In an article published in Forbes yesterday, Ralph Jennings, a journalist specialising on east Asia, said the administration of US president Donald Trump wants to ensure the diplomatic and trade isolation of North Korea, which has recently made belligerent gestures with missiles capable of reaching Los Angeles and other US cities.
He said both Malaysia and Thailand, where Tillerson is also scheduled to meet government officials next week, can expect their concerns on the Trump administration’s relationship with them to be answered during the visit.
“Both countries on the Indochinese peninsula want a thumbs up from Trump, but he may hedge without help on his anti-North Korea cause, and neither Thailand nor Malaysia may be able to offer that,” he wrote.
Quoting Tillerson’s acting assistant secretary Susan Thornton, he said the trip to Malaysia and Thailand was being made in the name of providing “regional security”.
Jennings also said that the US embassy in Manila stated on Friday that the US would push Southeast Asian countries to “downgrade diplomatic engagements and exchanges” with North Korea before the Asean Regional Forum which Tillerson would also be attending in Manila next week.
“For the Trump administration, it’s first about isolating and addressing the North Korea threat and later perhaps about re-balancing China and regaining a bigger place at the Asean table,” the article quoted Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, as saying.
Jennings also said Malaysia looked to the US to counter-balance growing economic dependence on China amid the sighting of Chinese ships in its maritime exclusive economic zone.
However, he cited a finding by the Centre for American Progress, a policy institute, that Trump lost more support in largely Muslim Malaysia when he tried to bar followers of Islam elsewhere from entering the US.
Washington may also hesitate to re-friend Malaysia after the US Department of Justice filed forfeiture complaints against high-level Malaysian officials to recover millions of dollars in assets linked to 1MDB, he added.
Malaysia’s relationship with North Korea became tense after the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged elder half-brother of North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un, at klia2 on Feb 13.
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