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Malaysia’s foreign policy balancing act
One year on since the 2018 electoral victory, Malaysia’s Pakatan Harapan government, led by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, has kept the main thrust of foreign policy of past governments of the Barisan Nasional
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O
ne year on since the 2018 electoral victory, Malaysia’s Pakatan Harapan government, led by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, has kept the main thrust of foreign policy of past governments of the Barisan Nasional.
But slight readjustments have been made to reorient Malaysia’s foreign policy to the center, enabling Pakatan to strive for more balance in Malaysia’s foreign bilateral relations.
The idea is to reinforce Malaysia’s nonaligned posture and pragmatic equidistance to two equally important countries to ensure domestic benefits.
As with Barisan, Pakatan conducted Malaysia’s bilateral relations through the domestic lenses of ethno-religious nationalist sentiments and economic benefits for the local populace.
Former prime minister Najib Razak was criticized for being too close to China, while Mahathir was keen on looking more to Japan, as a return to his Look East policy of the 1980s. This was to learn from Japan on how to hasten social and economic development.
Mahathir opted for some distancing from Beijing, being wary of China’s assertive regional behavior, and the fragility of domestic Malay-Chinese relations.
Mahathir’s arguable heir-apparent, Anwar Ibrahim, is one of the few Muslim statesmen to have criticized China’s crackdown on its Muslim minority in Xinjiang province.
Mahathir is not anti-China, viewing China as a valuable trading partner for Malaysia. But he is mindful of Malaysia being caught in China’s debt trap and losing part of its sovereignty.
One Pakatan’s foreign policy successes was to demonstrate that it is possible to bring China back to the negotiating table. This was reflected in Mahathir being able to renegotiate a more favorable deal with China on the East Coast Rail Link project signed by Najib’s government.
Najib was also criticized for positioning Putrajaya too close to Riyadh at the expense of Tehran and Ankara for example. This courtship allegedly led to a massive transfer of money to Najib’s personal account, but this was later denied by the Saudi royal family after Najib lost the election.
This closeness with Saudi Arabia appealed to the more conservative Malaysians, but it also engendered pushback from the more progressive segments due to Saudi Arabia’s illiberal interpretation of Islam and the attendant Arabization of Malay culture.
Pakatan took a strategic decision to reorient Malaysia’s foreign policy to befriend all Muslim countries in the Middle East including Iran and Turkey.
Mahathir therefore scrapped Najib’s idea of establishing a Saudi-funded King Salman Center for International Peace in Putrajaya, and withdrew Malaysian troops stationed in Saudi Arabia to avoid being dragged into the Yemeni civil war.
Given Anwar’s friendship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he was keen for Malaysia to forge a more constructive relationship with Turkey, to the chagrin of Erdogan’s critics.
Mahathir’s government wants to bring more balance to bilateral relations with neighbors Indonesia and Singapore, though this is likely to be tilted toward Indonesia.
Although Najib’s critics perceived that he was too close to Singapore, the end result was that Malaysia-Singapore relations were the best they had ever been under Najib’s watch.
But Mahathir’s priority is Indonesia, the first ASEAN country he visited after his electoral victory. He and President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo talked of developing a joint car, protecting the palm oil industry from the European Union’s anti-palm oil campaign, and together preserving the principle of “ASEAN centrality” in Southeast Asian affairs and strengthening ASEAN cohesiveness.
Malaysia-Singapore relations started off positively, with Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visiting Malaysia to congratulate Mahathir on his electoral win. But they petered out with Malaysia’s deferment of the high-speed rail project and haggling over water prices.
Relations reached a nadir as a result of a political tussle over the use of Malaysian airspace for landing at Singapore’s Seletar Airport, and disagreement over port limits and maritime borders after Malaysian vessels encroached into what Singapore believes to be its territorial waters.
Bilateral turbulence will likely continue in Malaysia-Singapore relations given Mahathir’s historic antipathy toward Singapore, and Malaysia’s domestic political fragility.
Fortunately, Malaysia and Singapore are mutually amenable to face-to-face meetings or third-party arbitration to negotiate an amicable solution to any bilateral impasse. This is vital as both are each other’s leading trading partners, and it bodes well overall for regional stability.
Meanwhile Malaysia drew closer to India than Pakistan under Najib, who visited India more than Pakistan. Najib’s last India trip was in last year’s election year, using it to court the Indian vote in Malaysia.
Mahathir however has yet to visit India during his first year as Pakatan PM. This is despite newly reelected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi detouring from his visits to Singapore and Indonesia to congratulate Mahathir on his electoral victory.
In contrast, Mahathir reciprocated the visit of the new Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to Malaysia in 2018 by embarking on a state visit to Pakistan in 2019.
Though Mahathir may visit India in his second year, as he considers India a key trading partner for Malaysia, he will opt for closer relations with Pakistan. This is a return to the past where there was a bent toward Pakistan during Mahathir’s first tenure as prime minister.
Tilting toward Pakistan can be attributed to Mahathir’s propensity for closer relations with countries either in the developing world or Islamic world.
The rise of Hindu nationalism in India, which would discomfit the Malay-Muslim majority in Malaysia, and the reluctance to deport radical preacher Zakir Naik to India could have also factored into the strategic calculation of Mahathir’s government to improve Malaysia’s ties with Pakistan. The idea is to ensure a more balanced relationship between India and Pakistan.
The buck clearly stops at Mahathir.
The PM has been the ultimate decision-maker on Malaysia’s foreign policy. For two months after the election win, until Saifuddin Abdullah was appointed to the position, Mahathir was de facto foreign minister.
This was epitomized in Mahathir’s speech in Japan at the Nikkei talks on Asia’s future, where he outlined the foreign policy priorities.
One significant development was to cease appointing politicians as envoys. This was a shrewd move to keep politics out of the foreign service while professionalizing the Foreign Ministry.
Cultivating a balance in foreign bilateral relations will be the modus operandi of the Mahathir government. The vagaries of domestic politics — defined by Malay ethnicity and the Islamic faith — will continue to determine the future course and trajectory of Malaysia’s foreign policy.
Malaysia remains a middle power with Islamic characteristics. Unless Pakatan loses the next election scheduled for 2023, more of the same in Malaysia’s foreign policy can be expected in subsequent years under a Pakatan government, whether led by Mahathir or otherwise.
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The writer is a research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He was formerly a fellow with the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
