A House Built on Sand
Issue 29— Key Developments Across Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia
Editor’s Note
by Haniva Sekar Deanty, Lead Editor - Maritime Crescent Desk
The escalation along the Thailand–Cambodia border has once again tested ASEAN’s conflict-management architecture, as Muhammad Aiman reflects after the Special ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Kuala Lumpur on 22 December 2025. Emergency ministerial diplomacy, ceasefire monitoring mechanisms and facilitation by individual member states demonstrate the bloc’s capacity to convene and de-escalate. But the fragility of these arrangements also exposes their limits.
Wira Gregory reports on the appointment of Brunei Ambassador to Myanmar, highlighting the small state’s diplomatic engagement with the Mekong country. By maintaining formal ties with Nay Pyi Taw, Brunei seeks to prevent Myanmar’s full detachment from ASEAN’s security and diplomatic framework. This signals an effort to keep channels open, reduce the risk of strategic drift toward external patrons, and preserve ASEAN’s centrality through incremental engagement.
Rayhan Prabu explores Indonesia’s delayed publication of its 2026 budget documents and highlights how governance norms within ASEAN’s largest member are also being tested. Fiscal opacity disrupts planning, weakens oversight and signals discretionary power concentrated within the executive under the current administration. Critically, it risks normalising deviations from transparency that Indonesia painstakingly institutionalised during its democratic consolidation.
Malaysia 🇲🇾
Beyond Diplomacy
by Muhammad Aiman Bin Roszaimi, in Cyberjaya
Renewed hostilities between Thailand and Cambodia in December 2025 have once again drawn ASEAN into a serious regional security challenge. What began as an escalation on their long-disputed frontier in early December quickly deteriorated into deadly clashes, killing dozens and displacing hundreds of thousands along their shared border. The violence marked a collapse of an earlier ceasefire and underscored just how volatile intra-ASEAN conflicts can be.
In response to the renewed clash, ASEAN foreign ministers convened a Special ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Kuala Lumpur on 22 December 2025. Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan urgently called on both Thailand and Cambodia to halt hostilities and return to dialogue toward a durable peace. The minister emphasised that ASEAN must do “whatever is necessary” to maintain regional peace and stability. The meeting urged the full implementation of earlier ceasefire arrangements, and the minister announced that the General Border Committee (JBC) will meet on 24 December to discuss ceasefire verification and implementation.
Despite these diplomatic efforts, the ceasefire remains exceptionally fragile. A ceasefire brokered in July 2025 with Malaysian facilitation and supported by external actors (United States and China) briefly paused the fighting, but it never fully addressed the underlying grievances driving the conflict. Short-lived agreements have collapsed under renewed border skirmishes, mistrust, and accusations between both sides. The lack of a sustained communication channel between military commanders and political leaders has allowed even minor incidents such as alleged landmine detonations and patrol confrontations to trigger flare-ups.
While ASEAN’s mechanisms for conflict management are increasingly utilised, they also reveal structural limitations. The bloc’s response has leaned heavily on diplomatic convening and dialogue facilitation from the ASEAN Observer Team (AOT) monitoring de-escalation to the General Border Committee tasked with ceasefire verification. These layered mechanisms are intended to build confidence, document compliance and encourage communication between both parties.
Yet these mechanisms lack enforcement power.
ASEAN has no standing peacekeeping force, no binding arbitration body and depends on member states’ goodwill to honour commitments. Without stronger verification measures or independent observers accepted by both sides, ceasefire monitoring can be incomplete or contested.
Part of the fragility stems from the deep historical roots and domestic pressures behind the dispute. The frontier has been contested since colonial-era boundary demarcations and remains a symbolically charged issue tied to national prestige, identity and domestic political pressures. There is no shared and mutually accepted framework for resolving these complex historical claims, which makes the ceasefires prone to breakdown.
