IT is hard to imagine an international environment more fraught than currently obtains. The US and China are deadlocked over a bruising trade war that seems to be quickly morphing into a broader geostrategic contest for overall global supremacy.
The perpetual global tinderbox that is the Middle East is once again throbbing with tensions as the US and Iran face off following US President Donald Trump’s unilateral tearing-up of the nuclear deal between Iran and major powers.
Meanwhile, isolated terror-related incidents can and do crop up in sometimes totally unexpected places to remind us all how fragile and vulnerable we remain to such acts of wanton violence.
As well, one of the most elaborate supranational projects at regional integration — the European Union — faces threats to its cohesion even as the messy effort by the United Kingdom to extricate itself from the union poses a long-term existential threat.
All these challenges which impact almost all nations directl y or indirectly in significant ways may be enough to have harried politicians and leaders the world over scurry back onto the pages of Tom Peters’ management handbook Thriving on Chaos for tips on how best to cope or at least avoid any adverse fallout.
For most of us in Southeast Asia, we are again in somewhat familiar terrain trying as best we can to manage big-power rivalry as our region again becomes a primary geopolitical theatre.
A major difference this time around is that it is now a much more formidable combination of trade and economic rivalry and of the more traditional military and political sort that regional nations need to steer through.
This will test our collective political and diplomatic skills as never before.
As Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong succinctly pointed out in a recent speech: “The bottom line is that the US and China need to work together, and with other countries too, to bring the global system up to date, and to not upend the system... each must understand the other’s point of view, and reconcile each other’s interests.”
But as both the US and China seem at daggers drawn, their unprecedented and mutually beneficial economic embrace that lies at the heart of the globalisation era which all countries are benefiting from appears in some mortal danger of unravelling.
Disruption to global supply chains is already underway and may only accelerate even if the US and China eventually reach some new understanding with and accommodation of each other.
Countries in our region stand to be net immediate beneficiaries of such disruptions.
But we should make no mistake that we may be on the cusp of a brave — if bifurcated — new world evolving.
Should Sino-US rivalry intensify even despite a future trade deal between them, the danger for this region (as for much of the world) is that it will be forced to choose between the two main antagonists.
In many ways, Singapore’s rather unique role parlaying between both powers and benefiting economically from such a role is the one that bears watching. It will loath to have to pick sides in any intensifying Sino-US rivalry and will root unambiguously for the existing international order to be further entrenched, with appropriate concessions made to accommodate China’s rising global heft.
Malaysia, on the other hand, has an almost equally delicate balancing act to execute. It stands as one that can profit rather handsomely from companies in China seeking to hedge bets by relocating to third countries. It must, however, be very careful to play as even a hand as possible vis-à-vis both major powers.
Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has been weighing in on the brewing Sino-US rivalry, clearly more on the side of China. This is, of course, intellectually a no-brainer given the rather erratic leadership behaviour of Trump.
Unsurprisingly too, he has come out in support of beleaguered Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. This is clearly in the nation’s best economic interests and one area where the US has no alternative on offer to match.
It will be in our national as well as collective regional interests to have the two major powers today balance each other out. The US under Trump and a China determined to disregard international laws governing its overlapping claims over the seas it shares with our region strongly hint they both intend to operate under the principle that might is right.
If internationally accepted rules fail us, we have little choice but to revert to balance-of-power dynamics.
The writer views developments in the nation, the region and the wider world from his vantage point in Kuching, Sarawak