By: Prof Dr Phar Kim Beng
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 23 (Bernama) -- Southeast Asia has crossed a threshold. Climate disasters are no longer episodic shocks interrupting normal governance.
They are now recurring conditions that test the state’s capacity to function at all.
In 2025, while regional attention was absorbed by renewed political instability along the Thailand-Cambodia border, a more pervasive crisis unfolded across the region.
Floods driven by extreme climate patterns swept through Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam, overwhelming infrastructure, uprooting communities, and accelerating ecological collapse.
Wildlife corridors vanished. Animals were forced into towns and farms. Human security and environmental security fused into a single, grinding emergency.
This is no longer a future scenario. It is an annual reality.
Yet one response across Southeast Asia has repeatedly been misunderstood - sometimes wilfully so: the decision by governments to prioritise internal command and domestic response before welcoming large-scale foreign humanitarian intervention.
Indonesia, in particular, became a lightning rod for criticism. Some commentators reduced Indonesia’s caution to personality politics, projecting accusations of ego onto Prabowo Subianto and his administration.
This framing is not only unfair; it is analytically shallow. It ignores the historical experience of post-colonial states and the hard lessons learned when emergencies dissolve authority rather than strengthen it.
No Southeast Asian government rejects goodwill. Foreign assistance can be valuable and, at times, indispensable. The danger lies not in aid itself but in timing, sequencing, and control.
Development studies have long described the trap of dependencia: when emergency relief gradually substitutes for state capacity, leaving countries weaker after the crisis than before it.
Humanitarian organisations, however professional, cannot fully grasp local geography, informal power structures, or the political economy of disaster zones.
When aid arrives without alignment to local needs, it still produces gratitude because victims feel morally compelled to thank outsiders. But gratitude is not governance. Nor does it guarantee effectiveness.
Worse still, uncontrolled inflows fracture authority. Relief goods are diverted, monetised, or captured by intermediaries who thrive in disorder.
In such environments, emergencies acquire a second life - one shaped by profiteering, patronage, and corruption. Southeast Asia has seen this movie before. It knows how it ends.
This is where Indonesia’s doctrine of Mandiri -- self-reliance grounded in resilience -- must be understood properly. Mandiri is not bravado. It is institutional memory.
Among ASEAN states, all except Thailand were colonies. They learned that sovereignty erodes fastest during crises, when urgency overrides order and compassion is mistaken for the suspension of control.
Within this framework, Tito Karnavian emerges as one of the region’s most serious crisis managers - not because he seeks attention, but because he avoids it.
Tito’s background as a former national police chief and counter-terrorism professional shapes his approach.
He treats disasters not as public relations moments, but as stress tests of the state. His priorities are clear and consistent: preserve the chain of command, protect logistical integrity, and prevent parallel authorities from emerging on the ground.
In flood zones -- where desperation, goodwill, and opportunism collide -- discipline is not cruelty. It is protection.
Tito’s refusal to conflate compassion with permissiveness reflects a mature understanding of emergency governance.
Foreign aid is not dismissed because it is unwanted. It is sequenced because, if unmanaged, it can destabilise.
Once relief goods circulate beyond state oversight, humanitarian crises mutate into governance crises.
This is why the most responsible initial response to external assistance may sound counter-intuitive: Not yet. Such restraint is not rudeness. It is statecraft.
Indonesia is not an outlier. Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam are not inhospitable societies.
ASEAN’s diplomatic culture is built on courtesy, restraint, and quiet coordination. It is often the noise of online outrage, rather than the practice of governance, that misrepresents these choices as arrogance.
By insisting that domestic institutions lead first, assess second, and accept external support only when it reinforces national capacity, Tito operationalises Mandiri rather than merely invoking it.
He does so in close coordination with President Prabowo Subianto, signalling a state that is neither closed nor naïve -- open to cooperation, but firm on command and control.
This clarity is especially vital in sensitive regions such as Sumatra, where past insurgencies once exploited institutional fragmentation.
As climate change turns floods into permanent features of Southeast Asian life, governments across the region will face mounting pressure to internationalise every emergency.
That path may appear compassionate, but it is also risky. Tito offers a different model: resilience anchored in order, sovereignty preserved through discipline, and humanitarian outcomes protected by coherence.
It is a model suited not to a world of occasional disasters, but to an age of permanent emergency.
Leadership today is often mistaken for visibility. In reality, the most consequential decisions are quiet ones. Knowing when to say “yes” matters.
But in Southeast Asia’s climate future, knowing when to say “not yet” and why, may determine whether states endure or unravel.
Foreign humanitarian assistance cannot be the first recourse. Before help can help, a state must first secure order. In an era of relentless climate stress, that is not severity. It is survival.
-- BERNAMA
Prof Dr Phar Kim Beng is the Director of the Institute of International and ASEAN Studies (IINTAS) at the International Islamic University of Malaysia
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of BERNAMA)
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