Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: Vietnam’s Communist Party reappoints its general secretary, Myanmar’s junta declares victory in its pseudo-election, Indonesia and Vietnam join Trump’s Board of Peace, and scientists prove the world’s oldest cave art is in Indonesia.
Vietnam’s To Lam Tightens Grip
To Lam was reappointed on Friday as general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the country’s top political position.
The party congress ran Jan. 19-23. It is yet to be announced who will become president, as is the normal schedule. However, many predict Lam to also be appointed to this role.
The development would further concentrate power in Lam’s hands and end the collective leadership system that characterized Vietnam’s political system for decades.
Since first assuming office as general secretary in 2024, Lam has moved swiftly to boost growth and cement his grip on power. He has declared he wishes Vietnam to grow at 10 percent or more until 2030.
To this end, he has boosted the private sector and fired tens of thousands of civil servants.
Analysts I spoke to saw the congress as a success for Lam. “The main takeaway is that To Lam was given a very strong mandate to accelerate his reform,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, a researcher in Vietnamese politics at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
Giang pointed to how the congress was cut short by a day and half, a sign of strong internal consensus. Should Lam become president—which would happen next month at an extraordinary session of the National Assembly or late March when a new National Assembly has been convened—this would further affirm his power, he added.
The question now is what will Lam’s power herald?
Hai Hong Nguyen, a senior lecturer of politics at VinUniversity, took an optimistic view of the power consolidation. “I think it will allow for swifter decision-making and more consistent implementation,” he told Foreign Policy.
Others, however, are critical. “We are entering an era of ‘Digital Securocracy,’” said Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, aka “Mother Mushroom,” a prominent Vietnamese dissident and founder of the human rights advocacy group WEHEAR. “To Lam’s background is in security and surveillance. We will see the aggressive deployment of technology not to empower citizens but to monitor them.”
Much may depend on the opaque internal politics of the Communist Party itself. Lam’s rise has been supported by the increasingly powerful Ministry of Public Security, where the former police officer built his career.
Yet, as he reaches a political apex, Lam will need to broaden his base to hit his goals.
Giang noted that appointments made at the congress showed a continued rehabilitation of the business-oriented “Southern Faction.” That wing had previously been battered by massive corruption investigations that Lam oversaw as public security minister.
The role of the military will be important, too. Vietnam’s military is a powerful economic player, controlling major state-owned enterprises, and is seen as conservative in its disposition.
One analyst I spoke to predicted that while Lam would grow more tolerant of other factions in the next five years, he doesn’t want anything to stand in the way of his focus on growth.
Some think that the concentration of power could undermine Lam’s economic goals.
“We are witnessing a shift where the Ministry of Public Security is not just a regulator but an active player in the economy,” Nhu Quynh said. Ultimately, she predicted this would undermine growth by distorting the economy and suppressing dynamism in favor of connected incumbents.
What We’re Watching
Myanmar’s junta declares victory. Myanmar completed the third and final stage of its general election on Jan. 25. The results—to no one’s surprise—delivered an overwhelming majority to the military’s proxy, the Union Solidarity and Development Party.
The results reflect the orchestrated nature of the election, where dozens of parties were banned from running; key members of the opposition, such as State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, remain imprisoned and have no contact with the outside world; and critics have been ruthlessly prosecuted—all while civil war rages through the country.
So, does the sham mean anything? “The election shows that the military realizes it needs to move back behind the curtain and make a show of civilian rule,” said Anthony Davis, a security analyst with Janes. “However,” he added, “in terms of the practical—the difference it might make to their legitimacy and what they can do for the economy—I’d say very little.”
Kyaw Soe Win at the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners concurred: The election “will not change anything in Burma. The revolution will continue, and the conflicts will still exist.”
While Western democracies and the Association for Southeast Asian Nations have not accepted the vote as legitimate, the fig leaf of elections could still provide cover for some governments to pursue greater engagement.
Thailand may have an appetite for this, depending on the results of its general election on Feb. 8. Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow has previously said that while he doubts Thailand will recognize this year’s election in Myanmar, 2010’s “imperfect” vote still helped pave the way for a period of reform and democratization.
Meanwhile, at the United Nations, Myanmar’s ambassador remains loyal to the deposed civilian government. And the country’s seat on the Human Rights Council remains empty. Myanmar—and its allies such as Russia and China—could use the election as leverage to lobby for junta-approved representatives to be appointed.
