and early 2000s. The country had held multiple free elections and passed one of the most progressive constitutions in Asia. It had a vibrant press, and regularly witnessed massive public rallies led by civil society groups. I lived in Thailand from 1998 to 2001, and at that time society seemed to be overflowing with political discussions, arguments, and contested elections. I was hardly the only one to praise Thailand at the time. Freedom House rated Thailand as “Free” in their 2001 edition of Freedom in the World, their annual survey of each country in the world. (Thailand is now ranked “Not Free,” after having been ranked “Partly Free” for much of the 2000s and 2010s.) As I noted in a 2013 edited volume, Pathways to Freedom, many of the U.S. officials who traveled to the kingdom during this time lavished praise on its maturing democracy, an example of a place where the army had returned to the barracks for good. The reversal of Thailand’s democracy began in 2001 with the election of the populist leader Thaksin Shinawatra. Both during the campaign and as prime minister, he excelled at recognizing and manipulating public grievances. He preyed on working-class Thais’ legitimate feelings of economic injustice. He also, however, outlined a real policy platform to address injustices, and succeeded in instituting populist policy reforms, many of which benefitted Thai society. Unfortunately, some of these reforms were enacted at the expense of democratic norms and the rule of law. Then, when some middle-class and elite Thais realized that liberalism was being undermined, they took the wrong steps to fight back. There is a larger lesson to be learned from the trajectory of politics in Thailand. To gain power, Thaksin used political tactics very similar to those more recently adopted by leaders from Turkey and Hungary to the Philippines and, now, with the presidency of Donald Trump, the United States. Thaksin emerged after a period of austerity in Thailand, and like Law and Justice in Poland combined skillful pitting of rural voters against elites with effective economic policies. And like Rodrigo Duterte and many other modern-day populists, Thaksin identified dangerous “others” and targeted them, often while using these “others” to shore up his law-and-order credentials. Thaksin’s own anti-drug war in 2003—along with a broader war on “dark influences” that was popular with much of the public—utilized extra-judicial killings, and was eerily similar to Duterte’s current drug war. Thaksin also often highlighted his own wealth, positioning himself as the one man who could take measures to boost the economy, even if he did so without following democratic norms. This “I alone can fix it” style predated that of Narendra Modi, Duterte, and Trump. For more on how Thailand was “patient zero” in the global democratic regression, see my new review in the Washington Monthly.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick April 11, 2018 Asia Unbound