Introduction
The year 2025 is drawing to a close. Over the past 12 months, the Indo-Pacific strategic landscape has shifted dramatically. Political and economic uncertainty has deepened. Conflicts and humanitarian crises in Gaza, Sudan, and Myanmar have worsened. New border tensions have emerged in Southeast Asia. Pluralism is rising at the expense of regionalism. Meanwhile, East Asia is experiencing intensifying geopolitical friction.
Many observers believe the world is undergoing a transition that no one can yet define. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong of Singapore captured this uncertainty when he told the Financial Times: “The old rules no longer apply, but the new rules have yet to be written.”
What is truly regrettable is how far the region has drifted from the Indo-Pacific visions that so many governments once endorsed.
This is not to dismiss the tangible progress made—ports, railways and connectivity agreements have been delivered across the region. Rather, the concern lies in how the broader vision of a free, open, inclusive, transparent and rules-based Indo-Pacific is slipping away from reality.
Some may disagree, but it is fair to argue that the Indo-Pacific has lived through a “hot peace” this past year, where any miscalculation could set the region back and push the aspiration of a peaceful and rules-based order even further out of reach.
Foundational Frameworks
This article draws from the visions enshrined in the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP).
In 2016, the late Abe Shinzo, Japan’s then prime minister, introduced FOIP at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development. Meanwhile, in 2019, Indonesia catalysed Southeast Asia’s own Indo-Pacific strategy, which ASEAN Member States (AMS) adopted as AOIP.
These visions were never meant to compete; they were designed to complement one another.
Both frameworks rest on the belief that the Indo-Pacific order must be free, open, inclusive and rules-based to achieve peace, stability, and prosperity.
Japan frames “free and open” as a principle of conduct that treats the Indo-Pacific as a public good, governed by existing international law. ASEAN goes further: it seeks to turn tension into dialogue, competition into cooperation and insists that any Indo-Pacific vision must remain inclusive—meaning China must remain part of the region’s strategic map.
Nonetheless, the region’s strategic landscape is drifting further from these shared visions. The gap between what leaders proclaim and what actually happens on the ground stems from four underlying realities.
Four Realities of a Drifting Region
First, trust deficits are widening, and new conflicts are emerging across the region. Findings from the ASEAN Peoples’ Perceptions Surveyin 2024 showed that 57.94% of Southeast Asian respondents believed armed conflict between AMS was unlikely in the next two years. That optimism was quickly disproven by the recent Thai-Cambodian armed clashes, which revealed how fragile intra-ASEAN trust remains.
Tensions have also escalated in East Asia, where the China-Japan relations have deteriorated further due to a recent statement by the Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae. Fragile situation remains in the South China Sea, whereas miscalculation may lead to an open conflict.
A similar dynamic persists between India and Pakistan in South Asia, where mistrust continues to shape their strategic behaviour. Meanwhile, the humanitarian crises in Gaza and Sudan have worsened, adding to the sense that conflict is becoming more widespread and less containable.
This deteriorating landscape has become a pretext for governments across the Indo-Pacific to ramp up their military budgets, pushing the region toward its highest level of militarisation in modern history.
Asia’s total military spending reached US$603.9 billion in 2024, a 4.9% increase from 2023, even after a record spike the previous year. China alone spent US$314 billion, more than triple any other country in the region. India came second with US$86.1 billion, while Japan and South Korea allocated US$55.3 billion and US$47.6 billion for defence, respectively.
Southeast Asian states are also accelerating their buildup: Singapore spent US$15.1 billion and Indonesia US$11 billion, driven by maritime insecurity and rising regional tension.
Taken together, these figures show a region arming faster than at any point in the past two decades—a clear sign that the Indo-Pacific is drifting away from its vision of peace, openness and stability.
Second, the “confluence of the two seas and continents” – as imagined by Abe – has become more rhetoric than reality. Politically and economically, the appetite to connect the Pacific and Indian Oceans through multilateral frameworks such as AOIP remains limited.
Even though ASEAN and the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) signed an MoU in 2023, and ASEAN and Japan recently announced an AOIP–FOIP synchron
Third, Ch
In September 2023, China signed the ASEAN-China Joint Statement on Mutually Beneficial Cooperation on AOIP, which was widely regarded as a diplomatic achievement for ASEAN, especially given China’s long-standing opposition to the Indo-Pacific concept.
Despite this, that commitment remains largely symbolic. Beijing’s endorsement has not translated into meaningful deliverables, concrete programmes or sustained engagement under AOIP’s four priority areas. In practice, China still channels most of its regional cooperation through BRI and SCO rather than through ASEAN-led Indo-Pacific frameworks.
Fourth, as teased above, the connectivity projects intended to link the Indian and Pacific Oceans have not produced meaningful integration. Despite the Indo-Pacif
No major cross-ocean transport corridors have been completed, and most trade still flows through long-established routes such as the Malacca Strait and Singapore’s hub-and-spoke system.
World Bank data shows that South Asia’s manufacturing value added is only 13.5% of regional GDP, far below East Asia’s 22.5%. India’s manufacturing share stands at just 12.5%, underscoring the region’s limited integration into East Asian-led supply chains.
Key projects like the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway and t
Recommendations
Despite the widening gap between rhetoric and implementation, regional leaders should treat this moment as both an alarm and an opportunity. Investing in confidence-building measures (CBMs) is now more strategic than ever.
Critiques of key forums like the East Asia Summit must be taken seriously, and the ASEAN Indo-Pacific Forum (AIPF) needs to be strengthened rather than allowed to become another talk shop. Bottom-up Track 2 initiatives including the AOIP Vision Group Conference should receive sustained support and be meaningfully integrated into
Furthermore, promoting conceptual, institutional, and implementation between AOIP-FOIP is strategic for concrete and game-changing implementation. Endorsing public-private partnership (PPP) projects under the AOIP-FOIP framework can accelerate deliverables and help address the persistent connectivity gaps between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
ASEAN’s relevance in today’s geopolitical environment ultimately depends on its ability to turn its long-standing mantra – “from rivalry to dialogue, and from competition to cooperation” – into practice. The AOIP-FOIP synchronisation offers a timely opportunity for ASEAN to advance more inclusive cooperation and deliver projects that benefit all. All in all, the Indo-Pacific cannot afford to drift further from the vision that most regional actors have endorsed. The region must remain open, free, inclusive and rules-based, where ASEAN plays its centrality. As 2026 approaches, ASEAN’s relevance will depend on whether it can uphold that vision and play the crucial role it has long claimed—turning principles into practice and cooperation into real outcomes.
