INTRODUCTION

In 2011, Myanmar embarked on a proper path of reform and liberalization after decades of isolation since the 1960s, failed experiments with socialism, and prolonged military rule since 1988. A partial opening up of the economy in the 1990s created cronyism and rent-seeking practices. The decade spanning April 2011 to the military coup in February 2021 saw wide-ranging reforms initiated by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) administration headed by U Thein Sein, who assumed office in April 2011, and these accelerated under the National League for Democracy (NLD) administration led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, which came to power in April 2016 following the NLD's resounding victory in the 2015 elections. Unfortunately, the military coup in February 2021 abruptly halted that decade of progress, plunging the economy into a severe decline and undoing the progress achieved.

Though significant, the reforms and liberalization efforts in the decade preceding the 2021 military coup were not without challenges or obstacles. Some discussions have already emerged, raising awareness of these challenges, but a thorough analysis of their origins and underlying causes remains lacking. These challenges persisted across the USDP and NLD administrations and continue under the current State Administration Council (SAC) military regime that staged the 2021 coup. While external challenges are often apparent to many, internal challenges, such as those outlined in this paper, remain largely hidden from public knowledge and discussion. Awareness of such internal challenges exists only among those with firsthand experience working within the government system, and even those in the know are reluctant to discuss or raise such issues.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

THE EDITORS

Series Chairman:

Choi Shing Kwok

Series Editor:

Ooi Kee Beng

Editorial Committee:

Daljit Singh

Francis E. Hutchinson

Norshahril Saat

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• Southeast Asian countries are once again showing renewed interest in nuclear energy as a means to bolster energy security and meet decarbonization goals.

• Countries in this region have been exploring the use of civilian nuclear energy since the late 1950s, but their commitment has fluctuated over the decades, influenced by factors such as government support for nuclear energy, and global nuclear events affecting public opinion.

• The latest interest follows the revival of global interest in nuclear energy and progress in the development of advanced nuclear reactors as well as small modular reactors (SMRs). SMRs are regarded as a potential entry point for nations new to nuclear energy because of advantages such as lower upfront costs, enhanced safety, flexible power generation, and a less disruptive impact on existing electricity grids.

• There are challenges to SMR deployment in Southeast Asia, however, one of which is the absence of international regulations specifically governing these new reactors, particularly concerning transportation and safeguards. The creation of a robust regional nuclear safety regime harmonized with international rules and regulations would augment the existing governance frameworks and afford the region greater confidence in the deployment of new SMR technology.

• Public acceptance of nuclear energy remains a crucial factor for its successful development in the region. While there is growing acceptance of the potential of nuclear energy in the region, support levels are still relatively low compared with other clean energy sources. Governments need to actively address public concerns regarding safety, trust, and risk perception connected to nuclear energy programmes.

INTRODUCTION

Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022, followed by the Israel-Hamas conflict in 2023, global energy prices have been subjected to great volatility and challenging issues of security of supply. These challenging trends come at a time when energy demand is growing in Southeast Asia. The International Energy Agency (IEA), in its Southeast Asia Energy Outlook 2024, notes that under current policy trajectories Southeast Asia is projected to be responsible for approximately 25 per cent of the world's energy demand growth from 2024 through 2035. With economic growth and population increases fuelling energy demand, Southeast Asia is expected to overtake the European Union in total energy consumption by 2050. It further notes that fossil fuels—predominantly coal—have been meeting approximately 80 per cent of the region's rising energy needs since 2010. The report also notes that ASEAN stands out as one of the few regions, alongside the Middle East, where economic expansion remains heavily reliant on carbon-intensive practices, with economic growth continuing to parallel increases in greenhouse gas emissions.2 Keen to establish a degree of energy independence to buffer against the adverse effects of these geopolitical uncertainties, Southeast Asian countries are beginning to realize that renewable energy sources, despite their high upfront capital costs, provide such an avenue.

ASEAN is, however, lagging in meeting the renewable energy goals it has set for itself. The ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation (APAEC) 2016–2025 Phase II: 2021–2025 (ASEAN Centre for Energy 2020), which was released in November 2020, sets a target for ASEAN member states to achieve 23 per cent renewable energy share in the total primary energy supply target under APAEC Phase II.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

THE EDITORS

Series Chairman:

Choi Shing Kwok

Series Editor:

Ooi Kee Beng

Editorial Committee:

Daljit Singh

Francis E. Hutchinson

Norshahril Saat

INTRODUCTION

The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) was for over fifty years, since the nation's independence in 1957, the ruling federal government of Malaysia. In 2018, its fall from power as the primary party of the National Front (Barisan Nasional, or BN) led to major rearrangements in political coalitions. UMNO returned to power in a new coalition in March 2020 alongside the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia, BERSATU), and in the 15th General Election of November 2023 (GE15), it again retained its position within the federal government under a unity government large-tent coalition together with former rivals the Pact of Hope (Pakatan Harapan, PH), comprising the People's Justice Party (Parti Keadilan Rakyat, PKR), the Democratic Action Party (DAP) and the National Trust Party (Parti Amanah Negara, AMANAH).

