Southeast Asia from Scott Circle

Indonesia’s April 2019 general elections are still 18 months away, but the potential challengers to incumbent president Joko Widodo—popularly known as “Jokowi”—are beginning to emerge and hone their campaign narratives. Candidates for the 2019 presidential election will not be officially announced until next September, but the jockeying between likely contenders is already impacting Indonesia’s domestic stability and foreign policy. 

Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, will meet U.S. president Donald Trump at the White House on October 23—the fourth Southeast Asian leader to do so this year. Following visits by Vietnam’s Nguyen Xuan Phuc (May), Malaysia’s Najib Razak (September), and Thailand’s Prayuth Chan-ocha (early October), Lee’s visit distinguishes itself through its timing and the mature and stable nature of the U.S.-Singapore relationship.

Thai prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s visit to the White House on October 2 could mark a significant step toward normalizing Thai-U.S. relations, which have been strained since the Thai general toppled an elected government in May 2014. Washington responded by suspending some military aid and downgrading, although not canceling, military exercises, including Cobra Gold, the largest multilateral exercise in Asia.

Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak’s visit to the White House on September 12 has injected new energy into a bilateral relationship that had slipped into a funk during the last two years of the previous U.S. administration.

Although most countries in the Asia Pacific viewed the United States’ exit from the TPP with considerable alarm and anxiety, many of them are wasting little time trying to cobble together other preferential trade arrangements that could have considerable negative impact on the U.S. economy down the road.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo—commonly known as “Jokowi”—in early August addressed criticism that his government is taking an authoritarian turn with a joke, asking the crowd at speeches in East Jakarta and Solo: “Do I have the face of a dictator?” The joke reportedly went over well for the humble Indonesian president and effectively undercut some of his more hyperbolic critics. It also sidestepped some legitimate concerns about his administration’s recent actions and a broader erosion of democratic norms in Jokowi’s Indonesia.

Participants at this year’s conference discussed China’s artificial island bases in the Spratlys more for their potential long-term effects than for any use over the past year. The balance between military and civilian activities planned for these dual-use facilities is unclear, as is the nature and tempo of future military operations from them. Disagreement remains over how great the bases’ impact will be both for peacetime competition and in a potential regional conflict.

Last September 14, while Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi was visiting Washington, President Barack Obama announced with considerable hoopla that the United States was lifting its remaining sanctions on Myanmar. Today, nearly nine months later, American companies trying to operate in Myanmar are still hobbled by sections 311 and 312 of the USA Patriot Act, which deal with money laundering and terrorist financing and impose stringent due diligence requirements.

The ongoing battle for Marawi City—the capital of Lanao del Sur Province on the island of Mindanao—between Philippine government forces and Islamic militants with links to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) seems increasingly an important bellwether of growing violence in the Philippines’ restive south. Fears that the breakdown of the government peace process with Islamic insurgents would lead to disillusionment and a return to violence, exacerbated by the influence of international jihadist movements like ISIS, appear to be coming to pass.