GEOGRAPHY is power. And powerfully has Malaysia used the possibilities of its geography in its national interest.
The storied history of the strategic location of the Straits of Malacca — and Malaysia, too — has formed chapter and verse of geopolitics of old and new.
One such is of recent vintage. In the last 12 months, Malaysia has been busy putting such a geopolitics into practice, with China in the north and Singapore in the south.
As a GPF publication, Geopolitical Futures, puts it, geopolitics is all about managing the community of nations’ power, fears and desires.
By this account, Malaysia has done well thus far. The renegotiated East Coast Rail Link project with China is but one example.
More recently, Greater Kuala Lumpur, the 2,793sq km area of the city and its metropolitan surroundings, located at the centre of the strategic straits, have exercised a similar global and regional pull, though more business than geopolitics.
Business is important because it lends vitality to geography and politics. Together, they — economics, geography and politics — make and unmake geopolitics. The Emerging 7 (E7) — China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Indonesia and Turkey — as opposed to G7 has three of the seven countries of the region in the grouping.
A 2006-coinage of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), E7 should really be E8, with Malaysia as a member. PwC may want to revisit the grouping’s membership. Because Malaysia is about to give a new reading, both in economics and geopolitics.
A good place to make that reading possible is where Malaysia links with Thailand. Granted we have a road and rail link to our neighbouring Thailand.
But a cerebral link — where consensus ad idem is possible — is missing. It is time for such a link to be put in place.
A university right at the border where Malaysia ends and Thailand begins would be a good place to erect the learning centre. People of both nations can be schooled in the political, economic and cultural forces that shape Malaysia and Thailand.
English — the lingua franca of the world — must be made the lingua franca of Asean. Thereafter, the lingua franca of Asia. Language binds; it connects commonality.
There is much that is common among Asean and Asian neighbours that needs coming together. The Malaysia-Thailand University — let’s call it that — can act as a model to sprout other similar varsities in the region.
And when minds meet at such academies, prospering neighbours becomes easy. This model needs to be replicated elsewhere in Asean, too.
Taking the route of English as a language of discourse does not mean other languages and dialects — there are at least 2,300 in Asia — will be allowed to wither. Consider Malaysia.
English is a widely spoken language in the country, but other languages — one account puts the country’s indigenous languages at 137 — continue to thrive.
So does the culture and practices of the many and varied 32 million people this and that side of the South China Sea that Malaysia is. A case of diversity making unity possible, you may say.