While this unity government has been criticized as an alliance of convenience—individual parties setting aside decades of political and philosophical differences to secure positions in the federal government—it was this equation that permitted the formation of a federal government. No single coalition had won a simple majority, and in order to avoid a hung Parliament, Malaysia's constitutional monarch, the king, Sultan Abdullah bin Sultan Ahmad Shah, called for a national unity government to be formed, a grand coalition that would include both PH and the opposition coalition, the National Front (Perikatan Nasional, or PN). PN, however, rejected this proposal (Wong 2023). This resulted in the present conglomeration taking its place to form the present unity government, in which UMNO holds 26 seats (BN as a whole holds 30).

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• Since Malaysia's independence in 1957 until 2018, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) was the single dominant party in control of an authoritarian regime, having been the main party within the long-ruling National Front (Barisan Nasional, or BN). Since its fall from power in 2018, key events have reshaped its party structure, leadership and overall support. Today, it sits in a large-tent coalition at the federal level, is part of the state government in seven states, and of these, controls the position of chief minister in three.

• Using the states of Malacca and Selangor as case studies, this paper examines UMNO's current state of leadership, how the PH-BN coalition is being managed and how this relationship is being communicated to the grassroots, and how these key elements contribute to the deinstitutionalization of the party.

• While grappling with party factionalism and leadership gaps at the national level, UMNO in both Selangor and Malacca has also undergone significant leadership changes. Serious efforts are being made to strengthen state-level leadership, but these remain overshadowed by the gaps in the party's central leadership.

• As political operatives of UMNO and Pakatan Harapan (PH) work together, there is some indication that this cooperation is beginning to coalesce, although resistance from the grassroots remains apparent within both the selected states.

This is the first of four chapters that provide a detailed examination of Russia’s bilateral relations with the 11 countries of Southeast Asia since the beginning of the Putin era in 2000. This chapter focuses on the three countries in mainland Southeast Asia that are linked by geography, history and geopolitics: Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

To provide context and demonstrate continuity and change, each of the four country chapters begins with an overview of their relations with the Soviet Union. For Vietnam and Laos, their relationship with Moscow during the Cold War was by far the most consequential in Southeast Asia, as the ideological, financial and military support the Soviet Union provided was decisive in their ascent to power. It was during this period that the foundations for contemporary bilateral ties were laid and enduring legacies created. Today, Vietnam and Laos are Russia’s closest partners in Southeast Asia. Even though the Cold War is over, and the Soviet Union is gone, they remain grateful to Moscow for its past assistance and continue to be dependent on the Russian Federation for the upkeep of their Soviet-centric armed forces. The Putin regime’s assiduous cultivation of ties with Vietnam and Laos paid dividends, as both countries have refrained from criticizing Russia’s aggression against Ukraine since 2014.

As for Cambodia, its feelings towards Russia are more conflicted. In 1978, the Soviet Union’s ally, Vietnam, invaded Cambodia, entangling the country in a damaging proxy war between Moscow and Beijing which lasted for over a decade.

On 31 December 2024, President Vladimir Putin celebrated a quarter of a century at the apex of Russia’s political system. This book has explored the Putin regime’s relations with Southeast Asia over that 25-year period; from Russia’s economic engagement with the region and Dialogue Partnership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to its defence diplomacy activities and the development of bilateral ties with all 11 regional states. Having examined these key areas of the relationship, how should we assess Putin’s Russia in Southeast Asia? Can Russia’s involvement in regional affairs be considered to have been that of a great power? What have been Moscow’s successes and failures? How has Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine affected its standing in the region? And what might the future hold for Russia’s relations with Southeast Asia?

Southeast Asia in Russian Foreign Policy

Since the middle of the twentieth century, Southeast Asia’s importance to Moscow has waxed and waned. For much of the Cold War, Moscow viewed the region as a key arena in its ideological and strategic competition with the United States and, later, the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Throughout this period, Indochina was the focus of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)’s Southeast Asia policy. Moscow assisted Hanoi in its anti-colonialist struggle against France, supported North Vietnam in its war against the US-backed regime in Saigon and bankrolled a reunified Vietnam in a proxy war with the PRC over Cambodia.

The winter of 1987 was an exciting time in East-West relations. By that point, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), had been in power for a little over two and a half years. Relatively youthful and energetic, Gorbachev was a breath of fresh air in the Kremlin after a succession of sick, grey and elderly Soviet leaders—Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko— and had startled the world with his straight-talking, candid assessment of his country’s economic problems, his clarion call for far-ranging reforms and his push to improve relations with the West and China. He was, as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher so famously said, someone the West could do business with.

It was in November 1987 that I visited Russia on my very first overseas trip. At that time, I was a 17-year-old lad living on Tyneside in the Northeast of England. An A-Level student, I was fascinated with history and international affairs. Eager to see at firsthand what was happening behind the Iron Curtain, I joined a package tour with the state-owned travel agency Intourist and jetted off from London’s Gatwick Airport with the state-owned airline Aeroflot on a Tupolev-154, the workhorse of the fleet. I spent a week in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), taking in the historic sights of Moscow—where I was lucky enough to catch the tail end of the military parade in Red Square to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution—the Arctic city of Murmansk, and Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was still called in those days.

