Southeast Asia Accepts Maritime Capacity Building, Not Quad Alignment

Maritime cooperation is most likely to gain acceptance in Southeast Asia when it is modular, capacity-first, and not visibly tied to bloc alignment: useful enough to improve national capability, but not so strongly associated with a coalition that it forces a partner to choose sides.

Arzan Tarapore frames the Quad’s problem as one of regional legitimacy. The Quad—Australia, India, Japan, and the United States—has narrowed its agenda into four lines of effort: maritime security; economic prosperity and economic security; critical and emerging technologies; and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Maritime security has become a particularly active line. But its ability to operate in the region depends on how regional states receive not just the Quad label, but particular initiatives associated with its members.

The relevant questions are granular. An Indian-led information-sharing project in the eastern Indian Ocean is not read in the same way as a US-led exercise near disputed South China Sea features. A ship-rider program, tabletop exercise, coast-guard training effort, or anti-illegal-fishing initiative does not carry the same political meaning as a live-fire drill or freedom-of-navigation patrol.

Vietnam, Singapore, and Indonesia distinguish between activities that offer practical national benefits and activities that appear to integrate them into collective deterrence against China. The former can include maritime-domain awareness, law enforcement, disaster relief, search and rescue, training, logistics, and information-sharing. The latter includes visible warfighting preparation, exclusive military blocs, and institutionalized commitments that narrow a state’s room to maneuver.

Marise Payne described the underlying distinction as one between substance and signaling. An activity can be operationally useful while also carrying a strategic or political message that makes participation difficult. For Quad members, the task is therefore not to determine whether Southeast Asia is “for” or “against” maritime cooperation. It is to understand the conditions under which a specific partner can accept it.

The three national assessments differ in important ways, but they apply a comparable set of filters. Who leads affects the political signal and likely Chinese response. What the activity involves determines whether it looks like capacity-building or collective military preparation. Where it occurs changes the level of strategic sensitivity. And the initiative’s branding, membership, and control arrangements affect whether it can be presented as a national or regional function rather than alignment with a bloc.

The distinction is not cosmetic. The same practical activity can be received differently depending on the political setting around it. A capacity-building initiative can become difficult if it is branded as a China-focused coalition project, conducted near a contested feature, led by the United States, or structured in a way that appears to bind a Southeast Asian military to an external order of battle.

Conversely, a project can be more acceptable when it is framed as a regional public good, conducted under national authority, delivered through bilateral or flexible arrangements, and designed to complement rather than bypass ASEAN-centered mechanisms. Those are not merely diplomatic preferences. They are conditions that allow governments to take useful assistance without publicly narrowing their strategic autonomy.

For Le Hiep, Vietnam’s approach begins with diversification and strategic autonomy. Hanoi seeks productive relations with major powers without becoming dependent on, or aligned against, any one of them. Its defense doctrine expresses that position through the “Four No’s”: no military alliances; no alignment with one country against another; no foreign bases or use of Vietnamese territory against third countries; and no use or threat of force in international relations.

The 2019 Defense White Paper also introduced what Hiep calls the “one depend” flexibility: Vietnam may build necessary and appropriate defense relationships according to circumstances. That clause leaves Hanoi room to deepen security ties while preserving its declared non-alignment. It has already expanded bilateral maritime cooperation with every Quad member: Japanese coast-guard vessels, law-enforcement training, and capacity building; Indian naval exchanges, officer training, and submarine-rescue cooperation; Australian maritime-security cooperation, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, defense education, and peacekeeping training; and US support for maritime-domain awareness, coast-guard capability, and naval engagement.

The harder question is whether the same cooperation remains politically comfortable when conducted under an explicit Quad banner. Hiep’s answer is that Vietnam evaluates every proposal through the interaction of leadership, activity, and geography. If one of those variables is mishandled, the political costs—especially in managing relations with Beijing—rise. If all three are calibrated, Hanoi can treat cooperation as routine capacity building rather than strategic alignment.

