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View all search resultsASEAN at 59: A ship with no captain, adrift in the storm
As Indonesia pulls up its diplomatic anchor and leaves ASEAN drifting into irrelevance, Southeast Asia faces a brutal reality check ahead of its 60th anniversary: lead together, or prepare for the bloc's retirement ceremony.
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United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio poses during the ASEAN Post Ministerial Conference with the US on the sidelines of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Pasay City, Metro Manila, on July 22, 2026. (Reuters/Pool/Aaron Favila)
A
s ASEAN turns 59 this month, the polite question in the ballroom is what the bloc will achieve in its seventh decade. The impolite, and far more urgent, question is who, if anyone, will lead it there.
For most of its life, that question had an obvious answer: Indonesia.
Whenever ASEAN mattered, Jakarta made it so. It was Indonesian statecraft that corralled a fractious region into a common house, that pushed the peace process in Cambodia, that turned the East Asia Summit into something more than a photo-op, that gave ASEAN centrality a pulse.
By every metric, economic, geographic and demographic, Indonesia was not just the biggest member. It was the anchor.
That anchor is now up.
Under President Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia has not abandoned ASEAN, but it has clearly downgraded it. He and Foreign Minister Sugiono no longer follow the long-held mantra that ASEAN is the cornerstone of Indonesia’s foreign policy.
The new Jakarta playbook is blunt and transactional: domestic growth first, military modernization second and direct deals with Washington, Beijing and everyone else in between.
