Watching, Waiting, Wobbling
Issue 52 — Key Developments Across Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia
Editor’s Note
by Siu Tzyy Wei, Lead Editor - Maritime Crescent Desk
As the world becomes harder to read and harder to insulate against, the Maritime Crescent looks at three neighbours who navigate uncertainty in different ways.
In Brunei, a new national committee signals that the sultanate is building its formal structures to watch, assess and prepare before the next shock hits. In Malaysia, the Unity Government is discovering that the coalition which survived a hung parliament may not survive its own ambitions, as state-level rivalries begin to unravel what federal necessity stitched together. In Indonesia, we revisit Jakarta’s defence modernisation drive to ask whether the fiscal and currency pressures beneath that ambition are beginning to test the real cost of strategic autonomy.
In their own ways, this week’s stories are about preparation and survival - one building for it, one hoping it’s enough, and one asking what it costs to remain ready.
Brunei Darussalam 🇧🇳
The Sultanate on Lookout
by Syimah Johari, in Bandar Seri Begawan
On 4th June 2026, Brunei established The National Committee on Addressing the Impact of the Middle East Conflict, a pre-emptive coordination mechanism to assess risks, manage potential disruptions, and safeguard national interests. While the conflict is unfolding far from Southeast Asia, the establishment of the committee highlights how distant geopolitical crises increasingly require local responses. It also reflects a broader shift in how security is being understood across ASEAN.
The government of Brunei has been closely monitoring developments in the Middle East and their potential implications for the global economy. Although geographically distant, the conflict has put energy markets, shipping routes and international supply chains under immense pressure. At a point where the world is barely adjusting to the rising costs from the COVID-19 pandemic, the conflict has triggered even higher costs for imported goods and increased economic uncertainty. For Brunei, this means bracing the current blows to its economy via the national stockpile policy, management of strategic supplies, but also the concurrent assessment of medium and long term implications of the conflict to national energy, food, healthcare and development sectors that are deeply dependent on international supply chains.
This reflects a broader regional trend. Traditionally, security has been associated with defence measures, borders and diplomacy. However, in an interconnected world where money, power and defence intertwine, security is redefined to include economic resilience, supply chain stability and access to essential goods. Today, economic resilience is just as important as national security - without it, a nation bears the costs not only to the disruptions of supply chains and growing competition for resources, but the changing nature of geopolitical relations and its overall sovereignty.
For Brunei, these concerns are the mold to the Committee. The country’s economy, while still dependent on oil and gas, is relatively small and highly open, with a strong reliance on imports for essential goods. In other words, the sultanate is highly dependent on the relations it has to its international counterparts and the global supply chain for food, manufactured goods and services to keep its people well fed and safe, thus making it extremely sensitive to the external price fluctuations and disruptions in global markets, As such, the creation of a Committee to manage Brunei’s survival amidst the Middle East conflict reflects a vital whole-of-government strategy to adapt and survive amidst turbulent and volatile realities it observes and experiences.
While the national committee was established to specifically address the impact of the Middle East conflict on the country, its significance extends beyond a single crisis. The committee reflects a broader shift in how Brunei is approaching geopolitical exposure - institutionalising its awareness that international disruptions can rapidly translate into domestic economic disruption, and that resilience is no longer an aspiration but an active policy priority.
Syimah is a graduate of King’s College London with a BA in International Relations. With a strong focus on diplomacy, regional cooperation, and development policy, she is passionate about contributing to meaningful change through public service. Currently, she is involved in poverty alleviation work through a local NGO.
Malaysia 🇲🇾
United, For Now
by Edrina Lisa Ozaidi, in WP Kuala Lumpur
In November 2022, Malaysia’s general election resulted in a “hung parliament” where no single coalition had enough seats to form a government. To break the deadlock, the King intervened and proposed a “Unity Government”.
This forced long-time rival coalitions to work together — Pakatan Harapan (PH), led by the current prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, a reformist coalition that had spent decades fighting against the establishment and Barisan Nasional (BN), which is the traditional establishment party that had governed Malaysia for over 60 years until its historic 2018 defeat.
For nearly four years, this “coalition of rivals” has maintained stability at the federal stage but remained bitter competitors at the local and grassroots level. Both sides are now preparing to compete against each other in the upcoming state election.
The current tension stems from a fundamental misalignment between the federal-level cooperation and state-level survival. In Johor, UMNO has moved to assert dominance, signalling its intention to contest all 56 state seats rather than maintaining a seat-sharing pact with its federal partner, Pakatan Harapan (PH). BN’s Chairman, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, reminded its role as a “unity government enabler” in the fragile governing coalition to its federal partner.
In a tit-for-tat response, the PH-led administration in Negeri Sembilan dissolved its assembly, effectively ending the uneasy truce and pushing both state elections towards a high-stakes, three-cornered fight. Alternatively, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration always prioritises political stability over the systemic reforms promised to the electorate. This has left the government more vulnerable to these localised revolts.
The structural flaws of the current administration are getting more difficult to ignore. Analysts point out that the Unity Government operates through the consensus, thus sacrificing long-term policy to avoid immediate collapse. As state election looms — infrastructure projects and reform agendas such as the “Maju Johor 2030” plan — are being weaponised as campaign tools, stalling long-term governance for short-term electoral optics.
