Southeast Asia is currently reassessing the role of major powers in the region and how to engage with them. While hedging is still a prominent feature of their response to growing geopolitical frictions, many regional states are changing the way they perceive security threats and measure influence. As the global environment grows more volatile – with renewed great power tensions, the U.S. trade escalations and intensifying climate impacts, to name a few – regional governments are adjusting not just to immediate pressures, but to long-term risks.
The focus appears to be shifting from long-held security alignments and diplomatic signaling to more grounded, results-based assessments. Rather than asking who leans towards whom, Southeast Asian states are increasingly concerned with which partners show up consistently and offer practical solutions to pressing challenges.
The State of Southeast Asia 2025 Survey by Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, conducted from January to mid-February 2025, offers some useful insight into how the informed public views these challenges. While not a real-time snapshot, the survey helps illustrate a broader recalibration – how trust, relevance, and reliability are being redefined in the region’s evolving strategic environment.
One of the clearest findings, reinforced by recent events, is that Southeast Asian countries are not making binary choices between the U.S. and China. The U.S. was slightly preferred as a strategic partner (52.3 percent) over China (47.7 percent), but this margin most likely reflects hedging, not alignment. Many states continue to depend on China for trade and investment, while looking to the U.S. and others for strategic balance. At the same time, many are expanding issue-based cooperation with a wider pool of external partners, such as Japan, India, Australia, and the European Union, whether it be infrastructure, digital connectivity, climate action or defense capacity-building.
Even so, confidence in the U.S. remains conditional. At the time of the survey, which was conducted on either side of Trump’s inauguration on January 20, trust in the U.S. had risen to 47.2 percent, reflecting hopes for stability and support for international rules. But since Donald Trump’s reintroduction of sweeping tariffs on both friends and foes, doubts about Washington’s consistency have re-emerged. At the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue defense conference in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth urged allies to lift defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, drawing comparisons to NATO, and painted China as the region’s main threat. While acknowledging increased levels of regional defense budgets, many watchers saw this call as an example of security-heavy messaging that overlooks the region’s broader priorities. Australia has distanced itself from the US call. A March 2025 survey showed that only one-third of Australians were on board with increasing defense spending.
China, meanwhile, gained ground in perceived trust, rising to 36.6 percent. This improvement reflects successful diplomacy in several countries with strong economic ties to Beijing. But levels of trust remain uneven. In maritime Southeast Asia, concerns persist over China’s actions in the South China Sea and its use of economic leverage in support of its expansive maritime claims. Many states see China as essential, but also as a potential source of coercion.
These views are part of a longer trend. Since 2020, regional attitudes toward both powers have shifted with global events. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has delivered infrastructure but raised fears of debt dependency. The U.S. has offered high-level rhetoric but often struggled with consistency. Neither power is fully trusted.
Other players are benefiting from this cautious outlook. Japan remains Southeast Asia’s most trusted external partner, with a 66.8 percent trust rating. Its steady engagement, development support and non-threatening approach have made it a durable presence. The European Union is also gaining ground, reaching 51.9 percent, based on its role in climate diplomacy, human rights and multilateral initiatives. India’s trust rating rose by 10 points, though it still lags behind its peers. Despite its efforts to expand ties, especially in digital and defense sectors, New Delhi is still seen as limited in follow-through.
Perhaps the most important shift isn’t geopolitical, but structural. For the first time, climate change and extreme weather emerged as the top regional concern, with over half of respondents ranking it above traditional security threats or economic downturns. Across Southeast Asia, climate risks are already visible in terms of food insecurity, forced migration, extreme weather events, and failing infrastructure. These issues are now shaping how the regional informed publics judge external partners.
This shift in perception probably hasn’t been fully absorbed into official messaging. Trump’s latest round of tariffs has drawn policymaking attention further toward countering trade downturns. At the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim prioritized trade and economic resilience. While that focus reflects real, immediate pressures, it sits uneasily with growing public anxiety about climate vulnerability and the long-term sustainability of national economies.
Still, institutional change is underway. Under Malaysia’s chairmanship, ASEAN recently adopted a strategic plan for 2026-30 that focuses on deeper intra-ASEAN integration, clean energy, and sustainable infrastructure. This collective vision reflects a broader understanding that the region’s future security lies as much in domestic resilience as in external balancing. This marks not just an inward-looking posture, but also a new framework for judging which external actors are seen as credible contributors to regional resilience.
Southeast Asian governments are reassessing how they judge external influence. Military engagement still matters, but so does practical cooperation on the issues of most concern to the region. Countries that can support energy transition, climate adaptation and long-term development are more likely to build enduring trust. This logic mirrors the region’s view of development aid: trust and influence are no longer earned through grand strategies or headline figures, but through consistent, tangible outcomes that respond to real needs.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect those of his workplace and affiliated institutions.