Sino-U.S. Relations and Southeast Asia: an Evolving Narrative

The presentation begins with a summary of the Cold War-era evolution of Sino-US relations, and then traces the transformation of adversarial dynamics into a tacit anti-Soviet alliance waging cover campaigns on three continents. It then outlines the geopolitical paradigm explaining intensifying systemic competitive tendencies characterising post-Cold War Sino-US relational dynamics, highlighting key milestones refashioning their strategic partnership into systemic rivalry, culminating in the linkages between subsystemic/regional flashpoints and systemic transitional fluidity, which generate strategic anxiety across Southeast Asia, as actors seek to balance, hedge, and engage. The presentation then examines the challenges and opportunities facing ASEAN/Malaysia against that fluid strategic backdrop, and closes with a few concluding observations about this period of systemic transitional turbulence.

Speaker

S. Mahmud ALIEast Asia International Affairs Programme Associate at the LSE IDEAS