A moment of warmth between Malaysia's Tengku Zafrul and Indonesia's Sri Mulyani Indrawati said more about ASEAN's quiet strength than any joint communiqué ever could.
There is a particular kind of trust that does not need to be written into a treaty. It lives in the laugh shared between two people who have sat across the same difficult table, faced the same impossible choices, and come out the other side still rather fond of each other.
That was the atmosphere when Malaysia's Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz, and former Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati shared a forum stage recently (Jun 10) — exchanging the kind of warm, pointed banter that only comes from years of genuine regional partnership.
The exchange came during "Leadership in a Fractured World: Lessons from ASEAN for Global Governance," a panel held at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Tun Razak Foundation.
When the moderator suggested that ASEAN sometimes functions as a "big sister" keeping its members in line, Sri Mulyani played the part with easy grace. Tengku Zafrul smiled and called it a warning, jokingly.
It was a small moment. But in ASEAN terms, it was everything.
Staying in the Room
The keakraban (intimacy) between the two was not performative diplomacy. It was the natural register of two seasoned hands who understand that regional warmth is not a luxury — it is a strategic asset, particularly when the world is pressing in from all sides.
And it pressed hard in 2025. When Washington's "Liberation Day" tariff announcements landed, Malaysia — then chairing ASEAN's economic pillar — called an emergency meeting of economic ministers within days. The question was blunt: do we face this as a bloc, or does every country go alone?
The answer was neither clean nor unanimous. "Some countries said we should deal as a group. Some countries said we should deal separately," Tengku Zafrul recalled, with the careful diplomacy of a man who knows exactly which country he is not naming.
But what mattered was that everyone stayed in the room. They agreed on three things: the tariff moves were unjustified; the rules-based trading system was worth defending; and retaliation was not the answer. For a bloc often criticised for moving too slowly, this was — in its quiet way — rather significant.
Sitting on the Fence, With Intention
The familiar charge against ASEAN is fence-sitting. But Tengku Zafrul offered a reframe worth taking seriously.
"You can't sit on the fence and be neutral if you are not reliable or not trusted," he said. ASEAN's studied neutrality — rooted in the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality that dates to Malaysian Tun Abdul Razak's era — has never been about having no position.
It has been about maintaining credibility with all parties precisely so the bloc remains useful to everyone. In an era of forced alignment, that is a form of power.
The real opportunity, he argued, is not in choosing between Washington and Beijing. It is in choosing each other.
ASEAN is 680 million people, growing at four to five per cent, with half its population under 30. Intra-ASEAN trade sits at just 23 to 24 per cent — unrealised potential that, together with the world's first digital economy framework agreement signed just weeks prior, points to an integration story that global fragmentation has only accelerated.
"If you want to bet on the future for ASEAN," he said, "it's not to bet on the US or bet on China, but bet on being together."
Oxford, Tun Razak and a Warning the World Should Hear
The conversation carried further when Tengku Zafrul and Sri Mulyani shared a panel at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford — held in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Tun Razak Foundation — on "Leadership in a Fractured World: Lessons from ASEAN for Global Governance."
What Tengku Zafrul wrote afterwards was not ministerial boilerplate. It was clear-eyed and urgent.
"Great powers are pressing harder. Supply chains are growing more fragile. Small and medium-sized countries cannot afford to misstep," he posted on X.
"That is not a weakness. That is a strength," speaking of ASEAN's decades-long ability to hold together nations of vastly different sizes, politics, and interests without fracturing the whole.
Then came the line that cuts cleanest: "We need to be friends with everyone, but not a tool for anyone."
It is the distillation of everything ASEAN has tried to be. Not alignment. Not isolation. Sovereign friendship, grounded in interests, sustained by trust — and, where possible, by the kind of relationship where a warning can be delivered with a smile because the foundation beneath it is solid.
That Sri Mulyani sat beside him at Oxford — Indonesia's most internationally recognised economic voice, alongside Malaysia's trade minister, both invoking the legacy of the man who drew the original blueprints for Southeast Asian neutrality — was itself a statement. ASEAN's keakraban does not stay in the room. It travels. It speaks at Oxford. It writes itself into the record.
Fifty-eight years in, ASEAN is still building that foundation. Slowly, deliberately — and still very much together.
