By: Professor Dato Dr Ahmad Ibrahim
The ongoing war in the Gulf has taught us one thing. We have moved from an era of convenience to an era of vulnerability. The notion that the global supply chain is a benign, invisible hand ensuring prosperity has been shattered. We now recognize that unilateral dependence—whether on a single chokepoint for energy, a handful of nations for active pharmaceutical ingredients, or concentrated grain belts for food—is not an economic strategy; it is a national security liability.
For too long, the discourse on security has been siloed. We treat defense, energy, food, and medicine as separate bureaucratic fiefdoms. Yet, the next major crisis—be it a pandemic, or a climate-induced famine—will not respect these distinctions. A disruption in energy logistics immediately compromises food production, through fertilizer and transport, and medical supply chains. A cyber-attack on defense infrastructure could simultaneously cripple a nation’s power grid. The US-Iran Gulf War was a preview of this convergence.
The urgent task before nations, example countries of ASEAN, is the formulation of a holistic National Security Strategy (NSS) that treats economic resilience as a pillar of defense. This means moving beyond vague aspirations of “self-sufficiency” to concrete policies: mandating minimum strategic reserves of food and medicine, incentivizing domestic manufacturing of critical generic drugs, and diversifying energy sources to include non-traditional partners. But no single nation in ASEAN can achieve this alone. Regional blocs are primarily economic projects or forums for diplomatic dialogue. They excelled at building trust through non-interference and free trade. But the threat landscape of the 2020s demands that a bloc like ASEAN evolve from a consensus-based talking shop into a functional security collective. The concept of “resilience” must be mutualized.
ASEAN must rethink its partnership model in four critical domains: Defense: The old paradigm of defense cooperation was about interoperability for peacekeeping. The new paradigm must be about resilience against coercion. ASEAN members need to harmonize their defense industrial bases to reduce reliance on external powers whose strategic interests may not align with regional stability. This doesn’t mean a military alliance, but rather a commitment to shared logistics, joint maritime domain awareness to protect sea lanes, and a mutual understanding that a blockade or cyber-attack on one member is a threat to all.
On energy, ASEAN is rich in renewable potential but fragmented in infrastructure. The region’s energy security is currently hostage to geopolitical whims and volatile global LNG prices. The solution is the ASEAN Power Grid. By connecting diverse energy sources—Lao hydropower, Vietnamese solar, Indonesian geothermal—the bloc can create a buffer against external shocks. Energy security should be redefined not as national self-sufficiency, but as regional interdependence where no single member can be held hostage by an external supplier.
Food security in ASEAN is paradoxical: we are a major producer, yet we are vulnerable to export bans and price spikes. The Gulf War demonstrated the power of oil as a weapon; today, food is being weaponized. ASEAN needs to operationalize its long-discussed but never fully realized emergency rice reserve. This must expand to a broader strategic food buffer, coupled with a mutual pact to refrain from unilateral export bans during crises—a practice that, during the Covid pandemic, turned neighbors against one another.
The pandemic exposed the region’s dangerous dependence on a handful of nations for vaccines and raw materials. ASEAN nations have the manufacturing capability—from Thailand to Singapore to Vietnam—to create a distributed supply chain for essential medicines and medical devices. By harmonizing regulatory approvals and creating regional stockpiles, ASEAN can ensure that in the next health crisis, the bloc does not find itself at the back of the global queue, bidding against itself for life-saving supplies. The resistance to such deep integration is understandable. It requires nations to cede a degree of unilateral autonomy and to trust neighbors with matters of “strategic” importance. However, the greater risk lies in remaining fragmented.
The Gulf War was a wake-up call on our complacency with supply chains. The wars in Ukraine and the Gulf, the growing intensity of great power competition, and the accelerating climate crisis have proven that the period of “business as usual” is over. For ASEAN, the path forward is clear. We can continue as a collection of nations individually vulnerable to coercion, reliant on distant powers for our most critical needs. Or we can finally internalize the lesson that in a dangerous world, security is no longer a zero-sum game. True security—for energy, food, medicine, and defense—lies in the difficult, but essential, work of regional integration. The time for discussion has passed. The time for action is now.
The author is affiliated with the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies at UCSI University and is an Adjunct Professor at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies, Universiti Malaya.
About The Author
