Opinion | How to steer the US and China away from conflict? Asean showed us

As US-China tensions boiled over the Ukraine war and Taiwan, Southeast Asia stepped in with proactive diplomacy and skilful mediation

They leveraged on Biden and Xi’s strategic maturity and achieved agreement against escalation in the Ukraine war, pulling off a US-China detente

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Published: 1:00am, 28 Dec 2022

“When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.” So goes the African proverb that has become a strategic cliché in Asian geopolitics in recent decades. This is especially true in Southeast Asia, where there are growing worries over Sino-US relations and the prospect of a full-blown cold war.

After all, the region was the site of great power conflict throughout the past century, most dramatically during the Cold War. Indochina, for instance, was a theatre of competition for not two, but three great powers throughout the 1970s and 1980s, namely the United States, Soviet Union and Maoist China.

But far from ending up as trampled grass, Southeast Asian nations have displayed tremendous strategic proactivity over the past year. Led by Asean members such as Indonesia and Singapore, regional states nudged the two major powers towards a desperately needed detente. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations also made clear that Russia cannot count on its support in the Ukraine conflict, which triggered a global food and energy crisis wreaking havoc across the developing world.

On their part, the US and China showed commendable strategic maturity in carefully managing their tensions over Taiwan, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific security architecture.

The year had no shortage of geopolitical shocks. In particular, two events on opposite ends of the Eurasian land mass, within months of each other, revealed the fragility of the international system. The first was Russia’s brazen invasion of Ukraine, which shook the foundations of the post-Cold War order in Europe.

The implications for great power relations were stark. The war ended the Biden administration’s hopes of achieving rapprochement with Moscow. Worse, Western military aid to Ukraine and unprecedented sanctions against Moscow reinforced a budding Sino-Russian alliance.