By Collins Chong Yew Keat

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's visit to the United Kingdom is pillared on the facet of strengthening economic friendship efforts for Malaysia to get the needed economic, trade, and investment returns, especially in new key critical areas that will be in line with the country’s economic transformation efforts.

The visit is also to secure greater trust and bond at the highest level involving the leaders, and to strengthen the deep underlying historical foundation of the ties between both nations encompassing both the economic pillar and the already strong people to people and business and education ties.

This also paves the way for more transcending ties in geopolitics, defence, and security, which Malaysia needs to strengthen its fallback security options and deterrence capacity.

UK is increasing its Indo Pacific strategic pivot, in joining the bandwagon of securing the critical geographical frontier in securing both the supply chain of key natural resources and critical minerals through maritime security and the concept of a Free and Open Indo Pacific, and also in increasing its presence in key flashpoints which will have a direct factor on the stability of the regional order based on rules and norms.

Malaysia as the ASEAN Chair will be banked on to ensure the key tenets of regional order based on the rules-based order and to galvanise regional economic integration and the roles of the collective ASEAN economies. In the realm of defence and security, the role of Malaysia in serving as both the check and balancer and Malaysia in extending its defence friendshoring net also helps to fill the gap in the region’s total combined defence deterrence, as reflected in the deals with South Korea, the renewed defence ties with Japan with OSA, and new potential defence partner in Turkiye in shoring up Malaysia’s defensive capacity.

This helps to strengthen Malaysia’s overall defensive capacity, and also complements the overall added strength of the existing FPDA where Malaysia sits at the central strategic role for the UK in maintaining its Indo Pacific presence and the role in Southeast Asia both in securing its supply chain and geopolitical interests and as a extended layer of forward base shield in facing potential hostilities and threats towards UK interests and in facing China’s new power moves.

The Indo Pacific pivot by the UK will very much bring positive returns to Malaysia especially in the defence and economic sectors, where the UK would increase its extended deterrence efforts through the intensification of power projection activities and in sending a message to the region that the UK’s presence is here to stay.

These maneuvers in defence and diplomatic friendshoring through the power moves and in deepening military ties and cooperation with key existing allies and with new potential partners will benefit the region and Malaysia, through a firm intent to help secure a free and open navigation, the right of passing and overflight in international waters and in upholding the sanctity of the rules-based order based on maritime and international law.

The new wave of building credible guardrails in the Indo Pacific will elevate Malaysia’s long term future role in UK’s new geopolitical shaping and strategic charting in this region, both in getting the best of Malaysia’s unique advantage in critical minerals and the country’s  new similar economic and energy transitions, as well as Malaysia’s new venture in capturing the role and influence of the Global South and the existing leadership in the Muslim world.

Malaysian companies and firms’ dealings and ease of doing services will be made easier through the grouping of the CPTPP, where the inclusion of the UK will provide positive ripple impact. Malaysia’s current major firms which have been having a significant presence in the UK will also get the spillover impact. Most importantly, Malaysia’s main resources of palm oil and rubber which have been subject to tariff before this, will now enjoy tariff free and also reduction in other barriers to the UK market.  

New Economic Returns

The economic opportunities for Malaysia with the UK as a CPTPP member will open up new access both to traditional economic and trade sectors and also as a precursor to similar pursuits of new economic transitions with the reliance of digital transformations, values-based economic approach with the focus on high technology, strategic galvanization of key critical minerals and commodities and in the process of transitioning away from the labour intensive and low skilled economic and investment climate into a high skilled talent and knowledge transfer and technology and digital embrace which will supplement the needed goals of Malaysia in achieving carbon reduction, new energy transition, enhancing food and supply chain security and as an important hedge and added fallback in Malaysia’s new quest to rely more heavily on the Global South.

The UK has been a traditional partner and a trusted security provider for decades, encompassing a deep level of trust and interdependence since the Cold War and the post colonial period. The Five Powers Defence Arrangement (FPDA) has been the main manifestation of the cornerstone of this deeply embedded milestone of defence and security reliance, but bilateral security and defence will need to be shored up.

