When US President Donald Trump totally took all the credit over the conflict resolution between Thailand and Cambodia, and treated the 10‑member regional organization as a mere organizing committee, with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, ASEAN’s current chair, as its project officer, ASEAN has been turning into a mere platform, or a co-working space, where it can no longer determine the substance, or set the agenda.
As ASEAN leaders will meet in Kuala Lumpur from October 26 to 28, that symbolic moment could be another confirmation of whether the bloc still matters, or if it is already hollowed out. Unfortunately, it is not all rhetoric from Trump. This is a reality. Without his pressure, and support from China, both Thailand and Cambodia would not have come to the negotiating table in the first place. Trump had threatened Thailand and Cambodia with his tariffs, while China had given its blessing to Cambodia to make peace.
ASEAN, as it turns out now, couldn’t handle its own internal conflict, let alone discipline its members. With Thailand turning to the US, and Cambodia, China’s closest ally in the grouping, going directly to the UN rather than trusting ASEAN’s internal mechanism to solve their disputes, the organization’s irrelevance could not be more glaring.
In its subsequent press release, ASEAN acknowledged the “determining role” of external partners, stating that the peace negotiation was “co-organized by the US and China,” with Cambodia later nominating Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, while Anwar insisted on the importance of Trump’s presence at the upcoming ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur. The irony couldn’t be sharper. The regional grouping once hailed as the driver’s seat of Asia‑Pacific regionalism has become little more than a passenger, or worse, an event organizer for great powers seeking a stage.
ASEAN was never designed as a strong institution. Born out of Cold War fears in 1967, it was built as a cooperation meant to prevent open conflicts among Southeast Asian states, not to enforce collective will or discipline.
Its DNA is consensus: a principle that, while celebrated as “ASEAN way,” has in practice become a convenient excuse for paralysis. Consensus is now the veto of the weak, the shield of the complicit, and the weapon of the powerful. Every time a crisis erupts, from Myanmar’s coup to the South China Sea, the “ASEAN Way” reveals itself as a ritual of avoidance. It is diplomacy as theater: all smiles, no backbone.
The result is a regional institution that functions more like a co-working space than a political organization, one where each member rents a desk, brings their own agenda, and shares only air conditioning and coffee breaks. The façade of unity hides a hollow core.
Nothing has exposed ASEAN’s impotence more than Myanmar. The 2021 military coup was ASEAN’s moment to prove its relevance, and it failed spectacularly. The so-called “Five-Point Consensus,” brokered under Indonesia’s chairmanship, was dead before it was signed. The junta ignored every commitment, escalated violence, and executed political prisoners, while ASEAN members quietly went back to business as usual. Thailand began separate talks with the junta; Singapore resumed limited trade; Cambodia even welcomed the junta’s foreign minister to Phnom Penh in 2022.
ASEAN’s response was to rotate its special envoy, a new face for an old failure. From Brunei’s Erywan Yusof to Cambodia’s Prak Sokhonn and Indonesia’s Retno Marsudi, each envoy repeated the same choreography: express concern, call for restraint, issue communiqués that meant nothing. In reality, Myanmar’s generals have nothing to fear from ASEAN. The bloc’s principle of non-interference has become a license for tyranny. It’s a pact of silence, a regional gentleman’s agreement that authoritarians can do whatever they want at home as long as they keep smiling abroad.
For decades, Indonesia was the natural leader, the primus inter pares, of ASEAN. It was the moral anchor, the diplomatic broker, and the visionary that once defined Southeast Asia’s collective purpose. From the Bali Concord of 1976 to the creation of the ASEAN Charter in 2007, Jakarta was not just the host but the heart of ASEAN.
Under presidents from Soeharto to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia projected a sense of quiet confidence: a large but humble nation with enough legitimacy to mediate, enough stability to lead, and enough conviction to stand for regional autonomy. That legacy, however, has been fading. During Joko Widodo’s decade-long rule, Indonesia turned inward, obsessed with infrastructure and domestic populism, neglecting diplomacy. ASEAN became an afterthought. The moral and strategic leadership Indonesia once exercised was replaced by transactional pragmatism.
Now, under President Prabowo Subianto, the erosion has deepened.