Vietnam’s preferred lead depends on the political signal

Hiep ranks the Quad members according to how politically sensitive their leadership would be for Hanoi. The ordering does not measure the value Vietnam places on each relationship. It reflects the degree to which a particular lead country causes an initiative to be read through US-China strategic competition.

Hiep’s proposed solution is rotating leadership rather than a permanent lead country. India could lead information-sharing and maritime-domain awareness in the eastern Indian Ocean; Australia could coordinate humanitarian assistance, surveillance, and multinational exercises; Japan could lead coast-guard capacity building and law-enforcement training; and the United States could contribute high-end surveillance and logistics in lower-profile settings away from major flashpoints.

The purpose is to use each country’s comparative advantage without creating the appearance of a fixed coalition directed against China. That same logic applies to geography. The Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal are least sensitive because they are distant from Vietnam’s maritime disputes. International waters are generally manageable when activity is framed as supporting the maritime commons and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Operations in Vietnam’s territorial sea require Hanoi’s explicit approval and remain under Vietnamese control. The South China Sea, especially near disputed features, is most politically charged.

An India-led coast-guard exercise in the southern South China Sea might be manageable, Hiep suggests. The same activity, led by the United States near the Paracels or Spratlys, would carry a much heavier political signal.

Vietnam’s red lines remain foreign military bases, rotational force pre-positioning, coalition warfighting, and alliance-style commitments. Hanoi is unlikely to become a Quad bloc member, but it is also unlikely to stand aside from useful cooperation. The objective, in Hiep’s account, is not to enlist Vietnam in the Quad but to give it options to participate selectively and on its own terms.

China’s importance to Vietnam raises the cost of visible alignment

Vietnam’s caution is not simply a product of its South China Sea disputes. Hiep emphasizes that Vietnam is the only one of the three countries discussed that is China’s immediate land neighbor. That proximity, together with Vietnam’s reliance on China for trade, investment, security, and economic development, raises the cost of appearing to take sides.

He pointed to the difficult period from 2010 to 2020, including China’s 2014 placement of an oil rig in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone and the confrontation and anti-China riots that followed. But Hiep argued that since the early 2020s China has given Vietnam “a relatively easy time” in the South China Sea, with no major incidents between the two countries, while China has shifted its focus toward the Philippines.

Vietnam’s current leadership is also prioritizing economic development, including double-digit growth and high-income status by 2045. China consequently matters more as a development partner. Hiep’s conclusion is not that Vietnam has abandoned bilateral security cooperation with Quad members. It is that Hanoi may now be even more careful about maritime initiatives Beijing could interpret as anti-China.

Sarah Teo describes Singapore’s starting point as the state of US-China relations. For Singapore, almost every major regional security development, including the Quad’s evolution, is secondary to the overriding need to prevent strategic competition from becoming open confrontation.

Singapore is open to newer security arrangements when they support dialogue, practical cooperation, a rules-based order, and international law. It strongly supports ASEAN centrality, while recognizing that ASEAN alone cannot resolve every security problem. Its preferred architecture is therefore an ecosystem of overlapping arrangements that complement ASEAN-led institutions rather than displace them.

Singapore maintains close relationships with all four Quad countries and is generally supportive of Quad activities it judges constructive. Its reservations are less about the substance of practical cooperation than about formal alignment, bloc politics, and arrangements that could heighten regional tensions.

The key Singaporean concern is not simply the Quad label in isolation. It is the prospect that a Quad-associated initiative involving Southeast Asian states might be seen as extending the grouping’s strategic footprint into Southeast Asia and drawing ASEAN members into closer alignment with it. The degree of sensitivity depends on the activity, the extent of Quad participation, and the particular Southeast Asian state involved.

Philippine participation, Teo suggests, might attract less controversy because Manila has a longstanding US alliance and existing security ties with several Quad members. Participation by countries more closely associated with non-alignment could be read as a more consequential regional shift.

