Webinar: Southeast Asia in the New Cold War: Choosing Not to Choose?

Date and Time: Nov 29, 2022 | 5:00 PM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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When the US Senate voted to expand NATO into the USSR’s sphere of influence in Europe in 1988, American diplomat-scholar George Kennan called it “the beginning of a new [US-Russia] cold war” and said that Moscow would “gradually react quite adversely.” Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 following a joint statement by Moscow and Beijing criticizing the US. In May 2022 China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said US-China relations were on the “brink of a new Cold War.” What does this mean for Southeast Asians? Are they refusing to choose between the US and its opponents? How much does the fate of Ukraine matter to Southeast Asians? Do they want peace or justice—to prevent big-power escalation or to reverse imperial expansion? How are they balancing those different views and the contending pressures to side with the US or Russia+China?

Speakers:
Richard Heydarian is a Manila-based scholar and columnist. His academic career has included professorial positions in political and social science at the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, and a visiting fellowship at National Chengchi University.

Huong Le Thu, an Australia-resident analyst of geopolitics in Southeast Asia, is a non-resident fellow in CSIS Washington’s Southeast Asia Program. She has worked in universities and think tanks in Australia, Singapore, and Taiwan, and has held visiting positions in the University of Malaya and the ASEAN Secretariat among other places.