The dispute reflects not only the institutional shortcomings of existing regional mechanisms but also unresolved historical tensions that continue to shape perceptions and national narratives on both sides. As a result, even well-intentioned mediation efforts face structural constraints, where ceasefires can temporarily halt violence but struggle to address the historical grievances that underpin the dispute.
In the end, ASEAN’s handling of the Thailand–Cambodia border conflict highlights both the regional bloc’s potential and its limits. Dialogue and diplomatic engagement remain essential, but without deeper structural mechanisms and genuine political commitment from conflicting parties, peace will remain elusive.
Aiman is a PhD candidate in Security and Strategic Analysis at the National University of Malaysia. His research focuses on Malaysia’s space policy, ASEAN regional security, and the strategic implications of emerging technologies. His work explores how Malaysia’s defense policy and strategic culture shape its approach to outer space.
Brunei Darussalam 🇧🇳
Stabilizing ASEAN’s Centre
by Wira Gregory Ejau, in Bandar Seri Begawan
On 16 December 2025, Brunei’s newly appointed Ambassador to Myanmar Haji Mohamad Sarif Pudin bin Matserudin presented credentials to Myanmar’s Acting President and State Security and Peace Commission Chairman Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in Nay Pyi Taw. This move signals Brunei’s intent to deepen bilateral ties while acting as a stabilizing bridge, keeping Myanmar tethered to ASEAN’s diplomatic and security architecture rather than allowing isolation to widen the cracks in regional unity.
Discussions during the visit touched on cooperation in education, defence, tourism, and aviation, alongside humanitarian assistance and Myanmar’s stated adherence to the ASEAN Charter. Brunei’s careful balancing act reinforces ASEAN’s principle of non‑interference while acknowledging the need for constructive engagement with Myanmar’s contested political trajectory. The emphasis on reciprocal goodwill visits and sectoral cooperation suggests Brunei’s preference for incremental trust‑building rather than overt political positioning.
Geopolitically, Brunei’s outreach carries implications for Southeast Asian security and defence. As a small but strategically located monarchy, Brunei has historically adopted a cautious foreign policy, privileging consensus and stability. Its engagement with Myanmar at this juncture reflects ASEAN’s broader dilemma: how to reconcile normative commitments to democracy and human rights with pragmatic imperatives of regional cohesion. The reference to Myanmar’s preparations for a “free and fair multiparty democratic general election” illustrates this tension. While external observers may question the credibility of such commitments, Brunei’s willingness to acknowledge them within bilateral dialogue reinforces ASEAN’s collective strategy of quiet diplomacy rather than public censure.
Economically, the discussions on agriculture, trade, investment, and labour highlight potential avenues for cooperation that transcend political sensitivities. Brunei’s interest in diversifying its economy beyond hydrocarbons aligns with Myanmar’s need for external partners to sustain growth amid sanctions and limited access to global markets. Such complementarities, though modest in scale, could serve as building blocks for broader ASEAN economic integration.
Strategically, Brunei’s engagement with Myanmar can be read as part of a wider ASEAN effort to prevent fragmentation. By maintaining dialogue even in difficult circumstances, Brunei contributes to the preservation of ASEAN’s centrality in regional affairs. This approach resonates with the bloc’s historical reliance on consensus and incrementalism, where even small states play outsized roles in sustaining cohesion. In this sense, Brunei’s diplomatic overture suggests less about bilateral gains and more about reinforcing ASEAN’s collective resilience.
Myanmar remains to be ASEAN’s intractable challenge. Against this backdrop, Brunei’s engagement and maintaining channels of dialogue, helps to ensure that Myanmar is not entirely isolated within ASEAN’s security and diplomatic architecture. This matters for the military balance of Southeast Asia, where exclusion risks pushing Myanmar further toward external patrons and undermining ASEAN’s claim to centrality.
Brunei’s approach keeps Myanmar tethered to ASEAN processes while leaving open the possibility of gradual reintegration into regional defence and security dialogues. Brunei demonstrates how, instead of resolving crises outright, fractures may be prevented from widening. For ASEAN, this is a reminder that its resilience depends less on dramatic interventions than on the quiet, persistent work of keeping doors open.