A formal Quad initiative may carry more symbolism than an informal arrangement involving two or three Quad members, though Teo sees the differences among Quad-only combinations as relatively modest. The more significant question is what political meaning the proposal conveys: whether it appears as practical regional cooperation or as collective military positioning against a third party.

Field training exercises that deploy forces and assets, demonstrate interoperability and readiness, or imply preparation for possible contingencies sit at the more sensitive end of Singapore’s spectrum. Tabletop exercises, ship-rider programs, and air-rider arrangements sit in the middle because they improve coordination without necessarily foregrounding combat capability. Communication networks, logistics arrangements, information-sharing mechanisms, confidence-building, and maritime-governance functions are less sensitive when framed as functional and capacity-building activities.

Location changes the assessment. Activities in the South China Sea draw heightened attention because they are readily interpreted through strategic competition and possible conflict. Activity near the Malacca Strait can also be politically sensitive, though for different reasons. Teo adds that land-based activity may imply a deeper strategic relationship than maritime or air activity because it involves foreign military personnel operating on another state’s territory.

Singapore will not apply a one-size-fits-all position. It will assess who participates, what the objective is, how the initiative is implemented and presented, whether it reinforces rules and norms, and whether it complements ASEAN centrality. Teo expects Singapore to remain open to practical cooperation, including facilitation where mutual interests are served, provided it is constructive and consistent with Singapore’s broader foreign-policy principles.

In reviewing Singaporean official statements since the Quad’s reemergence in 2017 and 2018, Teo found broad continuity. Singapore may have been somewhat more cautious five or seven years ago, but she sees a “new normal” stabilizing rather than a major change in the country’s core approach.

Muhammad Kharisma argues that Indonesia begins from a different question than outside analysts often do. Observers may ask what benefits Jakarta could gain from closer engagement with the Quad. Jakarta first weighs the risks and costs that cooperation might entail. Benefits are considered only once risk is judged manageable.

That risk-first filter is rooted in Indonesia’s doctrine of bebas aktif—free and active foreign policy—and in the experience of an archipelagic state situated between two oceans and historically between rival spheres of influence. In Kharisma’s formulation, non-alignment is not merely an ideology. It is a safeguard for sovereignty and autonomy.

The historical lesson is twofold: close alignment with one power can invite pressure or punishment from another, and concentrated dependence can create vulnerability. Kharisma cited the post-East Timor US arms embargo as a continuing reference point for why Indonesia should diversify partnerships rather than become overly dependent on any one partner.

Traditionally, the Foreign Ministry has been the institutional custodian of this instinct. It screens proposals through non-alignment, ASEAN centrality, and concerns about bloc politics. Indonesia’s navy and coast guard may be more ready to engage on practical maritime-security problems, but the Foreign Ministry has typically been more geopolitically cautious—particularly because it must manage diplomatic fallout, including objections from the Chinese embassy.

That division helps explain Indonesia’s preference for issue-based cooperation over bloc-based arrangements. Jakarta wants to remain an independent, inclusive broker and bridge builder, not a member of a camp.

Prabowo’s approach makes cooperation more reachable and more reversible

Kharisma’s central qualification is that Indonesia’s gatekeeping process has changed under President Prabowo. The earlier model was Foreign Ministry-led, consensus-driven, and screened through familiar diplomatic language: ASEAN centrality, a rules-based order, and predictable scripts. Under Prabowo, he argues, decisions are more centralized, leader-driven, and transactional.

The question becomes less whether an idea fits established diplomatic language and more what concrete return it delivers to the administration: regime stability, poverty alleviation, asset modernization, resilience, or other material priorities. Kharisma sees sovereignty increasingly understood through regime stability and agenda delivery, and autonomy less as saying no to external involvement than as acquiring capacity and means to endure.

That can make novel proposals easier to bring forward. Indonesia’s accession to BRICS, Kharisma says, demonstrates a willingness to cross barriers that earlier might have produced an automatic rejection. Yet the bureaucracy remains.

