At the May 2026 Shangri-La Dialogue, Malaysian Defence Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin met US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to discuss a possible sale of Naval Strike Missiles to Malaysia.
Malaysia also joined 16 other countries in endorsing Guide, a Singapore-initiated framework to protect critical underwater infrastructure.
What Zopfan promised
For over 50 years, Malaysia has told its people that this country does not take sides in the wars of big powers.
Yet, one agreement at a time, that promise has been broken.
Zopfan – the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality – was a promise made in 1971, in Kuala Lumpur, by the five founding members of Asean. It stated that Southeast Asia should be free from the interference of outside powers, whether American, Chinese, Soviet or British. Malaysia would be a friend to all nations and an enemy to none. That was the pledge.
But the reality is different.
The United States military has a growing presence across our region.
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China is pushing its claims in the South China Sea, which touches Malaysia’s own waters.
And successive Malaysian governments have been signing agreements with foreign military powers, apparently without telling Parliament, without asking the people.
The Bangkok Treaty of 1995 – formally the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, or SEANWFZ – reinforced Zopfan, declaring the region free of nuclear weapons.
The treaty includes a protocol specifically for the five nuclear-armed states – the US, China, Russia, the UK and France – committing them not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons within the zone.
Thirty years on, not one of them has signed it. From the very beginning, the promise depended on the goodwill of countries with no reason to limit their own power.
Built-in contradiction
In 1971 – the exact same year Malaysia signed the Zopfan neutrality declaration – it also signed the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA), a military agreement with Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. If Malaysia or Singapore is attacked, these countries consult each other and may send military forces to help.
The FPDA is a colonial leftover. When Britain withdrew from the region in the late 1960s, it reorganised its military presence under a new name rather than simply leaving. Malaysia signed both the neutrality declaration and the Western military pact in the same year. The contradiction was there from day one.
Successive Malaysian governments chose not to talk about this. It was more comfortable to keep pointing to Zopfan in speeches while benefiting from the security of the FPDA. That geopolitical silence continues to this day.
A region being redrawn
Across the region, the picture tells its own story.
Indonesia has deepened defence cooperation with the US, a notable shift for a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Singapore functions as a quasi-ally, with American surveillance aircraft operating regularly from Changi Air Base.
Malaysia remains inside the FPDA arrangement with Britain and Australia. In late 2025, it formalised a new defence Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the US, covering maritime domain awareness, joint exercises and technology sharing along Malaysia’s coastlines.
The Philippines, a US treaty ally since 1951, now gives American forces access to nine military sites under President Marcos Jr.
Thailand, allied to the US since 1954, hosts hundreds of joint exercises annually.
And Australia under Aukus, a 2021 pact with the US and Britain, is acquiring conventionally armed, nuclear-powered US submarines, while American forces have long been stationed at Darwin, close to Southeast Asia.
This is not a picture of a neutral region. This is a landscape being drawn, step by step, into the US military embrace – at the very same time that China is becoming more aggressively assertive in the South China Sea.
The Southeast Asian region is becoming a stage for a contest between two superpowers. Ordinary people in Malaysia and across the region had no say in how we got here.
Transparency – the promise not kept
The Malaysia-US defence MoU signed in 2025 deserves special attention because it directly involves Malaysian territory.
It covers maritime domain awareness along Malaysia’s maritime zones, including the Strait of Malacca, one of the busiest and most strategically important waterways in the world.
The MoU commits Malaysia to expanded cooperation in maritime domain awareness, joint exercises, surveillance technology sharing, cybersecurity and special forces training.
The government says it is legally non-binding and grants no permanent US presence on Malaysian soil. But it does formalise a rotational US presence across the South China Sea.
The full text has not been released. It was signed without parliamentary debate, without a public white paper, without civil society consultation. People in Malaysia were simply not asked.
When a foreign military is involved in monitoring your maritime zones, that is not routine. That is a question of who shapes the security of our borders. It deserves a proper public debate.
It has worsened because a government that promised reform has chosen to continue the same pattern of keeping security decisions hidden from the people who elected them.
The people deserve better – and they deserve it especially from a government that said it would be different.
New blocs, old dangers
Aukus places nuclear-powered submarines in our region. This raises tensions with the spirit of the 1995 Bangkok Treaty, which said our region should be free from nuclear technology of this kind.
Australia and the Western powers argue that nuclear-powered submarines are not the same as nuclear weapons.
But that argument is difficult to accept for the countries that signed the treaty and meant it seriously.
The second arrangement is the Quad, a grouping of the US, Japan, India and Australia. It holds military exercises, shares intelligence and coordinates across the Indo-Pacific. Its purpose – checking the rise of China – is openly understood.
Asean countries that cooperate with Quad activities even informally are seen as taking a side in the US–China rivalry, whether they admit it or not.
Both Aukus and the Quad were built deliberately outside Asean entirely. This is a clear signal that the big powers no longer feel they need to work through Asean to shape the security of this region. Asean is being sidelined in decisions that affect the people of this region.
Who benefits from the confusion?
When a government invokes “neutrality” while quietly deepening military ties with a foreign power, someone benefits. It is worth asking: who?
The US benefits because it can deepen its military presence in this region while the Malaysian government reassures its own people that nothing has changed.
China benefits when it can point to Asean’s internal contradictions as proof that the region has no real collective voice.
And most directly, the Malaysian government benefits because it avoids a difficult public conversation – one where it would have to explain to voters exactly what security commitments have been made in their name, and what the risks and costs of those commitments are.
The people who do not benefit are the ordinary people of Malaysia – those living near coastlines now covered by arrangements they never approved, and those whose children could one day bear the cost if this region’s militarisation turns into actual conflict.
Neutrality is a promise made to the people of Southeast Asia. When that promise becomes a cover story while military agreements are signed away from public view, it is no longer protecting the people. It is protecting the politicians from having to answer for their decisions.
What we should fight for
Zopfan cannot simply be revived. The world is too different.
But its values – that Southeast Asia should not become a battlefield for others’ wars, that our people should have a say in their own security – are still worth fighting for.
One concrete step would be for Malaysia to press all five nuclear powers to finally sign the SEANWFZ protocol – and to make that a condition of any deepening defence relationship, rather than an afterthought.
What progressive civil society groups like Aliran can and must do is push back against the culture of secrecy that surrounds Malaysian defence and foreign policy. This is not about being anti-American or anti-Chinese. It is about being pro-people.
Across Southeast Asia, civil society groups, trade unions and community networks share the same demand: we do not want this region turned into a military stage for the great powers. We want peace, sovereignty and honest governments.
A civil society agenda
All defence and military cooperation agreements must be tabled in Parliament. No more deals made without the knowledge of elected representatives.
A proper parliamentary committee should oversee Malaysia’s defence and foreign policy commitments, with the power to question ministers and review agreements.
Public consultation should happen before any new agreement involving foreign military access to Malaysian territory or waters. This should be done through community forums, civil society dialogue and open government communication.
The government should issue a clear statement on how the existing FPDA and US defence agreements are compatible with Malaysia’s stated commitment to Zopfan and non-alignment.
Asean civil society should work together across borders to demand that regional governments speak with one voice against military blocs that bypass Asean and endanger regional peace.
Additional input by emeritus professor Johan Saravanamuttu
The views expressed in Aliran's media statements and the NGO statements we have endorsed reflect Aliran's official stand. Views and opinions expressed in other pieces published here do not necessarily reflect Aliran's official position.
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