Roundup #2
Energy Shocks, Vietnam's leadership consolidation, The State of SEA.
Monday, April 20th 2026 Week two. The energy shock set off by the Hormuz closure continues to reshape the region — fuel queues in Yangon, emergency loans in Bangkok, and a political emergency in Manila. Meanwhile, Tô Lâm wraps a consequential four-day visit to Beijing, and Prabowo’s increasingly legible foreign policy pivot draws sharper analysis.
More Shocks: Energy, Fertilizer, Plastics
The consequences of Iran’s Strait of Hormuz closure are growing. Fulcrum published a piece this week addressing the legal dimension head-on: under international law, Iran is entitled to restrict enemy shipping during an armed conflict but must permit neutral passage. In practice, the distinction has been difficult to enforce and neutral states are bearing real costs. Full story at Fulcrum →
The NYTimes also provides some useful reporting today on the shocks in the Asia-Pacific and what we may start to see in other parts of the world. A choice quote from the articles author, HCMC Bureau Chief Damien Cave, shows the desperate nature of the situation, “Even if there is a peace deal soon, the future of this industrious region that has driven global economic growth for decades will likely include months of canceled flights, surging food prices, factory pauses, delayed shipments and empty shelves for products long considered quick and easy to buy worldwide: plastic bags, instant noodles, vaccines, syringes, lipstick, microchips and sportswear.” Cross-border supply chains and some of the highest energy imports in the world are pushing these massive disruptions and dangerous shortages. Read the fully article here →
Another excellent Fulcrum pieces: In 2025, 56% of ASEAN’s crude oil imports came from the Middle East. The Philippines declared a national energy emergency in late March after fuel prices more than doubled. Malaysia’s monthly fuel subsidies ballooned from MYR 700 million to MYR 4 billion almost overnight. Thailand’s oil stabilization fund is burning through 1.5 billion baht a day and had to seek emergency financing. A Fulcrum piece makes the pointed argument that Vietnam’s pivot to UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar suppliers simply “swaps one form of fragility for another” — diversification without decarbonization is not a strategy. Full story at Fulcrum →
The fertilizer and food security dimension is under-covered. In Myanmar — already economically isolated — fuel prices are up 50%, flight ticket prices have tripled, and farmers cannot access diesel during a critical harvesting window. Worse, urea prices have doubled since December as China restricts fertilizer exports, threatening yields across a country that cannot afford a food shock on top of a fuel shock. Full story at Fulcrum →
The FT also had a long piece from the weekend about “the coming global food crisis” tied to the war in the Middle east. A stark, but not hopeless picture from SOAS’s Adam Hanieh — read it here.
There’s a longer-term story running alongside the crisis. Southeast Asia’s solar panel installations have been accelerating and the energy shock is only adding urgency — as is the question of whether the ASEAN Power Grid, a long-discussed regional interconnection framework, can move from aspiration to infrastructure. The Diplomat on solar → | The Diplomat on the ASEAN grid → One under-reported note here: many of the green energy products require fossil fuels, their by products as well as rare earth minerals to manufacture. This may become a future choke point and situation to watch.
More on Vietnam’s Consolidation
Tô Lâm, General Secretary and now State President, concluded a four-day state visit to China this week — the first major foreign trip since his formal consolidation of power. The Diplomat has a summary →
Khanh Vu Duch at The Asia Sentinel offers a counter to the “new momentum” narrative coming out of Hanoi: Vietnam’s deepening supply-chain integration with China carries real strategic costs. It creates exposure to Western trade enforcement and signals reduced autonomy to the partners Vietnam needs precisely to hedge against Beijing. As the Trump Administration continues aggressive policing of so-called transshipment, closer ties to China also signals to Washington that Vietnam may not intend. Future trade relations, 30% of Vietnamese exports to go the US, may sour. points to the real issue, one that should trouble Ha Noi — locking the country into Chinese inputs and value chains runs the real risk of locking itself into lower tiers on that same chain. If Viet Nam wishes to grow rich by the 2030s, it has to move up and avoid the dreaded middle-income trap. Well worth a read. Read it here →
Indonesia at the Crossroads
The most analytically interesting story this week may be Indonesia. Prabowo has simultaneously announced a new defense partnership with Washington and completed a visit to Moscow — a juxtaposition that has sharpened commentary on Jakarta’s posture. The Asia Sentinel reads it as a genuine tilt toward Washington. Read it here → | The Diplomat on the US defense partnership →
Indonesia faces numerous challenges in the months and years ahead. The country’s fiscal health may start to weigh on it’s partnerships and decisions. Higher fertilizer, oil, and gas prices are pushing deficits to new heights as the government tries to support households — alongside increasing inflationary pressure.