Whereas the previous chapter gave an overview of Russian foreign policy under Vladimir Putin and his government’s Turn to the East, this chapter provides more detail on Moscow’s most important relationships in the Indo-Pacific. It starts by examining the development of the Russia-China strategic nexus, including the factors that have brought the two countries into a tighter embrace since 2012, as well as where Moscow and Beijing’s interests diverge, including in Southeast Asia. It goes on to look at Russia’s relations with Japan, specifically the two countries’ failure to negotiate a peace treaty and resolve a territorial dispute left over from the Second World War. This is followed by a section on Russia’s changing policies on the Korean Peninsula and the Putin regime’s failure to keep relations with North and South Korea in balance. A review of Russia’s enduring ties with India is next, especially whether the relationship can withstand the pressures created by the recent tectonic shifts in major power relations. This chapter ends with an outline of Russia’s engagement with Southeast Asia, its successes and failures, and the impact of the Russia-Ukraine War from 2022 to 2024.

Russia and China

Russia’s relationship with China today is unquestionably its most consequential international partnership and arguably the cornerstone of Putin’s foreign policy. Although Sino-Russian ties have been on a positive trajectory since Sino-Soviet normalization in the late 1980s, they have become especially close since 2012, when Putin began his third term as president and President Xi Jinping rose to the apex of China’s political system.

The last chapter looked at Russia’s relations with Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This chapter examines Russia’s ties with the two other mainland Southeast Asian countries: Thailand and Myanmar.

Bangkok and Moscow regard the bonds of friendship formed between their monarchs in the late nineteenth century as the foundation for contemporary Thai-Russia relations. But what is less often mentioned is that when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Tsar in 1917, the relationship fractured along ideological lines, the Thai body politic being allergic to communism. The two countries remained at opposing ends of the ideological spectrum for the next six decades. After 1978, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) displaced China as Thailand’s main national security threat due to its support for Vietnam’s occupation of neighbouring Cambodia. Post-Cold War, bilateral ties normalized, though Russia never figured very prominently in Bangkok’s foreign relations, which were dominated by its treaty ally, the United States, and its closest economic partner, China. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Thailand declared its neutrality to avoid taking sides in the dispute and so that it could court Russian money.

The second half of this chapter focuses on Russia’s relations with Burma/Myanmar. In the Cold War, ties between the Soviet Union and Burma were tenuous. It was not until the early 2000s that Myanmar’s military regime looked to Russia as a way to reduce the country’s dependence on China. Following a brief interlude of civilian rule after 2016, the armed forces carried out another coup in 2021, plunging the country into civil war.

In the Cold War era, defence diplomacy—more commonly referred to during that period as military assistance or defence cooperation—was utilized by the superpowers to advance their geostrategic goals, such as strengthening the military capabilities of allies against common rivals and exerting influence in their respective spheres of influence. Defence diplomacy activities consisted mainly of arms sales (often heavily subsidized), high-profile combined military exercises, educational exchanges and naval port calls.

Since the end of the Cold War, the motivations for, and scope of, defence diplomacy has broadened, particularly as practised by Western countries in their security engagements with the Global South. The pursuit of economic, political and strategic interests through military cooperation remains at its heart, but additional goals have been added. These include rapprochement with former enemies, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s Partnership for Peace with former Warsaw Pact countries, many of which went on to join the alliance; engaging potential adversaries to improve communication and enhance trust to avoid misunderstandings and conflict, the primary purpose of US-China military-to-military ties today; promoting security sector reform, especially the development of democratically accountable armed forces that respect human rights; countering the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD); arms control; humanitarian and disaster relief (HADR); and peacekeeping.

On 13 November 2018, President Vladimir Putin arrived in Singapore for what would be his last trip to Southeast Asia before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 and his fateful decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Scheduled to meet Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong the day he arrived, the meeting was postponed after Putin’s aircraft had departed late from Moscow. Officially, the flight was delayed because of Putin’s “tight schedule”. However, the Russian president had a reputation for keeping foreign leaders waiting, sometimes for several hours, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Pope Francis and Queen Elizabeth II. Was his tardiness in Singapore, as some Kremlin observers speculated, a power game designed to impress upon his hosts that he was the leader of a great power on a par with the United States and China?

If so, Putin might be disappointed to learn that, at least as far as the academic literature is concerned, Russia is not considered to be a great power in Southeast Asia. Since the early 2000s, academics working on the International Relations of Southeast Asia have focused on how the region has become the primary theatre of major power competition in the Asia-Pacific, or, as it is more commonly referred to these days the “Indo-Pacific”. In particular, scholars have intensively studied Southeast Asia’s multifaceted relations with China, the maritime territorial disputes in the South China Sea and how countries in the region attempt to navigate the perils and opportunities of US-China strategic rivalry.