Commentary: In US-China rivalry, Southeast Asia is nobody’s prize. Why will we insist in any other case? | USAEMALL.com

BUILD ON REGION’S POTENTIAL

Beijing pointedly reminded the region – at an ASEAN-led meeting, no less – that “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact”. South China Sea claimants also know all too well what a territorially aggressive China is capable of. 

Beijing’s most recent warning against any deals between the United States and other countries “at the expense of Chinese interests” places Southeast Asia on notice given the region’s importance in the global technological value chain.

Yet Trump has also made it explicit that Washington will return to its imperial instincts, declaring in his second inaugural address that “the United States will once again consider itself a growing nation – one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons”.

Trump’s America First policy is simply an unfiltered version of the long-standing utilitarian US approach to Southeast Asia that has undergone different iterations in past decades: From the ideological clash of the Cold War that rived mainland Southeast Asia to the all-consuming Global War on Terror that labelled much of maritime Southeast Asia as the “second front” of Washington’s campaign. 

The region’s significance is again in focus as Beijing and Washington slug it out in the race for technological supremacy.

Southeast Asia has certainly benefited from competitive major power statecraft on the diplomatic, economic, and socio-cultural fronts. But the region’s population would be better served in the 21st century by policy elites building Southeast Asia’s collective potential in new and creative ways, rather than rehashing trite arguments about why the region matters for the self-interested gaze of metropoles near and far. 

After all, if the world is to be reordered, so too should its narratives.

Elina Noor is a senior fellow in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. This commentary first appeared on Lowy Institute’s blog, The Interpreter.