US Empire Defeated: Multipolarity Wins Against Colonial West | Dr Kee Beng Ooi

## Introduction A decisive shift in global politics is underway: the long era of Western-dominated globalism is fraying, and a more genuinely multipolar order is emerging. That was the central insight running through a recent conversation with Dr Kee Beng Ooi, director of the Penang Institute. The exchanges sketched how regional histories, economic transformations, and the legacy of decolonization are reconfiguring power relations. Far from being a tidy handover from one hegemon to another, this transition is uneven, contested, and suffused with the cultural memories of empire. Understanding it requires paying attention to local optimism in Southeast Asia, the history behind China’s expanding influence, the unfinished business of Bandung-era sovereignty, the geopolitics of oil and the Middle East, and the strategic realities of the maritime Southeast Asian commons. ## China’s rise and regional history One of the conversation’s most persistent themes was the need to historicize what observers now call “the rise of China.” Dr Kee Beng Ooi insisted that China did not suddenly arrive on the world scene; its presence in Southeast Asia is centuries old. Migration, trade, and cultural exchange from South China shaped the demography and economies of the Malay world, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam long before the nineteenth-century colonial scramble. To see contemporary Chinese influence as a sudden phenomenon is to forget those deep roots. Yet this is not a simple continuity. The current configuration of Chinese power is also a reinvention. Industrial modernization and Western technologies were decisive in China’s recovery from the humiliation and disintegration of the Qing era; the modern Chinese state mobilized borrowed scientific and organizational methods in ways that look both familiar and novel. Dr Kee Beng described the current system as neither a return to “ancient China” nor a carbon copy of Western modernity. It is a synthesis: strong state capacity informed by global science and commerce, deployed within political traditions that feel dynastic to outside observers. That synthesis has profound regional implications. Economic dynamism in East and Southeast Asia—powered in large part by Chinese demand and integration—has altered aspirations across the region. Where independence once meant political survival within a West-centric order, economic growth now makes deeper claims imaginable: equality with Western powers, new forms of regional cooperation, and a global South that can speak with greater confidence. This explains why many Southeast Asians feel more hopeful about their futures than their European counterparts; prosperity reshapes attitudes as surely as ideology does. ## Bandung, Africa, and sovereignty The mid-twentieth century projects of decolonization still cast a long shadow over contemporary diplomacy. Bandung—commonly invoked as the origin point for the Global South—was a deliberate political prod against the assumption that the world should be organized as an arena for Western competition. The conversation reclaimed Bandung as more than nostalgia: it is a living political sensibility that insists on sovereign equality and nonalignment as ethical and strategic imperatives. Dr Kee Beng argued that decolonization’s ambitions were often modest in practice. Newly independent states prioritized defensive nation-building and economic insertion into a global market dominated by Western firms and finance. But the relative decline of neoliberal orthodoxy and the economic rise of non-Western powers have breathed new life into Bandung-style thinking. Economic alternatives give voice to political alternatives: when states can project development independently of Western capital, they can demand a seat at the table that is not simply token. This revival is not confined to rhetoric. The postcolonial world is experimenting with institutional and diplomatic architectures that resist binary framing. Multipolarity, as discussed in the conversation, should not be shorthand for a new set of blocs mirroring the Cold War. Instead, it ought to signify a plurality of centers—economic, cultural, and political—that make unilateral Western policymaking less effective and less legitimate. The challenge is to ensure this plurality does not harden into polarized camps; the historical lesson of Bandung is that sovereign dignity and cooperation offer a pathway out of binary conflict. ## Iran, the Middle East, and oil The wars that dominate Western headlines—Ukraine and recent Middle Eastern conflagrations—are frequently portrayed as implacable remnants of a previous international architecture. The participants in the discussion suggested a different reading: these conflicts are, in part, the last gasps of a world still organized around colonial interests and resource-centred strategic logic. Iran’s confrontation with external forces and