Unlike defence ties with the US, defence ties with the UK has a distinct and unique facet and nature of mutual relations, underscored by past common struggles against a common threat and that it remains robust with comprehensive, pervasive  and deep lying connections at various levels of the societal and non societal ties between both nations and historical connotations of both having shared a long history of entangled development both under the Commonwealth banner and the evolving need and nature of the threat settings with the return of traditional threats.

Unlike the UK, for the US, it involves more of a practical grand overview of the significance of holding up to an expanded and extended umbrella of maintaining the values based ideals and the tenets of freedom and democracy and defending the norms of international law and the rule of law.   

Critical industries of mutual interests include Artificial Intelligence, digital economy, critical minerals and semiconductors, new energy economy, blue economy and the defence and security related industries.

The UK has the conventional and existing edge in terms of expertise, infrastructure and systemic readiness for this AI venture, while Malaysia provides key holistic public-private orientation and a strong focus on the application of AI into different models of industrial and economic transition of the country, and serving as the hub with the influx of both Western and non Western firms and inflow of capital and investments in AI and digital related fields, apart from the existing strong foundation in electrics and electronics and semiconductor manufacturing which will benefit the UK in expanding the digital outlook in the Indo Pacific.

Role in Navigating the West-China Tension

The UK is a cherished and a much needed historical partner in a holistic overview, and more so in the realms of defence and security and economic and investment security. With increasing vulnerabilities and uncertainties in power tussles and a growing security dilemma, this long standing economic, cultural, and defence partnership of UK-Malaysia has stood the test of time and upheavals, and remains the indispensable factor in ensuring Malaysia’s deterrence capacity, in building a more resilient and durable confidence and trust based on proven and trusted acts of support in the past, and more importantly, in sending a message that despite past neglect of the region, the new chairmanship and the renewed ties will bolster joint guardrails in establishing a new wave of economic and security confidence despite Malaysia’s strict adherence to its non alignment policy.

Advanced manufacturing, new energy transition and digital economy remain the new facets of geostrategic importance to both countries, and both will amplify efforts to remain ahead in these fields. For the UK, Malaysia sits at the centre of ley maritime routes and in ensuring stable supply chain for the UK, in standing up to China’s new economic and defence postures.

In taking into account the new opening and threats from the emergence of the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route in the renewed power tussle and power posture there over strategic routes and critical minerals and with the new opening of trade routes, UK will need a two pronged strategy of having ASEAN and key components of ASEAN including Malaysia as the hedge and fallback in its quest to deal with the emergence of the Indo Pacific and new potential flashpoints in the Arctic that will impact on its interests.

Collectively, the ASEAN bloc is ahead of the UK as the world’s fifth-largest economy, and UK-ASEAN  trading relationship is worth £50 billion. The UK sees ASEAN as the key economic and increasingly defence bloc that has a profound direct impact on the UK’s long term strategic balancing in its dealings and responses with a delicate and unpredictable China and also with the long time ally of Washington, even in Trump 2.0.

Both the UK and Malaysia will need to foster deeper economic exchange of capital and technologies, drawing from the entrenched solid foundation of ties at the people to people level and at the official Track I level, in having more barrier free exchange of business, trade and investments in key areas for mutual benefits.

Current conventional model of strategic hedging and balancing also serve as a limitation for Malaysia in getting the full returns from the ties with the UK, and systemic practical barriers at the public level also constraint the efforts to further deepen solid commitments of key sensitive and strategic fields in defence and security, in keeping with the need to avoid upsetting other economic partners that are heavily depended on.

Ties have been robust especially at the people to people level, education, tourism, research, new demographic outreach, business and trade. These areas of low politics provide the most significant and easiest low hanging fruits in cultivating the supportive factor in the larger spillover impact and precursor to the more critical areas of deeper joint defence and security partnership and also cooperation in critical fields and the supply chain and food and energy security.

Ultimately, the quest to reap durable and future driven returns from this unique and special relationship will be in the form of a strong and resilient message of the unique interdependence of key economic and security support and the deep trust and bond between both nations that were once under a different set of ties during the colonial period.

This serves as a symbol of a needed trust based relationship in creating a region and a world that is abiding with the rule of law and the international law in upholding peace and stability.