This makes cooperation more reachable, Kharisma argues, but also more reversible.

For Indonesia, branding is central. An initiative explicitly presented as a Quad counterbalance to China would be highly provocative because accepting the label means accepting its geopolitical association. By contrast, a neutral initiative without a visible imprint of great-power rivalry could receive a second look—particularly if it is assembled from bilateral building blocks over time rather than introduced as a bloc.

Kharisma calls this the distinction between membership in the Quad and a “Quad derivative”: an Indo-Pacific program or practical product whose origin matters less visibly than its utility. The preferred arrangement would be inclusive, functional, and, where possible, led by states with a direct geographic stake.

Indonesia’s record illustrates the instinct. Kharisma cited Jakarta’s rejection of the US Regional Maritime Security Initiative in 2004 on the grounds that littoral states should own the Malacca Strait; its decision not to join ReCAAP while retaining control over its own maritime information-sharing; its support for littoral-led Malacca Strait Patrols; and its hosting of the inclusive Komodo Exercise, which has brought the United States, China, Russia, and India into one forum.

Potential areas of support include maritime-domain awareness and information-sharing; countering illegal fishing, smuggling, and trafficking; disaster relief; capacity building; and the blue economy. Indonesian officers, Kharisma said, have a real appetite for information-sharing because of concrete concerns including Chinese survey gliders found near the Lombok Strait and perceived threats to undersea cables.

The condition is control. Any information-fusion cell would need to operate in-country, on Jakarta’s schedule and terms. Activity in Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone may be feasible by invitation and at Indonesia’s pace; long-term concessions of access to territorial waters are far harder.

The least acceptable activities are those that resemble a warfighting bloc: large exclusive field exercises, staging and logistics networks, combat activity, or interoperability that binds Indonesian forces into a single order of battle. For Indonesia, Kharisma says, interoperability in that sense is a barrier rather than a benefit. Yet Prabowo’s deal-making orientation could still open possibilities for hosting, maintenance, or logistics access if material returns are tangible and the arrangement is discreet.

Kharisma’s ranking of potential Quad interlocutors differs from Hiep’s Vietnam-centered ordering. In his account, the United States has the greatest weight with Prabowo because proximity to Washington is treated as insurance, although it also raises concerns about Trump-era demands for spending and alignment. Australia and Japan follow: Australia as a nearby partner that understands regional diplomatic language, Japan as a longstanding development partner increasingly relevant to security. India is welcome as a supplier and Global South voice, but is also treated as a competitor for regional influence and external investment.

The three country assessments place live-fire, amphibious, and multi-domain exercises at the politically sensitive end of the spectrum. Marise Payne nevertheless pointed to Talisman Sabre as an important apparent exception: a large Australia-US field training exercise held biennially in northern Australia, with Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand as formal ASEAN participants and Brunei, Malaysia, and Vietnam as observers.

Talisman Sabre includes live-fire combat simulation, amphibious and airborne landings, ground-force maneuvers, urban operations, and multi-domain warfare. Its relevance is not that Southeast Asian countries have become comfortable with Quad-branded warfighting cooperation. Rather, its political setting changes what participation means.

It is conducted in northern Australia rather than in disputed Southeast Asian waters; it is Australia-US led rather than a formal Quad activity; and regional countries participate in distinct roles, including as observers, within a much broader multinational exercise. Those features allow participation without requiring a government to endorse a Quad military identity or signal an alignment decision in the South China Sea.

James Ellis argued that Beijing remains the “silent counterparty” in such decisions. The issue is not only whether an initiative delivers military or security value, but how China will read it and what response a participating state might anticipate. China’s conduct can generate demand for capacity, while its potential retaliatory power makes visible alignment more costly.

The implication is not that framing neutralizes every concern. It is that the setting of an initiative can determine whether regional participation is understood as practical engagement with a partner, or as entry into a coalition directed at China.