Editor’s Note
by Siu Tzyy Wei, Lead Editor - Maritime Crescent Desk
This week at the Maritime Crescent is all about appearances and the politics behind them.
Amidst the ongoing oil crisis, Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia join hands in launching SEAFA, a trilateral fertiliser alliance designed to shield the region from global supply shocks. With Brunei becoming the host of the secretariat, Wira Gregory looks into the Sultanate’s role as the secretariat host and its evolving identity as a quiet architect of resilience, a role that may move far beyond the stretches of hard power.
As Malaysia sails again with the second Global Sumud Flotilla, Muhammad Aiman explores the weight of moral solidarity that it now carries as a growing stakeholder across contested waters. Beyond humanitarian aid, can the nation-wide support for a flotilla of symbols and intentions truly shift the tides of justice?
In Indonesia, society meets with Koperasi Merah Putih, a state initiative that promises transformation but inevitably returns to old familiarity. Beneath the banners of progress, Rayhan Prabu explores whether the program risks becoming a monument of appearances rather than a vessel for much needed change.
At face value, these stories unravel a tapestry of gestures - alliances built, flotillas launched and cooperation unveiled - revealing how the three nations navigate the delicate balance between image and intent.
Brunei Darussalam 🇧🇳
SEAFA and the Sovereignty of Food Security
by Wira Gregory Ejau, in Bandar Seri Begawan
As the Strait of Hormuz remains in limbo following the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran in late February, effectively disrupting approximately one-third of global seaborne fertiliser trade, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia have launched the Southeast Asia Fertiliser Association (SEAFA) on 6 April. Established by Pupuk Indonesia, Petronas Chemicals Group, and Brunei Fertiliser Industries, SEAFA presents as one of the more strategically consequential multilateral moves in recent ASEAN memory.
Prior to the crisis in the Middle East, the Strait of Hormuz served as a corridor through which roughly one-third of globally traded fertiliser normally transits. In a period when diplomatic posturing is critical, many governments have kept their cards to themselves, making it difficult to gauge domestic preparedness for shocks. Urea and ammonia have become commodities with volatile availability, with the spring planting season across the Northern Hemisphere having collided with an agricultural input crisis. Urea and ammonia have become commodities of volatile availability, colliding with the Northern Hemisphere’s spring planting season. Unlike oil, fertiliser markets lack internationally coordinated strategic reserves; the machinery for crisis response simply does not exist at the institutional level.
That being said, Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia occupy a position of rare strategic complementarity. Indonesia and Brunei possess domestic fertiliser production capacity that exceeds national requirements, while Malaysia remains a net importer, exposed precisely where the others are insulated. Together, they span both sides of the energy-fertiliser nexus, which is the chain by which liquefied natural gas (LNG) is converted into nitrogen fertiliser. In turn, this underwrites crop yields across the region. Crucially, both Indonesia and Malaysia are also significant LNG exporters. This carries the capability for all three nations to sit astride the input-output chain that runs from Gulf gas fields to Southeast Asian farms, with potential leverage at both ends.
SEAFA is a hedge against the logic that regional blocs dependent on external chokepoints for agricultural inputs effectively outsource their sovereignty. While it would be premature to assume that an industry association may function as a treaty mechanism, its founding represents the difference between building structural resilience and managing crisis optics after the fact. If SEAFA evolves as intended, with a strong focus on expanding membership, coordinating LNG-linked production inputs, and developing a collective voice in international agri-commodity governance, it could represent the trio’s first serious attempt to convert resource complementarity into collective strategic leverage.
For a small state whose strategic footprint is significantly measured, Brunei’s role as secretariat host for the institutional architecture of a regional body is multilateral statecraft that extends its presence and confers legitimacy at a cost structure that hard power cannot match. The question SEAFA ultimately poses to the region is whether ASEAN is prepared to treat food security as the structural geopolitical issue it has now demonstrably become.
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.
Malaysia 🇲🇾
Malaysia’s Flotilla Diplomacy
by Muhammad Aiman Bin Roszaimi, in Cyberjaya
Malaysia’s participation in the Global Sumud Flotilla 2.0 (GSF 2.0) reflects more than a humanitarian gesture, it is a convergence of public sentiment and state-level diplomacy. As the Gaza crisis continues to shape global discourse, Malaysia involvement offers insight into how middle powers navigate moral politics and international constraints.
At its core, the GSF 2.0 is a transnational, civilian-led movement aimed at delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza through maritime routes. Drawing participants from over 70 countries, it aoperates as a non-violent grassroots movement grounded in global solidarity with Palestinians.
At the societal level, Malaysia’s ivil society organisations, humanitarian NGOs and grassroots movements have played a central role in mobilising participation. Malaysian contingents in earlier flotilla missions included doctors, journalists, and activists, the humanitarian nature of the mission more than the political nature of the crisis it serves.
