While the crisis in Europe is not yet over, we are witnessing another predicament happening in the Middle East, and many are anxious about the possibility of another world war happening.

East Asia is no exception to this turbulence. The region is facing mounting challenges, with escalating tensions in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula, all of which carry their own weight in threatening regional peace and stability.

The growing strategic rivalry between the United States and China further exacerbates these troubles, with potential implications for global peace and security. These are challenges that are of concern to us all.

In such a chaotic world where great powers are intensifying their rivalry and getting more entangled in a spiraling arms race, we are faced with choices: whether we want to become self-centered or inward-looking or we choose to deepen the cooperation among the major and middle powers in this region.

For us, the non-great powers, the pressure is getting stronger to be soon plunged into the vortex of the great powers’ tug-of-war. We are forced to choose either side while we do not wish to do so, as we benefit from cooperating with all.

It is disheartening to see that today, in the eyes of the great powers, we, the smaller powers, only matter when we choose to take their side. We are only part of another battleground in their unhealthy competition. However, we do matter because we have dignity, values and interests of our own that must be respected.

But, what can we do in the region to navigate our way amid this turbulent world? As smaller powers, we are used to thinking that multilateralism is the only way for an equal playing field where everyone is heard and attended to. But today we have to face the hard reality that there is a limit to multilateralism as great powers continue to abandon it, undermining multilateral platforms, to pursue their vested interests.

They persistently reject the idea of reforming the structure of the multilateral institutions that should reflect the new environment where emerging powers should also sit together with them, to shape the way the international system is governed.

And now, the great powers are interested more in creating small groupings with allies and like-minded countries, what is often described as the trend of “minilateralism”. Nothing we can do about it, as “the strong do what they can, or what they wish”.

We may ponder, is minilateralism bad, especially for us in the region? In fact, if we look back, we, in Southeast Asia, also started with this small grouping called ASEAN with five founding members. Then, we expanded ourselves to become 10, and hopefully soon, 11 countries.

Back in the late 1990s when a severe financial crisis swept Asia, ASEAN came up with the idea of deepening and strengthening East Asian regional cooperation to protect the region. Hence, ASEAN +3 was established as a functional cooperation system among ASEAN and Asian powers specifically to strengthen the regional financial system and to reform the international financial architecture.

It was then the embryo for the establishment of the East Asia Summit (EAS) in 2005, which is a larger gathering at the leader’s level, which serves as a platform for dialogue among the major and regional powers. And later regional cooperation to face jointly the COVID-19 threat was established by the ASEAN +3 regional cooperation.

With so much going on in this chaotic world, what we can do is to redirect our attention back to our region. While the world is in still recovery mode after the pandemic, East Asia remains a region with high economic growth of around 4.6 percent in 2024, outpacing the rest of the world. Nonetheless, as depicted earlier, it is also rife with hot spots, arising from the extension of great power rivalry. Whatever happens in this region will immediately impact Southeast Asia.

Thus, it is timely to revitalize our own “minilateralism” – to focus on nurturing and intensifying our collaboration with the closest dialogue partners, namely Japan, China and South Korea. In fact, those three have a special relationship, or even as aspiring great powers themselves, and therefore have the leverage and capacity to help mitigate the tensions arising from the heightening strategic rivalry, and in its turn, prevent another war breaking out.

Our minilateralism is not meant to target or show enmity to any particular state. Rather, it is aimed at staying focused and being committed to nurturing friendly and beneficial relations as much as possible, bearing in mind the limited resources that we have, as we cannot deal with everything under the sun.

With that long background that I have just elaborated, this is exactly the rationale why we want to establish this Centre for East Asia Studies. The establishment of the center represents a bold step forward in our commitment to advancing knowledge and understanding of the complex dynamics of East Asian politics.

It will focus its research on the relations between Indonesia and our key partners in East Asia, China, Japan and South Korea, with a view to identifying opportunities for cooperation and collaboration in fields such as defense, trade, people-to-people connectivity and other issues.

We hope the work of the center will contribute greatly, not only to Indonesia’s foreign policy ambitions, but also to building greater knowledge and understanding of East Asia as a region. The center is ready to contribute to the world we live in for a better future.

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The writer is chair of the Advisory Council of the Centre for East Asian Studies (CEAS). The article was based on his speech during the launch of the Centre for East Asian Studies, Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta, on June 12, 2024