INTRODUCTION

Our guest today is Dato Dr. Ilango Karuppannan, who has over thirty years of experience as a distinguished Malaysian diplomat, with posts that included a high commissioner in Singapore, acting ambassador in the United States, as well as ambassador in Lebanon, where Malaysia still maintains a role in the UN peacekeeping force amid escalating tensions in the Middle East.

We start our conversation talking about the role of Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in positioning the country geopolitically and geoeconomically amid US-China competition and the Gaza war. Make sure you watch, listen, and read the full episode as we go through a range of other subjects, including Malaysia's approach to flashpoints like the South China Sea and its coming agenda for the ASEAN chairmanship in 2025.

To receive full ASEAN Wonk posts and support our work, consider a paid subscription for $5 a month/$50 a year through the button below. For more on pricing for institutions, groups and discounted categories, visit this page.

Note: The transcript that follows the above free clip preview has been lightly edited for clarity and organized into sections for ease of quick browsing. For all ASEAN Wonk Podcast episodes, full video and audio podcasts, along with edited and sectioned transcripts as well as block quotes, will be a premium product for our paying subscribers, but we will include a short free transcript preview and a clip for all readers to maintain accessibility. Paying subscribers can find the rest of the full transcript and the full video podcast right below the paywall. If you have not already, do consider subscribing, and, if you have already done so and like what you see and hear, do consider forwarding this to others as well who may be interested. Thank you for your support as always!

ASSESSING MALAYSIA’S FOREIGN POLICY IN REGIONAL AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the ASEAN Wonk Podcast, Ilango. Thank you for joining us, and let's get started with our conversation. I think a lot of ink has been spilled on Anwar's rhetoric and Malaysia's recent foreign policy moves, its rhetoric on the Israel-Gaza war and its interest in the BRICS. We were talking a little bit about this right before recording. Much of this is not really new, and it's a product of strands in Malaysian foreign policy. We saw coexistence, for example, during Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s time between Malaysia's non-aligned rhetoric and relations with the United States in some areas like security moving under the radar as well. So I guess the more interesting question to my mind is beyond Malaysia doing X or doing Y to benefit Power A or Power B, two years into Anwar's term, how do we really assess the Anwar government's ability to secure Malaysia's own interests in a more competitive and contested world? So we can go with individual metrics like how many trips has Anwar taken, which is quite a few. He's been very active after Malaysia's recent revolving door of prime ministers. We can look at foreign investment: there have been a number of tech investments that have been quite notable. But if we could just zoom out a little bit from these individual metrics and just ask the question, how would you assess Anwar's foreign policy so far? And if you could use a scale of one to ten or a letter grade as somebody who's been involved in Malaysia's diplomacy for decades and seen this firsthand, how do we go about assessing Anwar's performance on Malaysia's foreign policy?

Dr. Ilango Karuppannan: Thank you Prashanth for that question. Well, you're right. I've been a diplomat for over thirty-three years, and I'm also currently teaching a master's course at University of Malaya. So I think I shall use the grading system that they use at university to grade Dato Seri Anwar's performance. Well, in the University of Malaya they use seven out of ten or seventy percent as a passing mark for masters. So I will have to start by giving Dato Seri Anwar a passing mark, a seven out of ten. But seven out of ten is nothing to be really jumping about because you just basically cross the bar. You don't have to repeat the course. Now let me tell you why I think he deserves a seven upon ten. First, I think the effort. I think he's putting quite a bit of effort. Malaysia's foreign policy, I mean, has been there's been a display of active diplomacy under his premiership. You must also know that Dato Seri Anwar is actually now the longest serving prime minister in the last six years or so. It's very strange to hear that, but he is actually the longest serving prime minister. And therefore, that has given him the chance to be a bit more active on the foreign policies. I mean, we have seen Anwar actively engaging by visiting practically all the ASEAN countries. That's a good thing. He has visited China a few times. He has been active on the Middle East issue. He has spoken about some of the Global South issues as well. So I think on the part of active diplomacy he deserves quite good marks. So that's one.

“So I will have to start by giving Dato Seri Anwar a passing mark, a seven out of ten. But seven out of ten is nothing to be really jumping about because you just basically cross the bar. You don't have to repeat the course.”

Number two, I think there is a certain problem because it seems to be a little bit unbalanced, all these efforts that he's put in so far. There seems to be, of course, a lot more emphasis on China, which, of course, we can understand it because China is a very close neighbor, huge trading partner and so on and so forth. Plus it's easier to travel to China than to travel to America, for example. You know, there's a lot more ground to cover, a lot more issues, a lot more preparation. So he's not been to the United States except for the UNGA session. So I think that's a little bit unbalanced on that part. There seems to be a lot of emphasis on the Muslim world so that also adds to that notion that there is a bit of imbalance here. Thirdly, I think as far as strategic gains are concerned, one would be hard pressed to find whether there has been significant strategic gains. For example, we are still not out of the woods insofar as China is concerned. I mean, with all the effort that has been put with China, one would have expected a bit more smooth sailing with China, but, unfortunately, we are still not there. You know, the Chinese side still goes on to the same position. You are aware that they have issued protest notes against Petronas' explanation for gas and oil over the South China Sea issue and so on and so forth. So there is an impression that there is not so much strategic gains that we would have expected. So on these three grounds, I think I would give him a pass mark, a seven out of ten, Prashanth.

MALAYSIA AND REGIONAL STAKES IN INTENSIFYING MAJOR POWER COMPETITION

ASEAN Wonk: Great. Thanks. A lot there that you mentioned, and I like how you distinguish between the fact that there's a lot of activity – and Prime Minister Anwar deserves some credit for that – and the big issue, as you pointed out, which is the extent to which this is producing strategic benefits for Malaysia and to what extent this is producing those benefits across the various relationships that Malaysia has. And that's, China, the United States, but also, as you mentioned, the Global South, the developing world, and a lot of these major strands in Malaysian foreign policy that's very complex. I guess one more specific aspect of that is what you've mentioned already, which is this environment of US-China competition. I think part of it is US-China competition being much more intensified, but frankly, it's also a much more complex and fractured global order. So we're talking about more protectionist sentiment, a lot more pressure on multilateral organizations, including ASEAN and the United Nations. In this competitive environment, there's sometimes a tendency to try to place Southeast Asian countries on, you know, if there's a US China spectrum, where do you fall? Do you fall on this side or that side? I'm less interested in that and more interested actually in a conversation about how Malaysia is navigating this environment relative to its other Southeast Asian neighbors. And you kind of hinted at this earlier.

So for example, when we're thinking about the relationship with the United States, both Indonesia and Vietnam have been able to get upgrades with the United States and engage with a mix of diverse partners on ecosystems on emerging technologies. Malaysia has been able to get some of those technology related investments, uh, from companies, including US companies. But the high-level engagement with the United States, partly because of the Gaza issue, hasn't been in place. Right? So some might say, in terms of strategic positioning, Malaysia is losing out. Others have said, frankly, who cares? So