26-12-2023, 10:56 AM
26-12-2023, 11:33 AM
(26-12-2023, 10:56 AM)Bigiron Wrote: [ -> ]Southeast Asia Appears Stuck In A History Trap – Analysis
https://www.eurasiareview.com/25122023-s...e_vignette
Quote: David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. As a journalist, he has covered Southeast Asian politics since 2014. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of Radio Free Asia and RFA sister organization BenarNews
I'm not really sure what is the point David Hutt is trying to make here.
He spends like one third of his piece on Myanmar which is a neither here nor there point. Myanmar has always been a unified state in name but warlords maintaining their own fiefdom in practice. This has been the case since the collapse of the Konbaung Dynasty and start of British colonialism. All he did was regurgitate History 101 with no value add at all.
The rest of the piece whining over how Southeast Asia refuses to acknowledge that China and US are at cold war and how playing both sides is bad for them is 10 years behind time and detached from current events.
Southeast Asia has already collectively made the decision to closer integration with China. Even if there is a cold war (for which there is none), they have already made their decision to stay in the China camp.
What they are doing now is integrating themselves to the China soft-led order in practice while making as much of a show they can rhetorically with the US in order to strengthen their bargaining position.
The only real country trying to play both sides now is the Philippines, i.e. attempting to simultaneously strengthen military and economic ties with the US and China respectively. So far this is not going well, they got whacked by China and got nothing in return from the US.
David either cannot or refuses to see (I suspect the latter) realities on the ground and translates these developments he does not like personally as signs that ASEAN leaders are naive, dumb and have an irrational emotional attachment to "peace" and Sino-US becoming good friends.
Time to wake up David!