SOUTH-EAST ASIA: The public opinion data from the region should alarm anyone serious about US strategy.
Everyone is watching the Middle East. That is understandable. But while the world’s attention has been fixed on Iranian missiles, stranded oil tankers and fractured alliances, something quieter and in some ways more consequential is happening in the Indo-Pacific — and Washington is largely missing it.
America’s 2025 National Security Strategy was unambiguous and hard to argue with: the Indo-Pacific is a decisive battleground of the 21st century. Preventing Chinese dominance of the region, it said, requires deterrence, allied burden-sharing, and economic strength. The problem is that the people this strategy depends on — the publics of the region itself — are tuning out.
New polling by the CT Group of nearly 10,000 people across key Indo-Pacific markets, conducted before the Iran war consumed the news cycle, makes for uncomfortable reading. In Malaysia, the United States scores a net favorability rating of minus 25.
President Trump comes in at minus 51. In Indonesia: minus 17 for the US, minus 46 for Trump. In South Korea — a treaty ally with nearly 30,000 American troops on its soil — the US scores net zero. In Australia, support for downgrading the American alliance is now net positive among every demographic under 55. Read that again: among Australians under 55, more people favor stepping back from the US alliance than maintaining it.
These are not rogue data points. They are a pattern — and the pattern is getting worse.
To understand why, start with what these populations actually care about. Malaysians see their country heading in the right direction by a net margin of plus 45. Indonesians, plus 20. These are confident, forward-looking societies whose political agenda is dominated by economic growth, cost of living, and tackling corruption.
Security is not a Top Ten concern. No one is worried about great-power rivalry. When Washington shows up leading with threat narratives and alliance obligations, it is irrelevantly discordant.
Meanwhile, both Malaysia and Indonesia are recording not just declining views of the US but rising positive views of Russia and China — including of Putin and Xi personally. This does not mean these populations have gone ideologically authoritarian. It means the reputational gap between America and its rivals is widening in the rivals’ favor. This is a strategic problem regardless of the underlying geopolitics.
While the temptation is to blame President Trump, the trends pre-date his administration. More importantly, the generational data makes clear they will outlast it. According to the CT Group survey, the 18-to-34 age group represents around 31% of the population in both Indonesia and Malaysia — a formidable voting bloc — and their views of the United States are consistently more negative than those of their parents.
Whatever caused this shift, a change of president in Washington will not reverse it. This is structural. The data from traditional allies compounds the concern.
Australian favorability toward AUKUS has fallen from plus 33 to plus 17 since 2023 — nearly halved in two years, even as awareness of the pact has grown. Support for US involvement in British defence investment has dropped from plus 33 to plus 14 over the same period. It turns out that the special relationship is not immune to the same forces reshaping opinion everywhere else.
The commercial consequences are already visible. US firms across the region report growing difficulty accessing local decision-makers. American identity, once a calling card, is becoming a complication. Executives are quietly asking whether to lead with it at all.
Politicians follow voters. When the largest demographic cohort in a country holds unfavorable views of a major power — and views its rivals more favorably — electoral incentives shift. It does not take a dramatic rupture. It takes a series of quiet recalibrations, each government responding rationally to its own domestic pressures.
Seen through this lens, the pushback some nations are already showing against US foreign policy positions looks less surprising and more like an early signal of what is coming.
So what should Washington do? Not what it is currently doing. Leading with security and threat narratives in markets where defense sits at the bottom of voter priority lists is a strategy for further alienation. The CT Group data is unambiguous on what resonates: investment, trade, jobs, and cost of living. Economic engagement is not a soft alternative to hard power strategy — it is the prerequisite for it.
Without public legitimacy in the region, the alliances, basing rights, and burden-sharing arrangements that underpin the entire Indo-Pacific strategy become politically fragile, if not untouchable.
Public opinion moves slowly, then all at once. The audience in the Indo-Pacific is not lost — not yet. But the generational clock is running. The largest voting bloc across these markets is already more sceptical of the United States than their parents, and the gap will only widen. This is not a communications problem that better messaging will fix. It is a substance problem that requires a different offer. Washington has a strategy for the Indo-Pacific. What it does not yet have is the public standing to execute it.
