Can Malaysia maintain autonomy in the new Indo-Pacific security order?

The United States’ 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) marks pivotal turn in contemporary Indo-Pacific geopolitics.

Released in November, it arrives just weeks after Malaysia and the US elevated their bilateral relationship to a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’ in October 2025.

The document is presented as a framework for stability and “shared prosperity”. But its underlying logic reveals a return to 21st-Century imperial statecraft – one where security, technology and capital become instruments of structural influence.

From a neo-imperialist perspective, the NSS does not merely respond to rival power expansion. It re-orders regional hierarchies, reproducing dependency and shaping domestic policy space across littoral states.

For Malaysia, the consequences are profound: simultaneously opportunity-rich and sovereignty-constraining.

The new front line

The document’s language prioritises the Indo-Pacific as the principal theatre of US strategic competition. This is not unprecedented – but the 2025 iteration integrates defence posture, technological supply chains and investment screening into a single architecture of power.

Neo-imperial theorists observe that such integration creates dependency through systems rather than territory (Harvey, D, 2003; Amin, S, 1977). US power therefore becomes infrastructural. It is embedded in sea-lanes, cybersecurity protocols, semiconductor ecosystems and alliance commitments.

The NSS frames this as stabilising. Yet structurally it locks regional economies into US-centred technological and security regimes. This narrows the autonomy of middle powers.

Militarisation as leverage

In practice, the NSS expands support for maritime policing, interoperability, and rotational access across the First Island Chain and the South China Sea.

Malaysia is located astride the Straits of Malacca and within contested exclusive economic zone waters. This makes it strategically indispensable.

But capacity-building assistance often binds recipients to US defence platforms and doctrines. This generates industrial and tactical dependency (Goh, E, 2016). Hardware choices determine maintenance contracts, training pipelines, and data sharing frameworks. These privilege US defence firms and long-term procurement cycles.

Over time, this converts ‘partnership’ into strategic reliance. 

When trade becomes security

A marked shift in the NSS 2025 is the securitisation of economic policy. Supply-chain partnerships, semiconductor investments and critical mineral projects are tied to national security rationales.

Favourable market access and tech transfer are extended selectively. They are contingent on alignment with US screening rules, data governance norms and export control regimes. Malaysia’s October 2025 trade agreement with Washington includes commitments on critical minerals partnerships, digital trade restrictions and economic security alignment.

For Malaysia, this promises capital inflows in high-tech and clean-energy sectors. But it also exposes domestic policy to regulatory extraterritoriality.

Neo-imperial critics warn that such arrangements resemble “soft conditionality” (Robinson, WI, 1983). Economic cooperation becomes leverage to influence legislative direction, investment screening and even diplomatic posture.

The pressure to choose

Asean traditionally thrives on hedging, non-alignment and multipolar balancing. But the NSS 2025 embeds an expectation of value-aligned partnerships. It signals that ambiguous neutrality may attract reduced access or slower technology cooperation.

Malaysia’s relationship with China complicates this; Chinese capital remains deeply interwoven into manufacturing, infrastructure and trade.

US alignment pressures risk amplifying internal political fractures. This is especially where domestic elites are tied to different capital blocs.

In dependency theory terms, this manifests as contestation between comprador networks – economic intermediaries aligned with foreign capital – who compete for influence over policy direction.

Opportunity or trap? 

Malaysia benefits from strategic relevance. Washington views Kuala Lumpur as a logistics and semiconductor node capable of buffering China’s rise and reinforcing resilient supply chains.

The partnership offers semiconductor investment and research and development cooperation, maritime surveillance capability upgrades, and education, digital and clean-energy funding streams.

But these gains risk entrenching asymmetric integration if not domestically insulated. Without a strong industrial policy, Malaysia may host assembly and testing – while high-value intellectual property and upstream fabrication remain offshore.

This mirrors the historic core–periphery dynamic discussed in dependency literature (Frank, 1967). Peripheral economies provide labour and resources, while core states capture innovation rents.

Strategic autonomy 

Malaysia needs a calibrated approach to benefit without becoming structurally subordinated.

Three policy directions are urgent: 

Active industrial sovereignty: Local-content requirements, technology-sharing clauses and sovereign data control must govern semiconductor and defence partnerships. 

Asean as balancing architecture: Commitments must be anchored multilaterally – not bilaterally – to avoid coercive alignment and preserve negotiation leverage.

Domestic capability investment: Education, R&D funding and intellectual property ownership mechanisms are required to escape low-value positioning within global value chains.

Malaysia’s future will be decided not by whether it partners with the US – but by how it negotiates the terms of integration.

The path ahead

The 2025 NSS extends US power beyond fleets and bases into code, chips, ports, policy and narrative. It is the architecture of empire translated into the language of partnership.

For the Indo-Pacific, this means a more securitised economic order. For Malaysia, it presents a double-edged pathway: one of accelerated industrialisation or deepened dependency.

A neo-imperial reading clarifies one thing. Sovereignty under NSS 2025 will not be lost in dramatic confrontation. It will be eroded incrementally through standards, contracts and strategic conditionality.

Resisting this outcome requires policy – not rejection – and strategic agency instead of passive accommodation. 

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