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Southeast Asia, explained.
A potential North Star for regional states (Ali Alauda/Unsplash)
Regional states manage crises alone and together at once, and getting that balance right is the next test.
Multialignment: Southeast Asia’s crisis-response toolkitMultialignment: Southeast Asia’s crisis-response toolkit
About the author
Prashanth Parameswaran
Dr Prashanth Parameswaran is a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the founder of the weekly ASEAN Wonk newsletter on Southeast Asia and Indo-Pacific geopolitics and geoeconomics.
“We have looked for help and examples from the outside and seldom look to ourselves,” Malaysia’s first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman wrote in a letter to Indonesia’s president Sukarno in 1959. The comment came as newly independent Southeast Asian states were managing intraregional tensions and exploring formulas for regionalism, as I note in my new book Mandalas of Multialignment (Opens in new window).
Nearly seven decades later, as regional states think through future of crisis response, finding a balance between external and internal alignments will be a central part of the equation.
There is a long legacy of trying to shore up crisis management mechanisms in Southeast Asia with a mixed record. Regional states have set up new institutions in response to challenges – including the Malacca Straits Patrols (Opens in new window) in 2004 to tackle a spike in criminal activity and the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre (Opens in new window)) in 2011 on disaster management following Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar.
At the same time, more far-reaching initiatives have been held back or scaled down. These included the call for a more robust ASEAN peacekeeping force (Opens in new window) or proposals for the expansion of the (Opens in new window) Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) protocols for naval vessel safety to cover the underwater domain.
A series of geopolitical and geoeconomic shocks over the past few years have inserted greater urgency into conversations around crisis response. Intensifying US–China competition, the Russia–Ukraine war and Middle East conflict have exposed the limits of country approaches in areas such as citizen evacuations, an example that policymakers know would be critical in a Taiwan scenario (Opens in new window). ASEAN’s regional mechanisms have been tested, including quiet tensions (Opens in new window) on the shape of the ASEAN Observer Team during the Cambodia-Thailand border dispute and an attack on AHA Centre officials (Opens in new window) during the Myanmar civil war.
Finding a balance between external and internal alignments will be a central part of the equation.
“Multialignment” can serve as a potential North Star for regional states trying to navigate this reality. A multialignment approach to crisis management can be implemented by applying what I have termed as an “I5” lens (Opens in new window) focused on all five layers of internal and external relationships – intrastate; interagency; interstate; interregional and intercontinental (which correspond to the subnational, national, subregional, regional and global levels).
Southeast Asian countries can do more to manage subnational and national dynamics within their own borders on future crisis response. The focus should be not just on specific scenarios, but also building a range of comprehensive crisis management capabilities. As Vietnam’s leader To Lam pointed out during (Opens in new window) his keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue this year, in a more interconnected world, future crises are even more likely to stem not only from supply chain disruptions or cyber-attacks, but other multiple sources including coordinated influence operations.
Early steps being taken by governments provide examples of where lines of effort can focus. For instance, Philippine officials have intensified (Opens in new window) efforts to counter foreign information manipulation and interference, which China may use as a lever in a future South China Sea crisis. The Thai government was among the first to publicise setting up a designated (Opens in new window) “war room” after the outbreak of the latest Middle East crisis for its strategic communications. Officials privately say this was partly informed by the need to bolster the coordination of domestic stakeholders, including non-governmental actors drawing on the lessons from the recent past.
There are also avenues for Southeast Asian states to advance subregional, regional and global cooperation. As Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan noted earlier this year (Opens in new window) at a special regional meeting on the Middle East, crises should ideally spur not only the addressing of immediate challenges, but also chart a path towards strengthening regional cooperation to manage future emergencies as well.
Singapore’s own recently launched (Opens in new window) GUIDE framework with 16 other countries including those from Europe and the Middle East is an important example of a cross-continental coalition putting a spotlight on the urgent work needed to protect critical underwater infrastructure. More efforts can also be undertaken to enhance the capacity of ASEAN institutions such as the AHA Centre, where unclassified reviews by partner countries have highlighted (Opens in new window) areas of focus, such as a greater focus on using artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies.
This mix of internal and external measures would ideally be supplemented by efforts that better integrate complex evolving dynamics that will likely factor in future crises. The first-ever ASEAN Geoeconomics Report has rightly highlighted (Opens in new window) the intersection of geoeconomics and geopolitics and the need for more interagency conversations between foreign and economic ministers. Quieter conversations around serious cyber incidents targeting individual Southeast Asian states as well as regional institutions – mostly unattributed with few exceptions (Opens in new window) – raise questions about how to plan for hybrid scenarios.
In addressing how countries should calibrate external and internal responses when managing challenges, former ASEAN secretary-general and Thailand’s foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan was fond of stressing (Opens in new window) the interconnectivity of dynamics by paraphrasing English poet John Donne – that no man or woman is an island. Harnessing interconnectivity will be essential as Southeast Asian states think through crisis response futures.
This article is part of a series on ASEAN’s crisis coordination and response mechanisms following a private workshop hosted by the Lowy Institute in June 2026. The project was jointly led by Abdul Rahman Yaacob and Hunter Marston, Director of the Lowy Institute’s Southeast Asia Program, with the support of the Department of Defence’s Strategic Policy Grants Program.
