Malaysia, ASEAN, non-aligned movement, the world

Fascinating stuff to spend one's time on. At 43 on a long sabbatical I finally have priority for this sort of thing.

First time I've sat through a talk by Jomo, on stuff I haven't studied in depth, so I'm going to skip over the majority of boffinesque IR points and address the meta point about communication and efficacy. 

1. Similar voices. The terse phrasing and adult nature of Jomo's content reminds me of one Ahmad Faisal, so perhaps the former can look at some of the latter's video work, and reach out to bridge generational audiences through their common frequency. If you haven't heard of him, he's part of the Patriots publication group which is a mainstay of political targeting upon youth interest in secular Malay nationalism. Usual suspects upstream, I would guess. https://www.facebook.com/share/1CBAGkh1H7/

2. The meta point, civil disengagement with international affairs. Shahril Hamdan recently gave an interview, where he spoke from his unique position about the narrative vacuum in Malaysian development today. I rather agreed with that, and so the lack of interest in this or that communication media, seems to be less a factor, than the broad absence of a stated national direction is a factor, of absent youth interest in nation building and international participation. ( https://youtu.be/zsYhC8q6hrA?si=XQ9n3omoo2ZAkBtH )

Recently on one KRI FB post I reiterated a favourite point : Malaysian K12 and upwards history whinges on and on about how Malaysia was victimised by the world, but has starkly little about "what is the point of Malaysia, and what is Malaysia supposed to do TO the world in the next 20/50 years to deliver that point?". In other words, leadership vacuum has led to narrative vacuum. Tun might have been a bit of an idiot about some things, but no one would dispute his coherence of direction.

3. Brief comment on IR itself. American influence in ASEAN is farrrrrer greater than any other major power bloc by my reckoning. The natural thing to do in a leadership vacuum is for the more bullish individuals to get together and to sort everyone else out. But in ASEAN this is traditionally impeded by the fact that Singapore's de facto role on Earth has been to project US influence south of VN as a counterpoint to the naturally anti-technocratic patterns of Islamic communities. So within ASEAN we have external interests being disproportionately represented, and maybe Anwar or someone else will eventually dial up the Singaporeans and go "hey guys we can't be doing things this way forever". I'm sure many have tried.

So while ASEAN is structurally inhibited from coalescing into a primary power bloc, no ASEAN country has any hope of being any more effective at participation in BRICS+ than in G77. It's simply below our pay grade.

Ergo Malaysian citizens broadly continue to obsess over the trivia of keeping up with the Joneses ( internal races, as well as the newer communities we host ), and have no way to express action on the global stage beyond Sumud. All this benefits local barons, foreign powers, and least of all the rakyat. 

What is one to do? 😂