Si the Indo-Pacific, the geopolitical space stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, constitutes the theater of the strategic confrontation between China and the United States, it is a pivotal region where the Chinese and American powers do not stop competing: the ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). For some continental, but with long coastlines like Thailand and Vietnam, and for others, archipelagic like Indonesia and the Philippines, they form “the epicenter of global competition” between China and the United States, and a “microcosm” who studies it, thus affirms the American sinologist David Shambaugh in Where Great Powers Meet. America and China in Southeast Asia (December 2020, untranslated).
The May 14 victory in Thailand of progressive forces in that country locked in a recurrent cycle of military coups shows that a more genuine democracy remains a desirable horizon in Southeast Asia – even if the Move Forward party , winner of this legislative election, will have to fight to form a coalition. If the geopolitical factor did not weigh in these elections, the young generations who carried this reform movement born in 2019 are the very ones who invested themselves in 2020 in the virtual coalition of the “milk tea alliance”. (#milkteaalliance), uniting Thais, Taiwanese and Hong Kongers against the arrogance of Chinese ultranationalists during Covid-19.
The Thai army, which in the past persecuted “Communists” in the name of its alliance with the United States, is today associated with the camp of repression and censorship embodied in Beijing. The military junta had also approached China after the 2014 coup in Thailand, to review its copy after the fiasco of the acquisition of Chinese submarines – they were to operate with German engines that Berlin refuses to deliver.
Joe Biden’s United States is on the rise in the region. They are on their honeymoon with Vietnam, to which they have supplied a large quantity of vaccines against Covid. In the Philippines, an American ally tempted by China under ex-president Rodrigo Duterte, the election as president in May 2022 of “Bongbong” Marcos led to an enthusiastic realignment with Washington, Manila having even endorsed the access to four new bases for the American marines. America also offers aid to the coast guards of countries with territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea (Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei).
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