Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are actively shaping their positions in the intensifying US–China competition through differentiated diplomacy, institutional activism and economic statecraft rather than formal alignment or passive neutrality, seeking to preserve policy space while leveraging their ASEAN membership and independent foreign-policy traditions.

Indonesia emphasises domestic capacity-building and multilateral engagement to move beyond non-alignment; Malaysia balances commercial ties with China against security and technology links with the United States under guiding principles for sensitive investments; Singapore maintains robust defence relations with Washington and deep economic ties with Beijing while strengthening rules-based regimes to enhance its credibility and regional stability.

The three states can reinforce ASEAN-centred mechanisms such as the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum for dialogue and crisis management, pursue economic diversification and technology screening to reduce critical dependencies, and adopt a coordinated yet flexible approach that builds common standards, analytical capacity and domestic legitimacy, drawing on Indonesia’s scale, Malaysia’s pragmatism and Singapore’s institutional networks.

As the US–China rivalry deepens into a global strategic competition over trade, security, technology, and influence, Southeast Asia is increasingly affected by developments that Seattle-based Mercer Consulting Group’s Asia analyst calls “a high-stakes game,” with the region’s autonomous economic development at stake. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, collectively known as ISM, are crucial in that game because of their deep economic interlinkages with both the US and China, their membership of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and their consistently independent foreign policy stance anchored on a strong commitment to regional stability. The three states thus are not becoming part of a US-led military alliance, nor are they paralyzed into mere neutrality. Instead, through what this analyst terms “balancing through differentiated diplomacy, institutional activism, and economic statecraft,” they are actively shaping the competition to preserve maximum policy space for themselves in an era of great-power rivalry.

The scale of Indonesia’s population, resources, and geography forms a........

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