Prabowo’s foreign policy, still searching for coherence, has so far been a blend of opportunism and appeasement. His eagerness to please everyone, from Beijing to Washington to Moscow, reflects less strategic autonomy than insecurity. Jakarta no longer leads ASEAN; it floats with it.
Prabowo’s diplomacy so far has been characterized by flamboyant gestures and vague slogans, promises of “Asian solidarity” mixed with overt displays of admiration for Trump-style leadership. Yet such eagerness to appease comes at a cost. Under Prabowo, Indonesia risks losing its hard-earned reputation as a bridge-builder and moral center. His visits to Beijing, Washington, and Riyadh have produced headlines, not direction. His foreign policy statements sound more like public relations scripts than strategic doctrines.
At the ASEAN table, Prabowo speaks of unity but avoids taking a stand, on Myanmar, on the South China Sea, even on the region’s future with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. He wants to be everyone’s friend, and thus becomes no one’s leader. In this vacuum, others step in. Anwar Ibrahim’s Malaysia courts Washington; Vietnam deepens defense ties with the US; Laos and Cambodia cling tighter to Beijing. ASEAN becomes an orchestra without a conductor, and Indonesia, its largest member, now merely hums along.
While ASEAN debates adjectives in its communiqués, the world has moved on. Washington, Beijing, and Tokyo now engage Southeast Asia directly through bilateral deals and minilateral blocs, the Quad, AUKUS, and IPEF, that bypass ASEAN entirely. ASEAN’s centrality has become ceremonial. The East Asia Summit, once its pride, has turned into a diplomatic photo session where real negotiations happen elsewhere.
China holds the economic card; the US, the security one. ASEAN is the stage prop that lends legitimacy to both. Trump’s symbolic “credit-taking” over the Thailand–Cambodia deal is only the most blatant example of a broader pattern: ASEAN as subcontractor. Each major power now rents the platform to advance its own script. For the US, ASEAN provides an entry to counter China’s influence without appearing imperial. For China, ASEAN offers an umbrella for economic integration under RCEP, a framework written in Beijing’s image but signed in Jakarta. For Japan and South Korea, ASEAN is a convenient venue to project soft power and regional aid.
The result is an organization everyone claims to love but no one truly respects.
To underscore how this imbalance plays out economically: intra‑ASEAN trade currently makes up just about 21.2 percent of the region’s total trade, while ASEAN’s trade with its “Plus Three” partners, China, Japan, and South Korea, reached US$1.2 trillion in 2024, accounting for 31.7 percent of its total trade. Meanwhile, the European Union accounts for 9.6 percent of ASEAN trade, and China remains its largest bilateral partner with roughly USD 468.8 billion in trade. These figures reveal a telling structural dependence: the internal arteries of ASEAN’s economy are thin, while its external trade links dominate. ASEAN isn’t just politically fragmented; it is economically tethered to powers beyond its control.
There is still a path forward, but it requires courage, not comfort. ASEAN must choose between remaining a symbolic gathering of bureaucrats or evolving into a genuine regional community. That would mean at least three bold steps: reform the consensus rule, empower the Secretariat, and reclaim Indonesia’s leadership.
Unanimity must give way to qualified majority voting on key issues such as human rights and security. Otherwise, ASEAN will always be hostage to its weakest members. The Jakarta office must evolve into an executive agency with authority to implement and monitor decisions. That requires both legal mandate and political will, especially from Indonesia. Jakarta must rediscover its moral compass and strategic courage. ASEAN’s relevance depends on Indonesia’s willingness to lead, not by appeasing great powers, but by asserting the region’s collective autonomy.
ASEAN once embodied the hope that small nations, by standing together, could chart their own path amid giants. That hope is fading. What remains is an organization obsessed with process but allergic to purpose — a co-working space that rents out rooms for power games it no longer controls. Trump’s mockery, in the end, was not entirely misplaced. When outsiders begin to assign your roles, your autonomy is already gone. Unless ASEAN, and especially Indonesia under Prabowo, rediscovers the courage to lead rather than host, it will remain what it has become: a beautifully decorated hall where others come to decide the fate of Southeast Asian people.
Omong-Omong Media’s editorial is also published in The Jakarta Post every week.
