# ASEAN Must Build Strategic Weight as US-China Rivalry Intensifies

- Link: https://www.thailand-business-news.com/asean/312133-asean-must-build-strategic-weight-as-us-china-rivalry-intensifies
- Published: 2026-07-27T08:35:00+07:00
- Author: Nadjib Mohamed

## Abstract

 * Southeast Asia faces mounting pressure as US-China rivalry intensifies, drawing
   comparisons to the volatile geopolitical conditions preceding World War I. ASEAN’s
   long-standing approach of balancing American security partnerships, Chinese trade
   ties, and broader economic relationships is under increasing strain as both powers
   push the region to align with their competing interests.
 * Malaysia and the wider region have become central to technology and supply chain
   competition, making passive neutrality increasingly difficult to sustain. Rather
   than simply avoiding alignment, Southeast Asian nations are urged to develop 
   collective strategic resilience substantial enough to prevent either superpower
   from treating the region as subordinate terrain in their broader rivalry.

Southeast Asia faces growing US-China rivalry reminiscent of pre-WWI tensions. ASEAN’s
traditional diplomatic balancing act is under strain as both superpowers pressure
the region. Malaysia and Southeast Asia must build collective strategic weight beyond
polite neutrality to avoid becoming casualties of great-power conflict.

## Key Points

• An ancient Southeast Asian instinct of careful navigation resurfaces as US-China
rivalry intensifies, mirroring dangerous pre-WWI patterns of declining hegemony,
rising challengers, territorial disputes, and nationalist tensions that threaten
regional stability.

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• ASEAN’s decades-long diplomatic balancing act — absorbing American security, Chinese
trade, and multiple powers’ investments — faces unprecedented strain as both superpowers
pressure the region to align with their competing visions of world order.

• Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia, has become a critical geopolitical hinge
in the technology and supply chain war, making passive neutrality increasingly untenable
as great-power competition penetrates the region’s economic infrastructure.

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### The Return of Great-Power Rivalry

**Southeast Asia faces a world that smells dangerously like 1914.** History is repeating
its familiar patterns: a declining hegemon, a rising challenger, territorial disputes,
naval build-ups, and nationalist fever amplified by new technologies. Author Odd
Arne Westad’s _The Coming Storm_ serves as a critical warning that the region must
heed. **If America and China stumble into conflict, Asean’s 684 million people and
US$3.84 trillion in global trade will not be spectators — they will be the table.**
The challenge is no longer simply avoiding a choice between Washington and Beijing,
but building enough collective resilience that neither superpower can treat Southeast
Asia merely as terrain.

---

### Asean’s Diplomatic Balancing Act Under Strain

For decades, **Southeast Asia performed a remarkable feat of strategic improvisation**,
absorbing American security, Chinese trade, Japanese capital, and European markets
while transforming swamps into ports and fishing villages into industrial hubs. 
This wasn’t cowardice — it was survival. However, **Washington now speaks through
export controls, tariffs, and technology denial, while Beijing leverages coastguard
vessels, artificial islands, and infrastructure loans.** Both superpowers publicly
respect Asean’s autonomy while privately preferring it exercised in their favour.
The region’s famously consensus-driven, carefully worded diplomacy — once its greatest
strength — is buckling under the pressure of a fundamentally harsher geopolitical
reality.

### Malaysia’s Precarious Position at the Crossroads

**Malaysia sits almost perfectly inside this great-power contradiction.** Facing
the strategically vital Strait of Malacca and deeply embedded in both Chinese commerce
and American technology supply chains, Malaysia cannot afford complacency. **Penang
alone, as a critical global semiconductor hub, has become part of the nervous system
of 21st-century geopolitical competition.** Modern rivalries are no longer fought
only on battlefields — they play out through customs forms, export permits, sanctions
lists, and undersea cables. As Southeast Asia becomes the world’s favourite supply-
chain workaround, it simultaneously becomes the place where both powers test each
other’s limits. **The elephants are moving. The question is no longer whether the
storm can be avoided — but where the lightning strikes first.**

**Source** : [Opinion: The table, not the audience — Asean and the coming US-China collision](http://www.theedgemarkets.com/node/805633)