its entanglement in regional politics must be read through the prism of resource politics, historical imposition, and a global order that has often instrumentalized the Middle East. Oil remains central to this dynamic. Control over hydrocarbon flows shaped twentieth-century power projection and continues to structure alliances and antagonisms. But the economic landscape is changing. Demand patterns, alternative energies, and new trade networks reduce the leverage of old energy-based hierarchies even as they complicate short-term geopolitics. The conversation emphasized that Western attempts to treat the Middle East as a theatre for demonstrating influence—whether through sanctions, military interventions, or regime-shaping—are increasingly mismatched to an environment where regional actors cultivate diversified partnerships and asymmetric resilience. Crucially, the multipolar turn alters the incentive structure for conflict. When regional powers can access markets, technologies, and security partnerships outside the Western orbit, they have less reason to accept external coercion as a permanent condition. That does not mean violence vanishes. But it does mean that many recent wars are better understood as efforts to preserve an older order than as inevitable clashes of civilizations. ## Maritime Southeast Asia and globalization The maritime arc that runs through the Straits of Malacca and beyond exemplifies how geography, commerce, and diplomacy interlink in the new order. Southeast Asia is intrinsically a maritime region—its cultures and economies have long been shaped by the sea. The conversation called attention to the strategic necessity of keeping the Strait of Malacca open and the region’s ports functioning as global nodes. This is not merely about military access: it’s about sustaining the trade networks on which millions of livelihoods depend. ASEAN’s role in this maritime arena is central. The organization’s longstanding emphasis on neutrality and consensus reflects a regional preference for de-escalation and practical cooperation. Southeast Asian states often prefer to trade, negotiate, and mediate rather than to build exclusionary blocs. That disposition has made the region an incubator for novel forms of globalization—ones that can accommodate Chinese supply chains, Western capital, and third-way development models from elsewhere. Globalization itself is being reframed. The era of export-oriented insertion into Western markets is giving way to more diversified connections. Regional value chains stretch across East Asia, South Asia, and Africa; investment flows include new actors with different conditionalities and expectations. For maritime Southeast Asia, the strategic task is to manage these flows in ways that preserve autonomy: invest in port infrastructure, sustain maritime governance, and build institutional mechanisms that reduce the risk of great-power coercion. The conversation warned, however, that globalization’s benefits are unequally distributed. The region’s optimism coexists with rising in

Globalism DEFEATED! Multipolarity Wins Against Colonial West | Dr Kee Beng Ooi It's the "last hurray of colonialism", as my guest today, Dr. Ooi Kee Beng, puts it. The wars in Ukraine and Iran are left-overs of a time that has already passed and is currently being supplanted by the realities of the Multipolar Order. Dr. Ooi, executive director of Penang Institute, discusses why Southeast Asia feels more hopeful than Europe, how China’s rise shapes decolonization and multipolarity, and why Western thinking still treats the world as a contest. He examines colonial history, the Middle East, ASEAN neutrality, and keeping the Strait of Malacca open. The Penang Peace Dialogue SIGN UP: https://commonwealthofworldchinatowns.com/penang-peace-dialogue Links: Wikibeng: https://wikibeng.com Penang Institute: https://penanginstitute.org ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute: https://www.iseas.edu.sg Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack. com Merch: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:09 Europe and Southeast Asia’s outlook 00:06:13 China’s rise and regional history 00:11:44 Decolonization and a multipolar world 00:23:21 Bandung, Africa, and sovereignty 00:26:39 Orientalism and the colonial world order 00:39:28 Iran, the Middle East, and oil 00:42:56 ASEAN and the Strait of Malacca 00:49:03 Maritime Southeast Asia and globalization #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. Today, for the first time, with Dr. Ooi Kee Beng, the director of the Penang Institute and one of Malaysia's most well-known and influential policy and foreign policy thinkers. Dr. Ooi, welcome. #Kee Beng Ooi Thank you. Thank you, Pascal. #Pascal It's lovely having you. And just before we start, I want to tell everybody that there will be a big event in Penang, actually: the Penang Peace Dialogue on September 5th and 6th, so in less than a month. So a lot of thinkers will actually gather on