Malaysia “Punching above its Weight” … and Finally Hitting the Target

Malaysia’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammad, crafted a three-pillar strategy for Malaysia to “punch above its weight” and better secure its interests in the region. The first was through entrenching strong bilateral relationships with traditional security and economic partners such as America and Japan, in addition to a strong economic and diplomatic relationship with a rising China. The second was to use regional multilateral forums to engage and bind larger powers to agreed rules of engagement, hence enhancing the leverage of smaller Southeast Asian states; as well as to extend Malaysian influence within these forums. The third pillar was to enhance Malaysian regional and global influence by exercising leadership in non-traditional groupings; for example Malaysia’s role in promoting South-South cooperation, relating to economic and technical cooperation amongst developing nations. Another was Malaysia’s standing as one of the leaders within the fifty-seven member-state Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which Malaysia chaired from 2003 to 2007.

Although Malaysia did indeed “punch above its weight”, the most important factor for stability in a region filled with existing and emerging giants is still America. It is well known that almost all Southeast Asian countries are pursuing some variation of a grand hedging strategy against possible future Chinese mischief: benefit as much as possible from China’s rise but also hedge against the possibility of a disruptive China in the future by supporting U.S. primacy and engagement in Asia.

Both Mahathir and his successor Abdullah Badawi understood the benefits of an engaged America in Asia and the importance of the U.S.-Malaysia bilateral relationship. But in the process of enhancing its Islamic credentials to the OIC (as well as his own political domestic credentials to a majority Islamic audience), Mahathir’s diplomacy often deviated from the script, launching several provocative, unnecessary, and indulgent public attacks on American foreign policy and values; despite continuing to nurture the bilateral relationship behind the scenes.

Although Badawi tried hard to recover lost ground and improve diplomatic relations between the United States and Malaysia when he assumed power in late 2003, the last eighteen months of Chinese assertiveness in the region has forced Malaysia to refocus on enhancing its bilateral relationship with Washington and help entrench American primacy and deepen engagement in the region through participation in multilateral institutions — something the Barack Obama administration has been attempting to do itself. In this sense, Prime Minister Najib Razak’s “new beginning” with the United States does not represent a fundamental change in Malaysian grand strategy, but a disciplined, creative, and timely return to its long-standing hedging blueprint.

A Change in Malaysia’s Attitude

In a June 2009 speech to the 7th Heads of Mission Conference that was held in Putrajaya, Prime Minister Najib Razak praised the enormous achievement of China’s economic rise, urged his government “to cover new ground, to walk further and faster to deepen and broaden” Kuala Lumpur’s long standing friendship with Beijing, before boasting about Malaysia’s “special ties to China”.¹ In conversations with senior officials from the American State Department around the same time, these officials expressed frustration that counterparts in Malaysia appeared reluctant to discuss the reality of current, and the likelihood of future, tensions between the United States and China in the region. Instead, in the words of one American diplomat, they only had “dull dialogues” in which “Malaysian officials stuck stubbornly to the script and were only prepared to speak blandly about the obvious benefits of peace and cooperation in Asia between the two giants”.

Less than one year later, Malaysian officials were busily courting American counterparts behind the scenes to discuss bilateral and multilateral strategic and economic issues in the region. Washington responded at the highest levels when President Barack Obama invited Prime Minister Najib to discuss a broad range of bilateral, regional, and global issues — going beyond nuclear non-proliferation — at the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in April 2010. One of only two Asian leaders invited to a one-on-one meeting with the American...