World leaders will soon begin converging on Malaysia for the second of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)’s two annual summits, and a host of other related multilateral meetings. Both the agenda and the high-profile list of attendees for next week’s ASEAN meetings, which begin on Sunday and will come to a close on October 28, make this arguably the most important regional summit in years.
Among the world leaders who will fly to Kuala Lumpur for the 47th ASEAN Summit and related meetings are U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Japan’s newly sworn-in Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae, South Korea’s President Lee Jae-myung, and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as well as the leaders of South Africa, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has confirmed that he will attend the summit virtually.
The summit also shapes up as one of the most eventful in years. To begin with, the bloc is expected to admit Timor-Leste as its 11th member, marking its first expansion since 1999. It will also run through an unusually crowded agenda. In addition to its perennial focus on economic integration, it will be forced to address the civil war in Myanmar, the disputes in the South China Sea, intensifying U.S.-China competition, dramatic shifts in the international trade system, the situation in Gaza, and Southeast Asia’s alarming boom in online scamming operations.
As I noted last week, the lead-in to the summit was dominated overwhelmingly by the question of whether or not Trump would attend. In late July, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who holds ASEAN’s rotating chair for 2025, confirmed that the U.S. president had accepted an invitation to do so. However, this was not confirmed by the White House until yesterday, when press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump would leave Washington for Malaysia late on Friday night. He will meet Anwar and attend a working dinner of ASEAN leaders on Sunday, before flying off to Japan and South Korea, where he will address the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit on October 30 and meet with China’s leader Xi Jinping.
During Trump’s first term in office, he attended an ASEAN summit just once, in the Philippines in 2017. Even then, he left before the East Asia Summit, a regional forum that is the most important event for U.S. presidents during ASEAN’s late-year clutch of summits. As a result, Trump’s presence is a considerable diplomatic victory for Anwar, who has described the roster of world leaders as a sign of ASEAN’s (and Malaysia’s) diplomatic relevance.
However, Trump’s interest in traveling to Malaysia appears to center less on ASEAN itself than on the opportunity to preside over the signing of a peace declaration between Cambodia and Thailand, aimed at ending their ongoing border dispute. The dispute erupted into five days of conflict in July, killing at least 42 people and displacing around 300,000.
Indeed, Politico reported earlier this month that Trump would travel to Kuala Lumpur only if he could preside over a peace agreement between Cambodia and Thailand, something that the two nations have since been forced hastily to assemble. (He also requested that Chinese officials be excluded from the ceremony, although it remains to be seen whether Malaysia has acceded to this demand.) After being credited with forcing the two countries to agree to a ceasefire on July 28 – he reportedly threatened both with higher tariffs – Trump presumably hopes to use the ceremony to bolster his credentials as an international “peacemaker.”
Given his planned itinerary, Trump also seems unlikely to attend this year’s 20th East Asia Summit, which is scheduled to take place on Monday, the same day he is scheduled to fly to Japan. Nor did Leavitt confirm that he would attend any other meetings while in Malaysia.
As Joanne Lin, co-coordinator of the ASEAN Studies Centre at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, told Channel News Asia, Trump’s visit at this stage “appears more symbolic than strategic. Unless this visit is followed by concrete policy frameworks, development funding, or long-term diplomatic engagement, it’s likely to be a one-off event.” The risk here for Anwar is that Trump’s diplomatic theater, and the expectation that ASEAN should “show ceremonial acknowledgement of his role and relevance,” as Huong Le Thu of the International Crisis Group put it, will overshadow the ASEAN Summit just as it has the run-up to the gatherings in KL.
Beyond the Trump factor, ASEAN leaders will discuss a number of perennial agenda items. The South China Sea disputes will again play a prominent role in proceedings, after another year that has seen repeated confrontations between Chinese and Philippine vessels in various disputed areas.
In 2023, ASEAN and China agreed to accelerate negotiations into a planned Code of Conduct that would create a series of guidelines to deal with the mess of overlapping claims in the South China Sea, which is claimed to varying degrees by China, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Brunei.
In practice, progress on the Code of Conduct has dragged on for more than two decades, and this year’s summit is unlikely to see much beyond the usual regional expressions of “concern” about the situation in the South China Sea. The bloc’s perennially vague statements reflect the fact that only four ASEAN member states (five, if one counts Indonesia) have a direct stake in the disputes. The remainder, as I argued after the corresponding ASEAN Summit last year, are “either unconcerned about the maritime disputes, enjoy close relations with China, or both.”
