The Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia has challenged the region's policymakers to fundamentally shift how they approach their role in an increasingly fragmented world. Rather than simply reacting to external pressures and great-power manoeuvres, ASEAN and other Asia-Pacific nations should position themselves as architects of their own geopolitical futures, according to Datuk Prof Dr Mohd Faiz Abdullah, executive chairman of ISIS Malaysia. Speaking at the opening of the 39th Asia-Pacific Roundtable on Wednesday, Mohd Faiz articulated a vision that moves beyond the familiar calculus of balancing competing interests to one centred on deliberate choice-making and coordinated regional action.
The distinction Mohd Faiz drew is philosophically important for how Southeast Asian nations understand their place in global affairs. Traditionally, smaller and mid-sized regional powers have framed their strategy around responding to shifts initiated by larger actors—adapting trade policies to American or Chinese moves, adjusting security postures to reflect Washington or Beijing's intentions, or repositioning diplomatically when external conditions shift. What ISIS Malaysia is proposing represents a departure from that reactive stance. Agency, in this formulation, is not measured by how deftly nations respond to outside pressure but by their capacity to determine outcomes through intentional decisions, collaborative mechanisms and purposeful engagement on terms they help establish. For many Southeast Asian nations simultaneously managing relationships with rival great powers, this represents both an aspiration and a practical necessity.
Mohd Faiz emphasised that building such agency begins with internal work. Nations and regional bodies must develop stronger domestic and collective capacity to deliver essential public services and maintain economic stability irrespective of external shocks or shifts in geopolitical alignment. This emphasis on resilience reflects a pragmatic recognition that strategic autonomy becomes meaningful only when countries can maintain core functions and social stability during periods of great-power competition or global turbulence. Without such foundations, nations risk becoming dependent on larger powers for basic security and economic provision, thereby surrendering the very agency they seek to exercise. The challenge for ASEAN, therefore, extends beyond diplomatic positioning to encompass the institutional and economic strengthening that undergirds genuine strategic choice.
The timing of this message carries particular weight given current regional dynamics. The Asia-Pacific faces intensifying Sino-American competition, unresolved territorial disputes, renewed nuclear security anxieties, and growing strategic importance placed on critical mineral supplies and supply-chain resilience. Within this environment, individual ASEAN members confront competing pressures to align with one major power or another. The ISIS Malaysia argument suggests that such binary choices need not be inevitable if the region collectively develops the capacity and institutional mechanisms to maintain autonomy. This is neither isolationism nor non-alignment in the Cold War sense; rather, it envisions a region capable of engaging major powers from a position of relative strength, with multiple options available rather than a single path dictated by external circumstances.
The 39th Asia-Pacific Roundtable, held from June 30 to July 2 under the theme "Accelerating Agency and Action", marks a notable pivot in how regional think tanks and policymakers are framing challenges. Previous iterations of this influential track-2 forum often centred on how to navigate geopolitical uncertainty or manage the consequences of great-power rivalry. This year's agenda explicitly shifts focus toward strengthening the region's own institutional relevance, decision-making capacity, and collective resilience. The conference programme has identified four strategic fault lines demanding attention: the evolving China-India relationship and its implications for regional stability, ASEAN's future institutional role amid major-power competition, the resurgence of nuclear weapons considerations in strategic calculations, and the geopolitical dimensions of critical mineral access and supply-chain security. Each of these areas directly affects Southeast Asian interests and requires coordinated regional thinking rather than fragmented national responses.
The distinction between track-2 dialogue and official diplomacy was highlighted by Mohd Faiz as essential to the roundtable's value and utility. Unlike formal governmental negotiations, which must account for official positions and diplomatic constraints, track-2 forums operate in a space where difficult questions can be posed openly, inconvenient answers explored candidly, and prevailing assumptions questioned without immediate policy consequences. This freedom from official constraints allows intellectual space for the kind of creative thinking about agency and regional action that official channels often cannot accommodate. For Malaysian readers and policymakers, this underscores the role such forums play in generating ideas that eventually filter into policy discussions, making their outcomes consequential for actual governance decisions.
Malaysia's position as host and convener of the roundtable holds symbolic importance. The participation of Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani in the opening events, and the scheduled keynote address by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim on the final day, signals the Malaysian government's engagement with these discussions about regional agency and collective action. For a middle-power nation like Malaysia that maintains relationships across the region's various geopolitical divides, the framework of strengthened ASEAN agency and collective resilience aligns with historical Malaysian interests in preserving regional stability and maintaining space for smaller nations to exercise influence. Prime Minister Anwar's participation suggests the government views these intellectual discussions as informing broader policy direction.
The roundtable's agenda also reflects evolving understanding of what regional resilience requires in contemporary context. Beyond traditional security considerations, discussions will encompass economic dimensions—particularly access to and control over critical minerals essential for clean energy transitions and advanced technologies. The geopolitics of supply chains and critical material dependencies increasingly shapes strategic relationships between nations. ASEAN's collective approach to these challenges could either amplify individual member vulnerabilities or create mechanisms for collective benefit. This dimension of the discussion speaks directly to Malaysia's economic interests as both a mineral-rich nation and a significant participant in regional value chains.
The framing of agency as something that regional powers must actively construct rather than passively await also reflects broader shifts in how international relations are understood. The post-Cold War period saw much discussion of a unipolar moment and later of rising powers challenging that dominance. What ISIS Malaysia appears to be suggesting is that this binary framework—dominant power versus challenger—obscures the capacity of regional groupings to establish their own terms of engagement. Neither subordination to nor direct confrontation with major powers need be the only options available; a third path involves regions developing sufficient internal coherence and external weight that major powers must accommodate their preferences rather than simply imposing external designs.
For Southeast Asian observers and policymakers, the substantive discussions emerging from the 39th Asia-Pacific Roundtable will likely prove more valuable than any single statement about regional agency. The fireside chats, panel discussions, and working group sessions will generate specific ideas about how ASEAN can strengthen its institutional frameworks, how individual nations can expand policy autonomy while maintaining cooperative relationships, and how the region might collectively address challenges from critical mineral access to nuclear security concerns. These concrete discussions, filtered through track-2 forums and eventually into policy circles, represent how intellectual leadership in regional thinking gradually shapes governmental action. The roundtable's explicit pivot toward agency and action rather than passive adaptation suggests regional thought leadership is moving toward more assertive frameworks for understanding Southeast Asia's role.