A more structural Fulcrum piece is worth reading alongside it. Indonesia’s bebas aktif (free and active) doctrine is less a calculated hedge, the author argues, than an expression of a genuine national identity — a self-image as a bridge between regions and ideologies. The problem is that intensifying great power rivalry is making that identity increasingly hard to inhabit. Clearer commitments are being demanded, and the middle ground is shrinking. Full story at Fulcrum →
Malaysia: Calm Before Another Storm
A US Supreme Court ruling has invalidated the legal basis for the 2025 US-Malaysia Reciprocal Tariff Agreement — but that’s not good news. While KL never ratified the agreement and faced severe domestic backlash, the Trump administration is deploying new instruments and launching investigations into forced labor and excess manufacturing capacity. The landscape has shifted, Tham Siew Yean argues, and Malaysia’s best path forward is renegotiation rather than reliance on a framework that no longer has firm legal footing. Full story at Fulcrum →
Reports & Academic notes this week
Kyoto Review — Issue 42 (March 2026) is out. There are a number of interesting pieces and book reviews. Two pieces stand out: The first, on Indonesia, documents 477 cases of religious intolerance in 2024 alone versus a handful of terrorist incidents — and argues that the government’s well-funded counterterrorism architecture has no equivalent for the far more prevalent problem of sectarian violence and religious coercion. Read it here →
The second covers Myanmar’s compounding security crises since 2021: 3.5 million internally displaced persons, drug production now rivaling Afghanistan, and emerging cybercrime networks — all amplified by climate stress and state fragmentation. Read it here →
Additional articles of interest: Climate Action in Southeast Asia: Responses from ASEAN and the Philippines
Non-traditional security challenges in Southeast Asia
AEA: New research on Asian immigration in US history finds that the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 produced a twentyfold increase in the Asian-American population — but also vast inequality within the category, as high-skill immigrants and refugee communities diverged sharply in economic outcomes. Useful context for the ongoing US policy debates. Read it here →
On USAID: Tim Hirschel-Burns has a sharp piece drawing on insider accounts of the agency’s dismantling. The reported detail that Trump appointees initially believed USAID “was just, you know, abortions” captures something about how the cuts happened. The combination of speed and ignorance has and will lead to monumental human suffering. Estimated toll: 2.6 million additional deaths annually from cuts to global health programs. The implications for Southeast Asia’s development landscape — particularly in fragile states — will be felt for years. Read it here →
Long read: Graham Allison’s Thucydides Trap gets another pass in Foreign Affairs, with an argument that the original framing misses what’s actually dangerous about US-China competition. Worth the time. Read it here →
The Week Ahead
The energy situation bears close watching. Thailand’s oil fund burn rate is unsustainable and the Philippines’ emergency framework will be tested as prices stay elevated. Any deterioration in the Iran ceasefire would accelerate these dynamics sharply. Shortages will not be contained to oil and gas (or their by-products like jet-fuel) — the region has already begun to see drops in the availability of consumer goods and medical supplies.
The aftermath of Tô Lâm’s China visit deserves scrutiny — what was actually agreed, and how Vietnam’s Western partners read the optics of such an early and high-profile trip to Beijing.
Prabowo returns from Moscow having simultaneously deepened ties with Washington. How Jakarta manages the optics of that simultaneity will tell us something about whether bebas aktif can survive the current environment or is quietly becoming a polite fiction.
Out of Time - Quote
This week’s quote is more recent but illuminates how quickly the world became short on time.
“Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE have come to occupy a far more central place in the global food economy than is often recognised.”
Adam Hanieh, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute and professor of political economy and global development, SOAS University of London, from The Global Food Crisis is Coming, FT.com 4/18/26
All errors are mine and I apologize for any formatting issues. I’ll have these worked out in the coming weeks.