Three key factors drive this mobilisation.
First, there is a strong moral and religious dimension, where solidarity with Palestine is framed within the global Muslim community as a humanitarian obligation transcending borders. Second, the flotilla is a movement that visibly thrives on active participative, encouraging Malaysians to move beyond symbolic protests into direct action. Third, it reflects a broader Global South solidarity narrative, positioning Malaysia alongside other developing nations advocating for justice in international affairs.
That being said, the flotilla remains a political symbol. Its focus on aid delivery ultimately highlights the political blockade of Gaza, a plight perceived by the global audience as systemic injustice.
Malaysian government response has evolved from rhetorical support to more active engagement. On January 2026, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim confirmed that Malaysia will be directly involved in Global Sumud 2.0, alongside more than 80 countries.
This shift signals an important transition for Malaysia. From being an observer, the nation is now an active stakeholder in the humanitarian crisis. The government frames its involvement as part of a broader “moral struggle” to uphold humanitarian principles and justice irrespective of borders, race, or religion. At the same time, Putrajaya has taken a firm diplomatic stance when previous flotilla missions were intercepted. Malaysia condemned such actions as violations of international law and demanded the immediate release of detained activists, including its own citizens.
However, the government position also reflects a careful balancing act. While supporting GSF 2.0, Malaysia continues to rely on diplomatic channels to engage with international partners in amplifying Palestinian concerns.Ultimately, Malaysia involvement in GSF 2.0 sits at the intersection of normative foreign policy and strategic signalling. Domestically, it reinforces the government’s alignment with public sentiment. Internationally, it positions Malaysia as an advocate for humanitarian justice within the Global South.
Yet, the same concerns echoes. Previous flotilla missions were intercepted before reaching Gaza, underscoring the constraints faced by non-state humanitarian initiatives in contested geopolitical spaces.
In this sense, Malaysia’s participation is less about immediate material impact and more about shaping narratives where it is asserting that even middle powers and civil societies can challenge the status quo, if only symbolically.
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.
Indonesia 🇮🇩
Red, White, and The Price of Appearances
by Rayhan Prabu Kusumo, in Jakarta
The Indonesian government is now accepting applications for a new batch of Sarjana Penggerak Pembangunan Indonesia—a go-to-scheme designed to accelerate college graduates into leadership roles of the Prabowo’s administration flagship programs. This time, they are being deployed to run village-level cooperatives under Koperasi Merah Putih.
For fresh graduates entering one of Southeast Asia’s tightest job markets, the offer looks tempting: a title, a salary, a sense of national purpose, and perhaps most meaningfully, a formal employment status. Yet behind the promise is a program that is expensive, poorly structured, and in a particularly cruel twist, potentially harmful for the very people it claims to help.
Koperasi Merah Putih was pitched by the Prabowo administration as a grassroots economic intervention to establish cooperatives across Indonesia’s roughly 80,000 villages. Each cooperative would build on what a village already produces or does well—deepening its value chain, connecting it to broader markets, turning a local advantage into something more durable. Done right, it could have been Indonesia’s version of China’s Township and Village Enterprises: state-facilitated, locally rooted, and oriented toward real productive activity.
Instead, most cooperatives have become just a little more than glorified retail cooperatives, selling basic goods in communities already saturated with small traders doing exactly that. In Indonesia, MSMEs account for 99% of businesses and 97% of employment, with retail and trade dominating the sector. By injecting state-backed cooperatives into the same space, the government is competing with the economy ordinary Indonesians already built to survive.
And it is doing so at enormous cost. With each cooperative requiring at least Rp3 billion to stand up, the program’s price tag runs to a minimum of Rp240 trillion (~USD 14.1 billion). Such a figure is likely conservative, given that the program has already drawn on public funds well beyond its designated budget lines. To put that in context, the Free School Meal program—the administration’s premier flagship program and the most expensive social program in Indonesian history at Rp335 trillion a year (~USD 19.7 billion)—is running simultaneously. The economic case for either spending commitment has never been convincingly made, let alone both at once.
The ingredients for genuine transformation were all there—nationwide reach, significant funding, and a structure capable of catalysing industrial development. Instead, the government used all of them to build grocery stores. A program with the scale and state backing to meaningfully move the needle on Indonesia’s long-stalled structural transformation was handed a mandate it was more than capable of fulfilling. What it chose to do with that mandate was to walk down the path of familiarity again.
Indonesia does not need another player in the trade space. It needs industrial development and an economy that can actually absorb the graduates it keeps producing. Koperasi Merah Putih, as it stands, offers none of that, only the appearance of trying. And it is a spectacularly expensive appearance to keep up.
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 11/04/2026 11:59 PM (UTC +8)