A similar diversity of interests underpins the bloc’s indecisive approach to intensifying U.S.-China competition writ large. Most ASEAN nations would prefer to avoid making a “choice” between Washington and Beijing, but as Trump’s demand that Chinese officials be excluded from his peace ceremony showed, there are many small ways in which these choices are now being forced on the bloc and its member states.
These factors have also complicated ASEAN’s approach to the major project in its own yard: the ongoing – indeed, intensifying – conflict in Myanmar since the military’s seizure of power there in early 2021. Despite formulating the Five-Point Consensus peace plan, which called for an immediate end to violence and inclusive dialogue involving “all parties” to the country’s conflict, ASEAN has failed to make much headway in resolving the conflict. Aside from excluding the military regime from sending leaders to its summits, ASEAN’s norms of consensus decision-making and “non-interference” in member states’ internal affairs have prevented it from taking any concerted action to punish the military regime or attempt to compel its adherence to the Consensus.
As a result, this year’s summit has been preceded by calls for the bloc to go beyond its current approach. For example, in a statement today, the rights group Amnesty International called on ASEAN to “revisit the failed Five-Point Consensus” and “urgently intensify efforts to exert maximum influence on the military and other armed groups to comply with international humanitarian law and free all arbitrarily detained prisoners.”
There is an added complication for ASEAN this year, given the military’s announced plans to hold an election beginning on December 28, which it intends to use as a route back to international legitimacy and a means of dividing (and eventually defeating) the nationwide resistance to its rule. The polls have been preceded by a fierce military campaign to regain lost territory and an uptick in repression designed to ensure that the army’s electoral theater unfolds smoothly.
ASEAN leaders have previously told the junta to prioritize peace over elections, and that any poll must be fully “inclusive.” A similar statement is likely to issue from the upcoming summit, as well as a strong condemnation of the violence that the military has unleashed in its run-up. But with the military bent on pressing ahead regardless, and the election set to be very far from “inclusive,” ASEAN leaders will need to grapple with the question of how to respond to the polls. The bloc’s past actions suggest that a change in approach is unlikely, and that it will eventually come to accept, however unwillingly, the junta’s electoral fait accompli.
In addition to these regional issues, the summit and its related meetings take place shortly after the recently concluded ceasefire in Gaza. Despite its geographic remove, the devastation of Gaza has been a subject of intense interest in the region, particularly in Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia. ASEAN’s foreign ministers welcomed the ceasefire after it was announced on October 8, describing it as “a crucial step towards ending the conflict” between Israel and Hamas.
Anwar has also said that he plans to discuss the issue of Gaza with Trump during their meeting on Sunday, and has credited Trump with “stopping illicit bombings in Gaza.” At the same time, Trump is due to be greeted with protests by pro-Palestine groups in Kuala Lumpur, highlighting the difficulties the bloc may face in striking a balance between maintaining a principled position on Gaza – ASEAN’s foreign ministers on October 14 expressed support for “the rights to self-determination and statehood for the Palestinian people” – without alienating Washington.
As mentioned above, another issue of importance is transnational organized crime, in particular cyber-scams, which are now costing victims billions of dollars per year. The upcoming ASEAN meetings were preceded by last week’s unprecedented joint action by the U.S. and U.K. governments to combat scamming networks linked to Cambodia’s Prince Holding Group. The action saw the U.S. Treasury Department imposing sanctions on 146 individuals and entities linked to the Prince, including its 37-year-old chairman Chen Zhi, alleging their involvement in cyberfraud, human trafficking, and money laundering. It also seized nearly $15 billion in bitcoin, describing it as its “largest ever forfeiture action.”
Given the privileged position that Prince occupied in Cambodia’s economy, the sanctions have heaped pressure on Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet’s government to take genuine action to tackle the scamming scourge that has engulfed the country. The aftershocks have also spread to Thailand, where two members of Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s cabinet have been accused of links to online scam operations. Whether or not the issue is addressed meaningfully within ASEAN itself, pressure is building from the outside.
According to the South Korean government, the country’s President Lee Jae-myung will hold talks with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet on Monday “to discuss the strategic partnership between the nations and pending issues, including online scam crimes.”
South Korea’s government has become increasingly concerned about Cambodia-based cyber-fraud since August, when a 22-year-old Korean student was tortured and killed by a criminal gang in southern Cambodia. Last week, a high-ranking South Korean delegation traveled to Cambodia to secure the release of nationals being held in scam compounds against their will. Sixty-four Korean nationals were subsequently deported, out of an estimated total of 1,000 who are currently working in scam centers.
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