Australia’s strategic messaging challenge in Southeast Asia

The government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has reinvigorated Australia’s focus on Southeast Asia. Emphasising the region’s crucial role to Australia’s prosperity and security, the Australian government frequently emphasises that Australia “shares a region and a future” with Southeast Asia. It has substantiated its rhetoric with material commitments such as a $2 billion investment facility for clean energy and infrastructure.

The government has also expressed its belief in the relevance of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and ASEAN-led mechanisms in the wider region. According to Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Australia is working towards a “strategic equilibrium” for the region, in which countries are not forced to choose who they make strategic partnerships with but can make their own sovereign choices. This is important because regional states have made it clear that they are unwilling to choose sides in the hardening strategic competition between the US and China, which are both important economic and strategic partners for the region. 

Yet Australia’s strategic policy, and more specifically its reliance on its ally in Washington, undermines Southeast Asian confidence in Canberra’s commitment to this regional vision. The Quad continues to be seen as exclusionary (i.e. anti-China) in its approach, not helped by incidents like US President Biden being caught singling out China on a hot mic at the Quad Leaders’ Summit in 2024. Criticism of the AUKUS agreement has grown more muted since its initial announcement in 2021, yet key stakeholders like Indonesia and Malaysia continue to harbour concerns over the pact’s potential to escalate tensions in the Indo-Pacific.

These anxieties reflect fundamentally divergent strategic outlooks. For Australia, China constitutes the key challenge to Indo-Pacific stability and long-standing partners like the US help Canberra to contain this threat. Southeast Asia, in contrast, sees great power competition as the major geopolitical challenge, not China. The region no longer sees Washington as a reliable partner. Nor do strategic concerns among ASEAN countries about China’s expanding footprint in the Indo-Pacific equate to support for a greater US military presence in the region. Rather - from Southeast Asia’s perspective - Australia-US security cooperation is part of the problem.

Canberra can alleviate these concerns to some extent by distancing itself from zero-sum rhetoric. This year, for example, the East Asia Summit (EAS) for the second time failed to achieve a joint statement. Although ASEAN had agreed unanimously on a draft, the statement was not accepted by its dialogue partners due to fault lines between the US and its partners on one side, and Russia and China on the other. These divisions strain regional unity and undermine ASEAN’s ongoing relevance. 

Australia can do more to shield the grouping from this kind of great power competition to show that it is serious about building regional security in partnership with Southeast Asia. At the EAS, for example, Canberra could have taken a more prominent mediating role to promote compromise between the two camps.

Still, Australia is unlikely to fundamentally alter its strategic policy. This means effective strategic messaging will be crucial to navigate differing international outlooks and deepen ties with the region. 

Key in this effort is a greater sensitivity to the region’s long history of external interference, and how it continues to shape its collective international outlook. From Canberra’s perspective, new security arrangements like the Quad and AUKUS contribute to regional stability. But they are met with scepticism in the region because they were developed without involving Southeast Asia as a stakeholder. Even if they expressly commit to supporting ASEAN-led mechanisms, therefore, emerging mini-lateral partnerships are viewed in Southeast Asia as undermining the grouping and its relevance by ‘imposing’ a regional vision. 

Australian diplomats need to recognise this perspective and adjust their communication accordingly. At its simplest, this can involve recognising Southeast Asian discomfort with geostrategic competition in the Indo-Pacific. Diplomats should also seek advice from counterparts on how Australia can demonstrate its commitment to the partnership even as it maintains close ties to the US. Greater transparency in key policymaking decisions, like the formation and development of AUKUS, would further enhance regional trust and confidence in Australia.

Interlinked, Canberra needs to be mindful of the place of liberal democratic norms in its regional diplomacy. While the Albanese government has dialled back some of the language of the previous administration that characterised regional competition as a battle between democracy and autocracy, shared democratic values are often cited as the foundation of Australia’s security partnerships, including statements by the Quad. 

This framing sits uncomfortably with a politically diverse region like Southeast Asia, in which many states feel ambivalent about Western initiatives to advance these norms. Shifting the narrative to shared opportunities for economic-functional cooperation in line with regional priorities, like climate change and infrastructure, will be more conducive to expanding engagement with the bloc.

Crucial to effective strategic messaging, therefore, is for Australia to better listen to regional concerns and explain its foreign policy decisions in a way that acknowledges the divergent international outlooks of its Southeast Asian partners.

This analysis reflects on discussions held during the recent 16th ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Track II Dialogue and Next-Gen Workshop organised by the Asia New Zealand Foundation, Asialink, and ISIS Malaysia in October 2024.

Dr Pia Dannhauer is a Research and Program Associate (Southeast Asia) at the Perth USAsia Centre.