Speaking at a recent webinar organized by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Russian Ambassador to ASEAN Alexander Ivanov discussed attempts to “divide and rule” through various Indo-Pacific concepts, especially amid growing tensions between the United States and China.

“At stake is not only ASEAN’s central role in the region but peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific,” Ivanov said on Nov. 19.

Speaking from his experience in preparing for the recent East Asia Summit – an ASEAN-led mechanism convening leaders of 16 countries that was held on Nov. 14 – the envoy said there were “unprecedented levels” of division among participating members.

“The Western participants openly rejected any attempt to reach an agreement on specific practical steps to revive the regional economy or jointly combat the pandemic,” he said, accusing the US delegation of blocking certain issues from appearing in collective EAS commitments.

“You won't find any reference to regional integration, open markets, resilient growth, the leading role of the [World Health Organization], multilateralism and many other things in the outcome documents,” said Ivanov.

The Indo-Pacific concept is a strategic reimagining of the Asia-Pacific in terms that are interpreted in different ways by different countries and interests. One common but contentious interpretation tries to take the focus away from China and its increasing influence in the wider region. Other nations, including Russia, have their own narratives.

Southeast Asian nations, finding themselves in the center of this reimagining of the regional order, seek to promote the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP), a strategy that consolidates its existing convening power and offers an "open, inclusive, transparent and rules-based" order.

But Ambassador Ivanov insists there are efforts to replace this order and “reinstate ‘divide and rule’”.

“Indeed, old habits die hard,” the envoy said. “This new order is promoted under the slogan of a ‘free and open’ Indo-Pacific – which is a trap for ASEAN since its outlook [document] has the same title. The content of the outlook of course is different, but nobody pays attention to it.”

“A free and open Indo-Pacific” is the language also used by members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. As members of the Quad, the US, Japan, Australia and India have positioned themselves as a counterweight to China.

Beijing has recently raised concerns that the grouping was an effort to build an “Indo-Pacific NATO”, a military alliance between the US and European countries, which some international relations experts have noted had soured US-Russia relations.

The Indonesian Foreign Ministry’s director general for ASEAN affairs, Sidharto Suryodipuro, said the AOIP was a way to respond to the growing geopolitical rivalries by building an architecture of “win-win cooperation”.

“Apart from recognizing the polarization of major countries in the Indo-Pacific, there's also the emerging countries that choose to remain active and independent and will neither enter into military alliances nor have foreign military bases on their territory,” Sidharto said at the same webinar.

Cheng Chwee Kuik, the head of the Center for Asian Studies at the National University of Malaysia, said it was natural for smaller countries to hedge their position.

He pointed out that Southeast Asia had always been very crowded geopolitically, with multiple major powers trying to court ASEAN for various geopolitical and economic reasons.

“Although we do argue that in many aspects, ‘the more the merrier’, these crowded geopolitical dynamics clearly have asserted big pressure on the smaller countries. And it is arguable whether or not [we get less space to maneuver],” he said.

Should countries be entrapped in great power rivalries, Cheng continued, the risk of polarization would be even greater, just as it was during the Cold War.

“Given these growing structural top-down pressures, it is in the DNA of smaller countries to hedge, because it's human instinct under high-stake conditions and high uncertainty conditions,” he said at the webinar.

“We are also trying very hard to do something contradictory but it is necessary. We are sure of our deference to collaborate, to accommodate on one hand, but we also defy whenever it is necessary.”