The Middle Power Moment Arrives in Southeast Asia, But Not for ASEAN
By Leon Hadar
For much of the past three decades, Washington's foreign policy establishment has viewed Southeast Asia as a chessboard. First it was a venue for post-Cold War "engagement," then a front line in the "pivot to Asia," and more recently a contested zone in the grand strategic rivalry between the United States and China. In each case the ten, now eleven, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations were treated as pieces to be moved, courted, or pressured, not as players with their own interests and agendas.
That view was always somewhat misleading. It is now becoming obsolete. As the unipolar moment fades and the global system drifts toward something resembling multipolarity, the question is no longer which superpower Southeast Asia will "choose." The question is whether some of its members can join the ranks of the middle powers, the Indias, Turkeys, Saudi Arabias, and Brazils, that are learning to play the great powers off against one another for their own benefit.
The answer, I would suggest, is yes for some ASEAN states, and probably no for ASEAN itself.
Indonesia: the obvious candidate
Start with the most plausible contender. Indonesia has the population, nearly 280 million, the economic weight, and the geographic position astride the sea lanes linking the Indian and Pacific oceans to make it a natural middle power. It also has a foreign policy tradition, the bebas-aktif ("free and active") doctrine dating back to the Sukarno era and the Bandung Conference, that is essentially a recipe for strategic autonomy.
Jakarta's decision to join BRICS in early 2025, while continuing to pursue membership in the OECD and maintaining defense ties with Washington, was dismissed by some American commentators as a tilt toward Beijing. It was nothing of the sort. It was the kind of multi-alignment that India has practiced for years with little complaint from Washington, which likes to call New Delhi a "partner" even as it buys Russian oil and sits in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Indonesia is simply doing what middle powers do: accumulating options.
Vietnam and the others
Vietnam is a more interesting case. Here is a communist state that fought wars against the United States, France, and China, and has emerged from that history with an acute sense of how dangerous it is to depend on any single patron. Hanoi's "bamboo diplomacy," bending with the wind while remaining rooted, has allowed it to upgrade relations with Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo, and New Delhi simultaneously. With a manufacturing sector that has benefited enormously from the diversion of supply chains out of China, Vietnam is on track to become a significant regional power, even if its ambitions are more modest than Indonesia's.
Singapore, meanwhile, is too small to be a middle power in the conventional sense, but it has long operated as what might be called a "middle power of ideas," punching well above its weight through diplomatic skill, financial clout, and a sober reading of the balance of power. Malaysia and Thailand have the economic foundations but remain hampered by domestic political turbulence. The Philippines, bound by treaty to the United States and locked in a confrontation with China over the South China Sea, has chosen, at least for now, the path of alignment rather than autonomy.
Why ASEAN is not a middle power
The temptation, especially among liberal internationalists, is to add up the numbers, a combined population approaching 700 million and a GDP that would rank among the world's five largest, and conclude that ASEAN as a bloc could become a major geopolitical actor, a kind of Southeast Asian European Union.
That is wishful thinking. ASEAN was never designed to be a power. It was designed to keep its members from fighting one another and to keep the great powers from dominating the region, and on both counts it has been reasonably successful. But its consensus-based decision-making, its principle of non-interference, and the vast differences among its members, from democratic Indonesia to authoritarian Vietnam, from wealthy Singapore to impoverished Laos and newly admitted Timor-Leste, make coherent collective action nearly impossible.
The record speaks for itself. ASEAN has failed to resolve the crisis in Myanmar since the 2021 coup. It could not prevent armed clashes between Thailand and Cambodia along their disputed border. And on the South China Sea, the one issue that most directly tests the organization's cohesion, Cambodia and Laos have repeatedly blocked joint statements critical of Beijing. An organization that cannot agree on a communiqué is not going to act as a unified pole in a multipolar world.
A feature, not a bug
Yet it would be a mistake to see this as a failure. ASEAN's weakness as a bloc is precisely what allows its members to pursue their own hedging strategies. A more integrated ASEAN would inevitably be pressured to take sides in the U.S.-China rivalry, and it would likely split in the process. A loose ASEAN, by contrast, provides a diplomatic umbrella, the "ASEAN centrality" that the great powers ritually endorse at summit after summit, under which Indonesia, Vietnam, and others can maneuver individually.
In that sense, the region is following a pattern familiar to students of European history. The smaller and medium-sized states of 19th-century Europe survived not by forming a unified bloc but by exploiting the rivalries among Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Southeast Asia's version of that game is being played between Washington and Beijing, with Tokyo, New Delhi, Canberra, and the Gulf states increasingly joining in.
What Washington should take from this
For American policymakers, the lesson ought to be straightforward, even if it is not likely to be learned. The rise of Southeast Asian middle powers is not a threat to U.S. interests. Countries that are determined to preserve their independence are the best possible guarantee against Chinese hegemony in the region, far better than a network of reluctant client states pressured into choosing sides.
The problem is that Washington, under both parties, has found it difficult to accept partners that will not be followers. The tariff threats aimed at Southeast Asian exporters over the past two years, and the recurring demands that the region "stand with" the United States against China, reflect a mindset shaped by the Cold War and the unipolar era. Neither is a useful guide to a world in which Jakarta and Hanoi have more options than ever before.
Southeast Asia is not going to produce a new great power. But it is producing a cluster of self-confident middle powers that intend to set their own course. The sooner Washington recognizes that, the better its position in Asia will be.