Asean all adrift over South China Sea consensus

With Malaysia set to chair Asean next year, Anwar’s statement carried immense strategic significance.

In an indirect criticism of America’s growing strategic involvement in the South China Sea, Anwar underscored that “there should not be involvement with other parties” beyond China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, so as not to “complicate the matter”.

Marcos Jnr also warned in Singapore that “China’s determining influence over the security situation and the economic evolution of this region is a permanent fact” while “the stabilising presence of the United States is crucial to regional peace”.

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Still, he emphasised that the Philippines is not interested in fully aligning with the West in a new cold war, since choosing sides is “never a choice” and, crucially, that both China and the US “are important” for Asia’s peace and stability.

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It’s unclear how Malaysia and the Philippines, let alone the whole of Asean, can arrive at an optimal consensus, one that would reinforce the regional body’s centrality in shaping the trajectory of South China Sea disputes.

Richard Heydarian is a Manila-based academic and author of Asia’s New Battlefield: US, China and the Struggle for Western Pacific, and the forthcoming Duterte’s Rise