Southeast Asia is more secure with geo-policing than geopolitics first

What Southeast Asia needs instead is a reorientation toward geo-policing—a regional approach that emphasizes law enforcement cooperation, maritime surveillance, cyber regulation, and intelligence-sharing. While geopolitics breeds zero-sum thinking and encourages arms races, geo-policing prioritizes collective resilience, rule-based governance, and trust-building. In this regard, Southeast Asia is safer with geo-policing than with geopolitics.

The danger of militarized thinking persists because geopolitics traditionally assumes that regional peace is best preserved through deterrence. In Southeast Asia, this logic has led to naval modernization, foreign base access agreements, and participation in security pacts such as the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Strategy. From the Philippines’ Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement with the United States to Vietnam’s strategic hedging against China, the region is increasingly caught in an arms buildup driven by mistrust and strategic anxiety.

However, such militarization has not translated into enhanced regional security. On the contrary, it has fostered suspicion, heightened the risk of accidental conflict, and weakened ASEAN centrality.

Instead of bolstering sovereignty, geopolitics often traps states in a binary choice: align with one major power or risk being isolated. This outcome is antithetical to ASEAN’s long-held principle of “non-alignment with engagement.”

Geo-policing offers a different path—one that focuses on non-traditional security threats and regional cooperation rather than power projection. It prioritizes the practical dimensions of safety: controlling smuggling routes, preventing maritime piracy, securing digital infrastructure, combating human and drug trafficking, and enhancing cross-border law enforcement. This approach has long been embedded in ASEAN’s institutional architecture mechanisms, such as ASEANAPOL, the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC), and the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Persons (ACTIP) provide essential platforms for real-time collaboration among national forces and border security agencies.

These mechanisms are operational—not aspirational—and respond directly to the insecurities felt by citizens and states alike.

Malaysia’s chairmanship of ASEAN in 2025 has sharpened the focus on geopolitics, particularly in addressing emerging threats from online scam syndicates and transnational crime networks.

In partnership with Thailand and Cambodia, Kuala Lumpur has mobilized joint task forces to identify and dismantle criminal nodes operating in border regions. This initiative strengthens community safety while bypassing the combative logic of geopolitics.

A compelling example lies in the management of maritime tensions. While geopolitics has produced stalemates in the East and South China Sea, geo-policing has yielded limited but real progress. Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines have expanded trilateral maritime patrols in the Sulu and Celebes Seas.

These operations—unlike traditional naval deterrence—are rooted in coordinated policing, information exchange, and maritime domain awareness. Rather than confrontational manoeuvres, geo-policing fosters operational trust.

When nations cooperate on maritime crime prevention, illegal fishing enforcement, and rescue coordination, they build habits of cooperation that can spill over into broader regional diplomacy.

This approach is particularly relevant given the growing technological threats to maritime security. Real-time satellite imagery, drone patrols, and digital vessel-tracking systems now make it possible to monitor vast stretches of ocean efficiently, provided that nations share data and coordinate response strategies.

Geo-policing thus leverages both institutional cooperation and technological advancement, a combination that classical geopolitics often overlooks. Yet the threats Southeast Asia faces are no longer limited to territory and naval encroachments.

They extend deep into the cyber realm. Ransomware, phishing, disinformation campaigns, and digital infrastructure sabotage now pose daily risks to regional stability.

In this context, geo-policing becomes even more urgent. ASEAN has begun laying the groundwork for a collective cyber strategy, including the ASEAN Cybersecurity Cooperation Strategy and the establishment of national Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs). The challenge lies in operationalizing these frameworks through shared digital forensics, joint investigations, and harmonized cybercrime legislation.

Geopolitics cannot solve these issues. Deploying more military assets or entering formal alliances does little to protect critical infrastructure from cyber threats. Geo-policing, on the other hand, equips ASEAN to face these challenges by fostering cooperation in cybersecurity governance and building digital trust across borders.

ASEAN’s track record of preferring quiet diplomacy over overt confrontation makes it naturally suited for a geo-policing paradigm. To make this approach successful, institutional reforms must be embraced that prioritize capability over symbolism.

ASEANAPOL should be upgraded into a more robust regional security body with greater autonomy and real-time intelligence-sharing capabilities. Criminal codes and legal standards—particularly those concerning cybercrime, human trafficking, and environmental crime—must be harmonized to reduce jurisdictional loopholes that criminals exploit. Regional training centres should be strengthened to enhance the skills of coast guards, cyber units, and police forces across member states. Investment must be channelled into joint surveillance and response systems, including AI-assisted monitoring of high-risk zones such as the Mekong River Basin, the Sulu Sea, and the digital marketplaces operating on the dark web.

Such reforms are far less expensive than procuring submarines or fighter jets, yet they are markedly more effective in tackling the threats that undermine regional resilience. Geo-policing is not a substitute for diplomacy or defence, but it is the missing link that transforms regional talk into regional action.

The world’s major powers may continue to play their games of balance and containment, but Southeast Asia cannot afford to remain a pawn on someone else’s chessboard. The true threats to regional security today lie in the erosion of law enforcement capacity, the fragility of digital systems, and the rise of cross-border criminal networks. These are problems that cannot be bombed, contained, or sanctioned out of existence.

Geo-policing offers ASEAN a way to reclaim agency over its security future. It is cooperative, adaptive, and rooted in the daily realities of governance. Rather than dramatize military tension, it seeks to reduce friction through enforcement, surveillance, and legal coherence.

In choosing geo-policing over geopolitics, Southeast Asia is not retreating from the world—it is charting a smarter, more sustainable path forward. In a century where hybrid threats are the norm, this is not only prudent. It is imperative.

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Phar Kim Beng is Director of the Institute of Internationalization and ASEAN Studies (IINTAS), Professor of ASEAN Studies in International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) and a former Head Teaching Fellow at Harvard University. ** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.