Number of the day

92 

That’s how old Paul Biya is, retaining his title as the world’s oldest head of state as he claims a contested eighth term as Cameroonian president, shrugging off deadly protests.

Diplomacy in the East

It’s hard to know which international forum gets the least done these days, but Southeast Asia’s main ASEAN bloc (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) might traditionally be right up (or down?) there.

To be fair, that’s partly by design, with its consensus-driven and non-interference vibes both somehow necessary to get such a kaleidoscopic group of 11 states turning up, yet also making any meaningful agreement pretty tricky.

This week’s ASEAN summit in Malaysia, however, has made a few more headlines than normal, and it’s worth taking a quick look at the four reasons why, starting with…

1. A new member! 

Timor-Leste finally got a seat at the ASEAN table, and it’s a big deal for all involved:

• Timor-Leste now gets preferential access to ASEAN’s $3.8T economy, a critical step for what is now ASEAN’s smallest (pop 1.4 million), youngest (independence from Indonesia in 2002) and poorest ($1.4k per capita) member.

• And for ASEAN itself, it caps off a 14-year process partly delayed by Timor’s own lack of readiness, but also a quiet lack of bloc consensus: Indonesia was onboard, but others fretted whether a new member would further dilute ASEAN’s cohesion.

Anyway, Timor-Leste passed hazing, making it ASEAN’s first new member since the 1990s, and its first since the bloc introduced formal membership criteria via its 2008 charter.

2. A missing member!

On the flip side, Myanmar’s leader (Hlaing) was again absent, for the simple reason he wasn’t invited. He and his fellow putschist generals have been barred since they signed then shrugged off ASEAN’s ‘Five Point Consensus’ on ending Myanmar’s civil war (basically calling on them to end the violence and start a political dialogue).

And with China and Russia now helping the junta regain turf, the generals have little incentive to re-engage with ASEAN now, particularly as the bloc quietly splinters: some nearer to Myanmar’s chaos (like Thailand) are breaking ranks with their own diplomacy, while others (like Vietnam) are calling for Myanmar’s rival armed groups to be included.

Meanwhile…

3. A new peace?

Donald Trump made an increasingly rare US presidential appearance at ASEAN, mostly to witness the new Thailand-Cambodia peace accord calling for troop withdrawals, prisoner releases, and joint de-mining operations along their contested frontier.

This deal was arguably less about ASEAN, and more a fading glimpse of Pax Americana in the region: the two warring neighbours hit pause after Trump personally intervened, threatening there’d be no US trade talks until their fighting ended. It worked in an immediate sense, but there’s widespread chatter that the underlying irritants will keep festering until the next flareup (Thailand has even been reluctant to call this a peace deal).

There’s one interesting ASEAN angle, however: the bloc will send observers to monitor the truce, which is a big deal for the traditionally hands-off ASEAN.

Anyway, to the extent this ASEAN summit has been more consequential than normal, plenty of credit must also go to…

4. A bold summit host!

Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim is not your average leader: he’s been on the scene for decades, knows the key players personally, and has happily thrown Malaysia’s weight around much more since finally taking his country’s top job in 2022.

It was Anwar who started pushing ASEAN harder on Myanmar, and it was even Anwar who brokered July’s initial Thailand-Cambodia ceasefire. Why? Any ego aside, he wants an ASEAN that moves past ‘non-interference’ towards a new mantra of accountability.

And so now, having just hosted possibly ASEAN’s largest-ever summit (with Australia’s Albanese, Brazil’s Lula, Canada’s Carney, South Africa’s Ramaphosa and others there), he hands the bloc’s revitalised reins to its 2026 hosts, the Philippines.

Intrigue’s Take

Like currency, summits only have the value we give them. So why’d this ASEAN summit seem more valuable than normal?

In addition to the above, it’s worth recalling that ASEAN itself is now home to a third of the world’s economic growth. So these distant leaders aren’t turning up to get the latest on the ASEAN Medical Device Directive Common Submission Dossier Template. Rather, these summits offer the perfect way to hit up a dynamic region’s leaders in a day.

For the US and China, of course, it also means not only hustling for influence in a region straddling critical maritime chokepoints, but even just engaging directly with each other: it was on ASEAN’s sidelines that the two rivals reportedly agreed the outlines for a trade de-escalation that Trump and Xi might announce in South Korea this Thursday (though a last-minute Wang-Rubio call suggests maybe it’s not done yet).

As for ASEAN itself, the block has consistently stuck to the “we don’t have to choose” mantra, which is arguably just a way of saying it rather likes the status quo of US-backed security and China-backed prosperity. Who doesn’t. But some intriguing research out of Singapore suggests that, whether the region’s capitals admit or even like it, several are indeed now starting to choose. And they’re seemingly choosing China.

Sound even smarter:

• In line with other recent US trade deals, Malaysia also reportedly finalised transactional pledges to buy American Boeings, LNG, coal, and tech.

Meanwhile, elsewhere…

Extra Intrigue

Here’s what people around the world are googling

• 🇦🇺 Australians googled ‘email passwords’ after the Have I Been Pwned website revealed a new email breach involving over 180 million accounts. 

• 🇧🇩 Bangladeshi film fans looked up US director ‘Kathryn Bigelow’, with her new White House thriller (House of Dynamite) tracking the minutes after a nuke gets launched at the US. 

• And folks in 🇧🇪 Belgium searched for updates on ‘Jamaica’, which is now in the path of Category five hurricane Melissa, the world’s strongest storm this year.

Announcement of the day

We’ve seen our fair share of weird announcements (we’re looking at you, Tokyo’s 2021-era advice to avoid eye contact with monkeys).

But we still raised at least one eyebrow when Albania’s artiste prime minister Edi Rama declared his government’s AI minister (who is an AI chatbot) is… pregnant (?) with 83 children (??), including one for each ruling party lawmaker (???).

It was his way of announcing that select parliamentarians can now access AI assistants, though it prompted a confused opposition to throw plastic water bottles in protest.

So we guess, um, artificial congratulations are in order?

Today’s poll

Yesterday’s poll: Do you think Western officials are over-dramatising the China threat?

💥 Yes, it wins votes (34%)
🦅 No, they're still too cautious (64%)
✍️ Other (write in!) (2%)

Your two cents:

• 🦅 J.M: “One cannot over-dramatize China. China has their ‘Monroe Doctrine’ with which they are seeking hegemony over the South China Sea.”

• 💥 B.K: “Americans often view China as vindictive as opposed to a fellow ambitious nation — competition should spur American development instead of focusing on attacking our opponent.”

• ✍️ X.F: “Whether you like it or not, China is here to stay. The rivalry is real but at the same time, China wants the same for its people, just like the West. Maintaining dialogue with a rival will always beat open conflicts, especially in a nuclear world.”