The role of ASEAN in charting its own course amid intensifying great-power competition took centre stage on Wednesday as the 39th Asia-Pacific Roundtable opened in Kuala Lumpur. Datuk Prof Dr Mohd Faiz Abdullah, executive chairman of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia, set the tone for a three-day gathering by challenging policymakers and strategic thinkers to move beyond a reactive posture. Rather than simply adjusting to an increasingly fragmented international order, he argued, the region must exercise genuine agency—defined not by passive responses to external pressure but by deliberate decision-making, cohesive action, and purposeful engagement that reshapes outcomes to the region's advantage.
Mohd Faiz's framing marks a notable evolution in how regional strategists view ASEAN's position. For years, dialogue on Southeast Asia has centered on balance and adaptation—how to maintain equilibrium as Beijing and Washington jostled for influence, how to preserve the rules-based order amid erosion, how to navigate between competing powers. The 39th Asia-Pacific Roundtable, themed "Accelerating Agency and Action" and organised by ISIS Malaysia with sessions running through July 2, signals a shift toward a more assertive mindset. This reorientation reflects growing awareness that the region cannot simply survive turbulence; it must influence the conditions that create it.
Central to this shift is the distinction between resilience and agency. Mohd Faiz emphasised that strengthening regional resilience—bolstering national capacities, ensuring continuity of essential services, and maintaining institutional stability—forms the foundation upon which agency can be exercised. Without internal strength and cohesion, countries remain vulnerable to external manipulation. Yet resilience alone is insufficient. True agency demands that ASEAN and individual member states actively shape regional architecture, expand their strategic options, and define the terms of engagement rather than merely adapting to terms imposed by others. This represents a psychological and strategic shift away from the posture of smaller powers as recipients of geopolitical currents toward architects of their own strategic environment.
The timing of this message carries particular significance for Malaysia and the broader Southeast Asian context. With China-India rivalry intensifying, United States reengagement in the Indo-Pacific, and the return of nuclear security considerations to strategic calculations, ASEAN faces mounting pressures to align with competing blocs. The temptation to surrender agency in exchange for security guarantees or economic benefit runs deep. Yet Mohd Faiz's assertion that "states are not merely passive subjects of history; they are also its authors" underscores a fundamental truth often overlooked in power-laden negotiations: that countries retain far greater leverage through strategic autonomy than through dependency. Malaysia and its ASEAN peers must take ownership of their futures rather than outsourcing decisions to major powers.
The roundtable's agenda reflects the specific challenges testing ASEAN's agency. Four strategic fault lines structure the conference discussions: the China-India axis and its implications for regional balance; ASEAN's institutional resilience as major powers intensify competition within and around the region; renewed nuclear security concerns as countries reassess defence doctrines; and the geopolitics of critical minerals and supply chains—a domain where Southeast Asia's resource endowments grant it considerable leverage if wielded strategically. Each of these domains presents opportunities for ASEAN to exercise agency, yet each also carries risks of fracture if member states pursue narrowly competitive interests rather than collective positions.
Mohd Faiz highlighted that the roundtable deliberately functions as more than an academic exercise. ISIS Malaysia operates in the track 2 diplomacy space, a realm where strategic thinkers, business leaders, and retired officials can explore ideas and pose difficult questions unconstrained by official positions. This freedom carries weight. While formal government negotiations proceed along well-worn paths and established protocols, track 2 forums like the Asia-Pacific Roundtable can examine unconventional approaches, challenge prevailing orthodoxies, and incubate ideas that may eventually influence policy. The executive chairman explicitly stated that the event's value lies precisely in its capacity to ask inconvenient questions and generate perspectives that official diplomacy often cannot voice.
The conference draws high-profile participation reflecting ASEAN's strategic importance. Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani attended the opening reception on June 30, signalling government engagement. The inclusion of Australian High Commissioner to Malaysia Danielle Heinecke in a fireside chat on middle-power agency acknowledges that countries like Australia face similar questions about how to maintain influence and shape outcomes amid structural shifts. Most significantly, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's scheduled keynote address on the final day indicates that the Malaysian government views the roundtable's themes as relevant to its policy agenda.
For Malaysian readers and policymakers, the implications run across multiple dimensions. Malaysia's economic dependence on complex supply chains, particularly in semiconductors and critical minerals, makes supply-chain resilience and agency directly material. The country's geographic position linking Indian and Pacific Oceans places it at the intersection of multiple strategic competitions. Its role as an ASEAN anchor requires balancing member-state interests while advancing collective positions. The question of whether ASEAN can exercise genuine agency—preventing its more powerful members from dominating its consensus, resisting great-power pressure to choose sides, and collectively shaping critical-mineral markets—will substantially affect Malaysia's prosperity and security over the coming decade.
The broader implication for Southeast Asia is that passive adaptation to great-power competition is no longer a viable strategy, if it ever was. The region possesses genuine assets: geopolitical location, economic dynamism, demographic weight, and resource endowments. These assets translate into agency only when deployed through coherent regional frameworks and collective action. The fragmentation threatening the global order—the erosion of institutional constraints on great-power behaviour, the return of spheres of influence thinking, the weaponisation of supply chains—presents dangers but also opportunities. Countries that strengthen internal resilience and coordinate externally can shape how that fragmentation unfolds. Those that drift or fracture will be shaped by forces beyond their control.
The 39th Asia-Pacific Roundtable thus addresses not merely intellectual curiosity about geopolitical trends but fundamental questions about Southeast Asia's future. Will ASEAN remain a forum where major powers negotiate with each other, or will it become a platform where Southeast Asian states collectively define the terms of their engagement with global powers? Will Malaysia and its peers exercise strategic autonomy, or will they outsource security and prosperity to greater powers? Will supply chains be secured through cooperative mechanisms that benefit the region, or imposed through arrangements that concentrate value elsewhere? These questions underpin the three-day gathering, and the answers will shape not just regional diplomacy but the lived experience of millions of Malaysians.