The result is a “wait-and-see” culture among investors and civil servants. With growing speculation of an early general election (GE16) by late 2026, the bureaucracy has become increasingly cautious, delaying regulatory approval and fiscal measures.
When a government spends more time managing internal fissures than executing policy, it is the public that ultimately pays the price through stagnating development and policy inconsistency. Malaysia now stands at a crossroads. The Prime Minister has hinted that snap polls could be called if coalition cracks continue to widen. However, calling for national elections during a period of high economic sensitivity may only deepen the divide.
For the Unity Government to survive its remaining term, it must transition from a reactive state of “crisis management” to being proactive in genuine reforms. If the coalition continues to cannibalise itself in the states while clinging to power at the federal level, it risks losing not just the next election, but the core legitimacy of its power that was brought in 2022. Only time will tell if the Unity Government can survive its own internal contradiction.
Edrina is a communications professional with a background in international relations. She holds a degree from the University of Nottingham Malaysia and has worked across public relations and social media for organizations in the development, education, and corporate sectors. Her work focuses on crafting narratives around regional affairs and strengthening media engagement across Southeast Asia.
Indonesia 🇮🇩
What the Budget Numbers Don’t Show
by Hree Putri Samudra, in Jakarta
Defense modernization is one of the easier things to sell in Jakarta. The announcements are familiar by now: Rafales from France, J-10s from China, PT PAL talking about unmanned submarines, another parliamentary hearing where the budget edges upward and officials speak of momentum. The ambition is real enough. What gets less attention is the part that starts after the cameras are gone. Procurement contracts do not end at signing. They arrive later as maintenance obligations, spare-parts orders, software updates, fuel bills, and invoices priced against a rupiah sitting closer to Rp17,500 than the Rp16,500 the budget was built around.
On paper, Rp187.1 trillion suggests a government still serious about defense modernization. The exchange rate complicates that story. Rafale contracts, T-50i sustainment, and billions in foreign financing behind the J-10 acquisitions are tied to currencies Indonesia does not control. The budget approved in Jakarta remains numerically intact as the rupiah weakens. At current rates, the difference runs into hundreds of millions of dollars, enough to turn maintenance, ammunition, and training from routine planning questions into budgeting problems.
This is usually where the public conversation loses track of how defense budgets actually work. When conversations revolve only on capital, what gets squeezed are the less visible elements that keep a military running. Refitting schedules stretch. Spare-parts procurement slows. Exercises get reduced because fuel and operating costs no longer match the assumptions made months earlier. Nobody announces lower sortie rates or delayed maintenance cycles. It is here that currency pressure leaves its mark - not in procurement headlines but in the quieter erosion of readiness.
Indonesia has been bearing this defence budgeting imbalance for years. Procurement and personnel absorb attention and money more easily than sustainment ever does. Maintenance, readiness, and lifecycle costs tend to sit further down the priority list until the exchange rate forces them back into view. When the rupiah is relatively stable, the system muddles through. Under sustained depreciation, the distance between what Indonesia formally owns and what the TNI can reliably operate becomes harder to ignore.
Defense is competing inside a tighter budget than the headline numbers suggest. Oil assumptions have shifted, debt servicing is heavier, and Makan Bergizi Gratis now carries Rp335 trillion, almost double the military allocation. Prabowo has defended the program and understandably so. But when some spending lines are politically difficult to touch, adjustment rarely disappears. It tends to move elsewhere, often into maintenance, training, and delayed upgrades.
The foreign policy effects are harder to measure but still worth noticing. Governments under fiscal pressure negotiate differently, especially when procurement financing narrows and economic assumptions become harder to defend. Jakarta’s commitment to large-scale US energy purchases was presented as partnership, and while there is no reason to dismiss that outright, tighter budgets usually leave less room to bargain comfortably.
Bebas dan aktif - free and active - was always a doctrine with a material premise: that Indonesia would be substantial enough, stable enough, and solvent enough that genuine independence was possible. That premise hasn’t collapsed. But it isn’t free, rather, it is getting more costly to sustain.
Hree is a Policy Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network (APLN) where she leads research and policy interventions on Indo-Pacific nuclear security and AI governance. She previously served as a Research Fellow at the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) and has managed multi-country security portfolios across all 10 ASEAN member states. Her work examines the intersection of emerging technologies, strategic stability, and the evolution of regional security architectures. She specializes in institutional risk assessment and the application of open-source intelligence (OSINT) for strategic monitoring. Her current research focuses on how technological shifts such as AI and advanced verification tools reshape escalation dynamics and multilateral cooperation in a multipolar world.
Editorial Deadline 16/05/2026 11:59 PM (UTC +8)
What's interesting is that Brunei's response reflects a broader shift in how smaller states are thinking about security. Twenty years ago, a conflict in the Middle East would have been viewed primarily through a diplomatic lens. Today, policymakers are focused on shipping routes, food security, energy markets, and supply-chain resilience. Geopolitics has become domestic policy.
For highly open economies like Brunei, the challenge is not military vulnerability but economic exposure. The creation of a dedicated committee suggests that resilience planning is becoming institutionalized rather than reactive.