ASEAN must be up to speed with the developments in the EU, Russia, and Moldova

To invite Moldova into the EU without first de-escalating this fundamental confrontation is to play with fire. Moldova's application to join the European Union is closely connected to Ukraine’s situation. Notwithstanding Moldova's pro-EU orientation after each national election, the danger of joining the EU is now ever higher. ASEAN must understand such geopolitical risks. Why?

Russia’s war in Ukraine has not ended. Sanctions, energy embargoes, and mutual hostility have hardened into a systemic rupture.

Moscow continues to test Europe through hybrid warfare — cyberattacks, disinformation, destabilization campaigns — not just in Ukraine but across the Balkans, the Baltics, and yes, Moldova itself.

Just as crucially, there are outright Russian violations.

Invariably, they have triggered discussions about the EU building a "Wall of Drones" as a deterrent to Russian behaviour.

To expand the EU into this zone of peace and development without a framework for stability with Moscow risks drawing a frontline into the EU’s very fabric.

Moldova may deserve encouragement, but the EU must weigh whether accession would enhance security or expose new vulnerabilities. Increasingly, it is the latter.

Unless Europe and Russia can stabilize their relations, Moldova’s entry risks becoming not an enlargement of peace, but an enlargement of conflict-driven problems, which the EU is already struggling to handle.

Moldova has courageously reoriented itself toward Europe, passing constitutional amendments, combating corruption, and resisting Moscow’s manipulations.

Yet for Brussels, symbolism is not strategy. To treat Moldova as a victory trophy against Russia risks making Chisinau a magnet for pressure, coercion, or even confrontation.

The EU’s first duty must be to prevent itself from stumbling into escalation. Without a modus vivendi with Moscow — even a fragile one — enlargement becomes less an act of solidarity than a reckless gamble.

This is where Southeast Asia offers a telling contrast. ASEAN’s members, confronting great powers in their midst, have long practiced a more calibrated diplomacy.

The “ASEAN Way” emphasizes dialogue, consensus, and non-interference, even at the cost of slower progress.

The region’s risk threshold is lower: it prefers careful calibration and balancing rather than outright confrontation. Nor has any country in ASEAN connived to build up more secret alliances to deter the likes of China and Russia. Instead, ASEAN has focused on trade and more trade. It can seem cold and calculated amidst great power rivalry, but ASEAN must do what it does best: tread out diplomatic templates that border on sheer insouciance. Learn how to roll over and play dead.

If ASEAN does not feign such indifference, across the region, to the degree of even being boring, the statecraft of ASEAN will be exposed to intense lobbying by all great powers to join them.

For example, Europe’s eastern frontier, by contrast, is now operating at a dangerously high threshold of risk.

Its leaders appear willing to test how far Russia can be pushed, believing that NATO’s shield and EU solidarity will deter escalation. Yet deterrence without dialogue is brittle.

ASEAN would never consider pulling a contested border state into its fold without some prior mechanism for accommodation with the rival power.

The EU must therefore think sequentially, not emotionally. The moral and political encouragement of Moldova is right and necessary — but accession cannot substitute for a stable relationship with Russia. If Europe continues to expand into a hostile vacuum, it is effectively daring Moscow to escalate further.

Stabilization does not mean surrender. It involves reopening avenues for arms control, implementing risk-reduction mechanisms, and fostering incremental trust-building, no matter how limited.

It means admitting that Europe’s security cannot be built solely on the exclusion of Russia, but on a sustainable balance with it.

The EU is already living dangerously with Russia. Moldova, brave and reformist as it is, must not become the pawn in this perilous game. It is not the position of ASEAN to tell the EU and Moldova how to behave. Risk-averse diplomatic practice should serve as an example to the EU and Moldova on how peace, imperfect as it can be, can be maintained with Russia.

Enlargement without stabilization is a recipe for more profound insecurity — not only for Moldova, but for the EU itself.

ASEAN demonstrates that risk thresholds can be effectively managed through dialogue and restraint. Europe must rediscover this wisdom before it promises Moldova a future that could instead become a frontline.

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