your beautiful island and talk about the international situation. For anyone who would like to go there, Neutrality Studies still has eight open seats. You can write me an email and say that you would like to participate. I'd be happy to put you in touch. And Dr. Ooi, you will also be part of this group, and then there will be a lot of international relations talk there and analysis on, well, peace in the world. Dr. Ooi, with this out of the way, can -- 1 of 18 -- we talk a little bit about your perspective on where we are in 2026 when it comes to war and peace? Because, you know, in Europe, it looks very, very bleak at the moment. What is your analysis of where we stand? #Kee Beng Ooi Well, that's correct, what you say. I think Europe is in a state of crisis, partly self-made, partly thinking too much sometimes. While in this part of the world, you don't feel that much. You feel it through reading the mass media and how the Trump presidency reacts to all sorts of things, rather aggressively and provocatively and so on. So from here, we do get that sense that, are people preparing for war, or what is this? Well, in Asia as a whole, East Asia at least, things are calm. So if we don't talk about imminent war in Taiwan every day, it's quite a beautiful part of the world. And not only that, in many ways, it's thriving. Economically, it's not doing too badly, even with the American tariffs and other conflicts, including the Ukraine war and Iran. So generally, people are happy and optimistic day to day. Yeah, sorry. #Pascal It's a very different picture. I mean, I got the same feeling every time I visit Southeast Asia, be it Thailand or Indonesia, that people seem quite looking forward to the future, right? It's like there's good things in store. And when they come to Europe, everything is gloomy. Everything is like, oh, it's about war. There will be war. We must prepare for war. Even in Switzerland, it's very dystopian in a sense. #Kee Beng Ooi From our side, of course, we think that it's the discourses and partly the global propaganda has— well, I'll call it the global propaganda machinery—has gone into a very pessimistic mode, I think, for quite a few years now. And so it has a very bad effect, I would say, on Western soft power. I mean, Western soft power has always been very strong in this part of the world. Southeast Asia has always largely been rather, well, pro-West. They like Western things and so on. But all that has disappeared very quickly, I suspect personally, due to things looking like propaganda. And it's as if the reality in Europe has suddenly become very different from the reality here. And I think when we were younger here, let's say 30 years ago, we were more ready to think that our situation is quite like what it is in Europe. We saw each other as more part of a global geoeconomic whole. I think that that time has passed, partly thanks to the rise of China, the rise of India, and so on. The economic reality, I think, is what pushes things. The ideology follows. And so generally, people are rather optimistic here, I think, despite certain natural disasters, as you might have read about here. But it's also a part of the world that's always been rather embracing of differences. It's a very maritime area. Some call it the second Mediterranean, I suppose. So we've always had some level of—some high level of multiculturalism in -- 2 of 18 -- this part of the world. So there's a certain, well, if you like to put a bad spin on it, fatalism; a positive spin is also a good thing, if you know what I mean. It's like not to depend too much on the world too quickly. And of course, I tend to think a lot stems from economics. So when the economic situation is rather good in the region, not only country by country, you tend to feel more optimistic. Social mobility seems very real. It seems real that my children will have a better life than me. There's generally peace. We don't see any chance of a great war breaking out here. Now, that maybe brings me to an important point. We fear that if there is a war here, it will be caused by some Western power. It won't be caused by us. I think that would be a general feel of things. And of course, nobody likes someone—you know, you can't be too positive about people or forces or nations that you think might try to ignite conflict in this part of the world. #Pascal You know, if you listen to especially mainstream Western geopolitical analysis, you will very quickly get the idea that China is about to launch a war against Taiwan, against the Philippines. Is this any of your concern, or is this part of what you previously referred to as the propaganda machinery? #Kee Beng Ooi Now, first, I would say, we say "rise of China." So I think in the West, when they say "rise of China," it's as if China wasn't here before the rise. #Pascal Yeah, right. #Kee Beng Ooi It dropped down from Mars or something. But we've always lived with China. I'm of Chinese origin. Penang is 45% Chinese. So, not