AFTER the deserved 50th anniversary celebrations, Asean needs to take a long, hard look into the future, and to be ready for it.
The trouble is the future is here. And Asean might just fall short.
In my contribution to the book “Asean FutureForward: Anticipating the Next Fifty Years”, published by the Institute for Strategic and International Studies, I highlighted two developments that threaten to tear up the script on Asean’s future shape.
Leaving aside the definite rise of China which will, planned or otherwise, rewrite and disrupt assumed intra-Asean relationships, I would like in today’s column to draw attention to the other deterministic development – Digitisation.
Now popularly dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Digital Economy is already upon us, while in the Asean narrative its greater economic integration will attract foreign manufacturing investment based on low labour cost in such destinations as Myanmar, Indonesia, even Vietnam.
Read more: Asean needs to think again
THE 19th-century British statesman Lord Palmerston is reputed to have said: “There are no permanent friends, and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.”
This has become a truism in international relations. China is and will be the same in its conduct of global politics, even if its style and idiom are different from the last over two centuries of Anglo-Saxon diplomatic action and language.
Malaysia, too, should look to secure its interests in its international relations, including of course those with China, with whom the country has become close.
If Malaysia does not do so, any country getting the opportunity – not just China – will take the shirt off our back. This has happened in the past, particularly in the long colonial period under the British.
In the Asean region, the case of Vietnam is a good example of the ebb and flow of relations and interests. After its victory over the Americans in 1975, an ascendant Vietnam was viewed as a threat by the original five Asean member countries, a fear that was magnified by the Vietnamese invasion of what was then called the Democratic Kampuchea on Christmas Day, 1978.
Read more: China – friend or foe?