There may even be an impact on the battlefield. The junta, having neared collapse in late 2024, has started to grind out a partial comeback. These advances, plus the election, have “catalyzed a sense of crisis among the opposition,” Davis told Foreign Policy.
This worry has helped coalesce the Spring Revolution Alliance, a group of some 20 rebel groups and ethnic armed organizations that have pledged to cooperate against the junta.
Whether this agreement can last, though, or whether the military will be able to deploy its old tactics of divide-and-rule, making deals with different groups, remains to be seen.
Indonesia and Vietnam join Trump’s Board of Peace.Indonesia and Vietnam have both agreed to join the Board of Peace established by U.S. President Donald Trump.
The decision by the former reflects President Prabowo Subianto’s long-standing desire to insert Indonesia in the Gaza conflict, having previously offered Indonesian troops as peacekeepers.
The move has sparked controversy domestically, with many in the staunchly pro-Palestinian Indonesian public and political elite extremely skeptical of Trump’s designs.
As for Vietnam, analysts speaking to Foreign Policy noted that the decision had been unusually swift and happened despite considerable Vietnamese sympathy for Palestinians—attributing it to the government’s desire to stay on Trump’s good side.
Singapore and Thailand were also invited but for now are holding off joining. The former says it is “assessing” the offer but has previously expressed skepticism about the concept.
The Thai government says it cannot decide before its Feb. 8 election. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said joining could bring benefits but raised concerns about the $1 billion price tag for permanent membership.
Meanwhile, a statement by the leader of the main opposition party supplied to Foreign Policy focused on the need for Thailand’s “strategic autonomy.”
Philippine journalist convicted. Frenchie Mae Cumpio, a journalist, and Marielle Domequil, a religious activist, were sentenced in a regional court on Jan. 22 to 12 to 18 years in prison.
The pair were convicted of financing terrorism, with separate weapons possession charges dismissed by the court.
Many have condemned the case as resting on planted evidence and testimony by unreliable witnesses. Notably, last October, another court dismissed a civil forfeiture case related to the terrorism financing charges, saying there was no evidence of a crime.
And an investigation into the case by Reporters Without Borders termed the case “fabricated.”
The case is widely seen as an example of “red tagging”—where critics of the government are smeared and prosecuted based on alleged association with the Philippines’s long-running communist insurgency.
Photo of the Week
Narrowed finger hand stencils found in Sulawesi, Indonesia.Courtesy of Ahdi Agus Oktaviana
These imprints of hands shaped to give the impression of clawed tips are 67,800 years old, the oldest known example of cave art in the world. The remarkable drawings were discovered in a cave on the island of Sulawesi and dated by a joint Australian-Indonesian team.
The handprints—which are at least 15,000 years older than any other cave art found in the region—provide a glimpse into not just early human culture but also migration.
Debates about how humans reached Sahul, an ancient continent comprising Australia and New Guinea, have long hinged on whether humans traveled south via Java and the Sunda Islands to reach northern Australia or north via Borneo and Sulawesi to reach New Guinea. This discovery adds weight to the northern route hypothesis.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- The Grand Strategy Behind Trump’s Foreign Policy by A. Wess Mitchell
- What Spheres of Influence Are—and Aren’t by Stephen M. Walt
- Faulty Assumptions About Iran Have Driven a Failed U.S. Policy by Steven A. Cook
What We’re Reading
Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. is facing three separate impeachment attempts. Cliff Harvey Venzon provides a good summary of the tangled political drama in Bloomberg.
Why is Indonesia planning to nearly triple the size of its armed forces? Muhammad Fauzan Malufti unpicks Jakarta’s plans to build a 1.2 million-strong military, and the shaky logic behind it, in War on the Rocks.
Documents taken from a Cambodian scam compound reveal in incredible details the ways in which criminal groups profile their victims and suck them dry, as Seulki Lee reports in Dunia.
Number of the Week
16,985. The record low the Indonesian rupiah hit against the U.S. dollar during intraday trading on Jan. 20. The dip was prompted by news that Prabowo had nominated his nephew to become a deputy governor of Bank Indonesia, the country’s central bank.
The rupiah has weakened steadily for a year now, driven by foreign investors exiting over concerns about quality of governance and the central bank taking an unusually dovish stance as the president pushes for growth.
The appointment of a presidential relative to the central bank will likely intensify these trends.
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