to put too much on the Chinese thing, but this part of the world is where China's influence has always been rather great. Maybe if you go back a thousand, two thousand years, Indian influence was rather strong because many of the cultures here, the Malay cultures as defined in Indonesia and Malaysia, are clearly Indic in character. And then there is a Mohammedan, if I use that word, layer on top of that, coming largely from Arabia and India itself. But if we now look at the last few hundred years, you see that the Chinese influence is stronger, mainly through demographics, mainly through movement from South China, immigrants from South China, and also economic influences from China. So since we're talking about that, I would like, before I forget, to say that when we say rise of China, there's of course a rise and a fall. And in Chinese history, you do have that cyclic movement. Dynasties come, dynasties go. And of course, Chinese dynasties tend to be Northern China, really. -- 3 of 18 -- They usually start in Northern China. So Southern China has always had its own history. But every time there's a rise or fall, there will be effects, ripple effects, if you want to call it that, coming into Southeast Asia, especially the northern countries. And of course, as you know, Vietnam used to be under the Chinese for a thousand years. But once they freed themselves, it became very obvious to Vietnamese identity to be, "We are not Chinese," right? That kind of feeling. So that, of course, to think of Vietnam without China is also difficult because that's the big neighbor up north. But then even further down, there have been movements by sea of people going north and south. But, well, many from coastal China would have come down and influenced this part of the world. As we know, if you take Thailand itself, the Thai people today, a large portion of them are of Chinese origin, especially in Bangkok and so on. So all those—well, my long way of saying that when you say rise of China, it's just a continuing story. #Pascal Hey, just a very quick note. The best way to support this channel is by signing up for my free Substack. You can also help with a paid subscription there, or you can get some of our new merch on neutralitystudies.com. Links below. #Kee Beng Ooi See you there. It's like talking about Europe as if France doesn't belong. You know, rise of France. What does that mean? So I would now, of course, when I put it this way, I would, of course, also like to note that this rise of China, this one is different in that it's now totally inspired by Western technologies, Western scientific mindsets, and so on, right? And all that is important, of course, because that was what saw the fall of China, saw the fall of the Qing Empire. They couldn't, despite being at that time the strongest economy in the world, they couldn't really, in the end, resist the largely military technology that the West had. At the end of the 1800s, 1900s especially, well, the British century, of course, came with such might in military, commercial, ideological areas that the ancient Chinese system, in the end, couldn't resist it. And so it fell. So this rise is then a Hegelian step, if I use that word, of East having an antithesis that is the West, and now you have something that is, we don't know what, Westernism with Chinese characteristics? Something like that, right? So we have all this mix of East Chinese communists—well, communist is also Western. And yes, in many ways, you have a communist party running the place, but it's running the place as if it were a dynastic house almost. You know what I mean? I'm trying to bring in the Hegelian idea that there is a historical movement, yeah, going one way and then the other. So you can't just see China as if it's ancient China. It's not ancient China. Ancient China was destroyed in many ways, and this is a new construction. So in that sense, it is not just another rise of China. This rise of China is going to have larger impacts on the whole region. #Pascal -- 4 of 18 -- Yeah, and we see that. So, you know, one of my problems that I often speak about is, of course, that the West has this intense need to conceptualize the entire world of international politics as an us versus them. Again, like, there's good, there's evil, and then there's nothing in between. And I think especially Malaysia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia has now a long history since independence, since the fifties, actually, to say like, no, guys, no. I mean, Bandung was about saying this is not what it should be anymore. And there, in '55, your prime minister at the moment has been quite outspoken of saying like, no, look, we don't pick sides, and we have a different approach at things. What do you think about this? And do you have the impression that the Western colleagues are listening to the perspective that's coming from Malaysia, Indonesia, and other places that are not the West? #Kee Beng Ooi The West has always been i