Gregory is an MSc candidate in Strategic Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He works as a freelance writer specializing in international history, conflict, and counterterrorism, with experience in academia, investigative journalism, and voluntary uniformed service. He currently provides research assistance with the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) under their Southeast Asian Security and Defence Internship Programme and conducts investigations on regional security and transnational crime for a confidential company.
Indonesia 🇮🇩
Flying Blind
by Rayhan Prabu Kusumo, in Jakarta
As 2026 approaches, Indonesia operates without publicly accessible fiscal guidelines. Details of the 2026 APBN (State Budget) and RKP (Government Work Plan)—documents that channel trillions of rupiah through education, healthcare, infrastructure, and social programs—remain unpublished despite parliamentary approval in September 2025. This unprecedented delay breaks from a budget calendar that Indonesia maintained throughout its democratic era.
The APBN functions as Indonesia’s annual spending blueprint which determines resource allocation across competing national priorities. The RKP translates these allocations into development targets and ministerial mandates. Together, they form the operational framework for government activity.
For years, Indonesia maintained a reliable budget calendar: RKP enacted by August-September, APBN finalized by late October. This timing allowed coordinated planning and enabled meaningful public scrutiny. The system emerged from conscious institutional choices during Indonesia’s democratic consolidation, making the current delay (which proceeds without legal basis or public explanation) a direct test of whether this administration considers fiscal transparency binding or optional.
The budget blackout aligns with broader patterns emerging under President Prabowo Subianto’s administration. His government has committed to expensive programs that require fiscal maneuvering, likely to invite criticism if fully transparent. Furthermore, a big-tent cabinet spanning multiple political factions creates pressures to distribute resources as coalition maintenance, making budget allocations as much about political accommodation as policy priorities. Opacity serves these imperatives by concealing how money flows between competing interests and whose projects receive actual funding versus rhetorical commitment.
The pattern reveals a governing logic where secrecy functions as leverage. Everyone outside the presidential circle operates with incomplete information, which converts what should be oversight relationships into supplicant positions, like asking for details the executive may or may not choose to provide. This fundamentally reorders how power flows through Indonesian institutions: away from formal checks embedded in law and toward informal access to whoever controls the information.
Beyond immediate governance disruption, fiscal opacity imposes strategic costs that compound over time. Indonesia competes for foreign direct investment against regional alternatives offering greater policy predictability. When global capital evaluates Southeast Asian opportunities, governance transparency functions as a proxy for institutional stability and regulatory reliability. Opaque budgets signal weak institutions and discretionary policymaking, exactly the risk factors that redirect investment toward other regional players.
Domestic economic planning suffers parallel uncertainty. Businesses and organizations cannot formulate medium-term strategies without understanding infrastructure priorities, subsidy trajectories, or regulatory directions. This deficit advantages actors with insider access while penalizing firms operating through formal channels.
The critical issue isn’t whether these documents eventually surface but what their prolonged absence establishes as permissible. Democracies don’t fail through single catastrophic events but through incremental norm erosion, with each violation that produces no consequence makes the next transgression easier.
This is how democratic backsliding operates, not through dramatic rupture but through normalized deviation, where each unchallenged violation redefines the boundaries of acceptable governance. Indonesia’s fiscal transparency now hangs on whether its institutions treat this opacity as a crisis demanding correction or an inconvenience requiring adaptation. The silence from Jakarta suggests which outcome is emerging.
Rayhan has a background in government affairs and public policy, with experience across government institutions and advisory firms. His work focuses on the intersection of geopolitics, policy, and risk, with expertise in advocacy, regulatory analysis, and stakeholder engagement. He holds a degree in Government from Universitas Padjadjaran, and has completed an exchange at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain, focusing on global politics and sustainability.
Editorial Deadline 21/12/2025 11:59 PM (UTC +8)
