It is Trump’s first attendance at an ASEAN summit since 2017, but his return to the region will be fleeting. On Monday morning he will return to Air Force One bound for Japan and then South Korea, where APEC and a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping await.
Trump’s visit to ASEAN is conditional on him presiding over an expanded peace deal between Cambodia and Thailand, which fought for five days in July at the cost of nearly 50 lives, including civilians. Trump takes credit for the uneasy peace currently in place and is openly campaigning for next year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaking before the prime ministers of Thailand and Cambodia signed deals to remove heavy weapons and transfer 18 Cambodian prisoners of war, among other agreements, Trump joked about how phone calls in July had forced him to miss a round of golf.
US President Donald Trump reacts to dancers during a welcoming ceremony for the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur.Credit: AP
“But I said this is much more important than playing a round of golf,” he said. “So we sat there all day. We had phone calls and it was amazing how everything came together so quickly. This is a lot more fun for me than anything else… since you’re saving people, saving countries.”
The crucial role played by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has been largely lost amid Trump’s self-congratulations, analysts say, although the president has praised Anwar many times.
It might be tempting to see Trump’s presence in ASEAN as renewed interest in a strategically crucial Southeast Asia, but Sharon Seah, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, says that is unlikely to be the case.
“ASEAN is an advantage,” he says, referring to Trump’s follow-up trip. “He has no interest in Southeast Asia. All he is interested in is where he thinks he can play the role of peacemaker.”
Before Trump’s long-awaited landing, Timor-Leste’s ASEAN accession document was passed between the nine leaders seated on the main stage for signing. Lawrence Wong from Singapore was serious, possibly looking a little bored. The pragmatic country has the deepest reservations about one of Asia’s poorest countries affecting the rest.
The penultimate to sign was a bureaucrat from Myanmar. ASEAN excludes the nation’s self-proclaimed leadership because of the atrocities it continues to commit against its people.
East Timor Prime Minister and independence hero Kay Rala Xanana Gusmao was the last to sign; his stern face lit up with a wide, closed-mouth smile.
East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta (left) and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto greet each other during the opening ceremony of the 47th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur.Credit: Vicente Thian / AP
“Today history is made,” he said.
Talks about Timor-Leste’s entry into ASEAN began at independence in 2002, but the country was so far behind that it was not until 2011 that the formal process moved slowly.
“I have said, in a humorous or sarcastic tone, ‘it is easier to get to heaven than to ASEAN,’” says Ramos-Horta.
“To get to heaven, all you need to do is behave well, pray as often as you can, and confess your sins to the priest. If you die that night, you are in heaven, and in heaven everything is arranged for you.
US President Donald Trump during the signing ceremony at the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur.Credit: Mark Schiefelbein/AP
“In ASEAN, they don’t take care of you at all. Not only that, but they make you work very, very hard.”
That work has involved preparing Timor-Leste’s nascent independence-era governance and infrastructure systems, or at least demonstrating a path toward readiness, for ASEAN’s complex standards.
It has also meant reaching an agreement. Timor-Leste’s history as a freedom fighter has generated a political culture of defending human rights, freedom of expression and democracy. To that end, he has been a fierce critic of Myanmar’s ruling military junta. But ASEAN, often painfully, requires consensus in all decisions, even from despotic generals. The Timorese leadership needed to take a step back to gain the regime’s tacit support and adhere to ASEAN’s fundamental principle of non-interference.
“But being a good member of ASEAN does not require us to be indifferent when there are serious and systematic violations of human rights in a particular country,” says Ramos-Horta.
Charging
“We are not going to claim to be custodians of the international human rights standards that we practice in our country. However, we will work with other ASEAN countries, with the UN and other partners, to try to see how the conflict in Myanmar can end because it is the people of Myanmar who are suffering.”
ASEAN is largely populated by autocratic regimes and false democracies, so Timor-Leste’s accession will bring a new dynamic, says Seah.
“Of course, it comes with its own set of development issues, which have been what has worried the rest of the ASEAN member states,” he says.
“But geopolitically we are in a very turbulent period. Leaving Timor out would mean that another scenario of great power competition would develop in southeastern Southeast Asia and just north of Australia.”
Ramos Horta says he doesn’t drink much. But he admits that when his compatriots get drunk on Sunday night, he might as well indulge in a couple of beers.
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