Malaysia’s Asean chairmanship: navigating troubled waters

In times of crisis of multipolar cooperation, chairing one of the world’s most significant regional blocs becomes particularly challenging.

Moreover, it seems that in 2025 the world and the region did several somersaults, making Malaysia’s task of keeping Asean chairmanship on track a mission impossible.

US President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on all Asean member states, while some Asean countries themselves were far from a desire to live together.

Nevertheless, Malaysia managed to navigate at least some troubled waters by adopting, in May this year, the Asean Community Vision 2045 on “Resilient, Innovative, Dynamic and People centred Asean”.

This vision is worth particular attention because it stresses the importance of cooperative effort to continue building a stable and prosperous region when the US-China tensions are mounting and are getting more and more projected to Southeast Asia.

Moreover, the full list of challenges the Asean Community needs to react to looks formidable.

The vision emphasises the indispensable role of the UN Charter and international law.

It stresses the importance of responding to the connectivity challenge by creating a Digital and Technological Community and enhanced linkages within and between Asean countries.

It also sets an ambitious goal of promoting synergies with all other subregional and multilateral cooperation efforts.

Still, all these ideas have yet to be brought to life.

Meanwhile, the realities on the ground during Malaysia’s chairmanship were quite different.

The variety of Trump’s tariffs imposed on the Asean member states became a clear dividing act, putting all the Association’s countries in a position of competitors for the best possible negotiated solution.

Needless to say, this competition implied the necessity of contacting the US administration one-on-one rather than through the channels of the regional bloc.

The Thailand and Cambodia border conflict, which erupted earlier this year, did not contribute to the enhanced linkages within and between Asean member states.

Equally, Myanmar’s semi-isolation from the Asean process did not add much strength to the Association.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and his team tried their best to keep Asean unity amidst all these turbulence, old and new.

Anwar took the lead on coordinating the Association’s position on tariffs and invested himself in inviting the US President to the Asean Summit even in the conditions of divergent views concerning this invitation at home.

While some may believe that Thailand and Cambodia agreed on the peace negotiations due to Trump’s promise of lower tariffs, still the Asean Chair’s peace-making effort was no less important.

It was so simply because peace is more vital for the regional actors themselves rather than for a faraway big power mired in its own problems.

Finally, Malaysia became much closer to establishing direct contacts between conflict parties in Myanmar through the Asean Troika mechanism than any previous Asean Chair so far could.

Addressing the general debate of the 80th Session of the General Assembly of the UN in September, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Malaysia, Mohamad Hasan, re-emphasised that the isolation of Myanmar was not a wise step to take.

Thus, Malaysia’s Asean chairmanship is not bringing a ready-made solution yet, but it is a hope for a solution and a return to Asean’s previous policy of engaging Myanmar.

Beyond Asean, Anwar conducted a rather proactive foreign policy.

For Russia, it was especially significant to welcome him in Moscow and Kazan in May.

This year marks an important milestone for Asean-Russia Strategic Partnership as the parties are to complete the existing Comprehensive Cooperation Plan and move towards new goals.

In 2025, Malaysia received the status of BRICS partner, expressing keen interest in developing trade and investment links with the expanded BRICS in times of rising protectionism on the part of the US, one of the key trading and investment partners of many Asean member states.

Malaysia is not neglecting Asean relations with the US or the EU but getting involved in multiple cooperation frameworks beyond North America and Europe may well add more weight to Malaysia’s and Asean’s global voice and, hopefully, work for the much-desired synergies of various multilateral efforts.

Ekaterina Koldunova,

Director, Asean Centre

MGIMO University