Anwar’s highly calculated handshake with Min Aung Hlaing

When Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, in his capacity as ASEAN’s 2025 rotational chair, met Myanmar Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in Bangkok on April 17, the diplomatic calculus of Southeast Asia shifted—if only slightly and with deep ambivalence.

The meeting, ostensibly framed around humanitarian aid following the devastating earthquake that struck Myanmar’s northern and central regions on March 28, marked the first formal ASEAN leader’s visit to the military junta since the collapse of the Five-Point Consensus. 

In a moment that may come to define Malaysia’s ASEAN chairmanship, Anwar shook the hand of a general whose regime has killed, displaced and dismembered the very notion of a unified Myanmar after staging a democracy-suspending coup in 2021.

There is no denying the symbolic weight of the encounter. After years of deliberate diplomatic distance, ASEAN had until now refrained from high-level engagements with Min Aung Hlaing to avoid legitimizing the Tatmadaw’s seizure of power. 

Anwar’s decision to break that pattern—regardless of humanitarian justification—has reopened questions about ASEAN’s resolve, coherence and credibility.

While framed as a humanitarian mission, the meeting inadvertently offered the junta a much-needed photo opportunity to signal regional recognition, if not acceptance. 

Naypyidaw’s tightly choreographed media coverage quickly splashed images of Anwar and Min Aung Hlaing across state-controlled outlets, reinforcing the perception that the junta remains Myanmar’s only legitimate ruler.

Yet it would be overly simplistic to paint the meeting as a diplomatic capitulation. Anwar’s visit brought immediate, practical gains. 

First, it opened up secure corridors for the delivery of humanitarian aid under the coordination of the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Center). 

Malaysian teams are now working through multilateral and local NGOs to access quake-hit areas that had previously been sealed off due to the ongoing civil conflict.

Second, Anwar insisted—publicly and privately—on the need for a ceasefire in disaster zones and unfettered access for aid workers, especially in contested territories held by ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) and People’s Defense Forces (PDFs). 

According to diplomatic sources in Putrajaya and Jakarta, the Tatmadaw has tentatively agreed to a temporary cessation of hostilities in certain areas, though the credibility and durability of this pledge remain in doubt.

Third, Anwar used the occasion to deliver what observers described as a “polite but firm” rebuke of the military regime. 

In a press briefing following the visit, Anwar emphasized that while ASEAN’s humanitarian concern is unconditional, political legitimacy is not. “This assistance does not confer recognition. It reflects our concern for the people of Myanmar,” he stated.

Still, the visit was not without serious omissions, not unlike any delicate diplomatic missions. Most glaringly, Anwar met only online with representatives of the National Unity Government (NUG), the civilian government-in-exile that commands growing international recognition and domestic allegiance. 

Nor did he face-to-face engage with civil society or ethnic leaderships from the Karen, Shan or Rakhine communities—actors who now control wide swathes of territory and whose participation is indispensable in any viable peace process.

However, some of these groups are militias that have participated in transnational crime syndicates. Anwar, obviously, was not obliged to meet them, especially when their activities have taken corrosive root along Myanmar’s borders with Thailand and China.

These groups—many of them operating with tacit or direct protection from local militias—are running scam compounds, cybercrime hubs and trafficking networks. 

While the unchecked rise of these syndicates is a direct result of Myanmar’s internal collapse, these groups cannot run amok with various scams and then be rewarded to meet ASEAN’s chair.

Yet the failure to balance the visit with non-junta groups and voices created an impression—fair or not—that ASEAN may be drifting back into its old habits of privileging state-centric diplomacy at the expense of inclusive dialogue. 

This risks alienating pro-democracy actors and reinforcing the narrative that ASEAN is unable—or unwilling—to uphold its own consensus-based principles. 

But such a broad analysis would be mistaken, too. ASEAN was not formed on August 8, 1967, to handle non-traditional security issues. Decades later, it still has a long way to go.

Furthermore, the visit occurred against the backdrop of escalating regional instability. Invariably, Anwar’s meeting must now be interpreted against the broader disintegration of the post-Cold War order driven by Donald Trump’s escalating tariff war with China.

Trump’s disruption has redefined global trade—not with new rules, but with new ruptures. The economic fragmentation has emboldened authoritarian regimes, deepened Global South dependency and turned Southeast Asia into a new frontline of strategic vulnerability.

Myanmar is the canary in the coal mine of this global governance mechanism collapse. In this geopolitical climate, Anwar’s visit may be seen not as an ASEAN retreat, but a tactical necessity—a move to prevent Myanmar’s complete descent into a failed state. 

As ASEAN’s chair, Anwar perhaps calculated that disengagement would cede the field to greater violence, deeper Chinese penetration and unchecked criminal syndicates.

As such, the meeting was both a diplomatic risk and a humanitarian imperative, signaling that ASEAN, while imperfect and divided, is not entirely paralyzed. Yet, it also highlighted the limits of quiet diplomacy in the face of militarized cruelty and regional decay.

What comes next matters most. Anwar must now balance this high-level engagement with an equally robust push for political inclusivity. He must rally ASEAN to not only deliver aid but to begin shaping a peace framework that includes all of Myanmar’s actors, not just the ones holding capital cities and airports.

In more ways than one, the Anwar-Min Aung Hlaing meeting was necessary to ensure better conditions for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and to demonstrate that ASEAN still retains a pulse in the face of extreme human suffering in its midst. 

But it must not come without the necessary censure: that Min Aung Hlaing and the Tatmadaw are presiding over Myanmar’s disintegration at a time when the traditional world order itself is dissolving under Trump’s trade wars and unilateralism. 

In such a world, silence is complicity. Engagement, if done with clarity and conscience, is the lesser sin.

Phar Kim Beng, PhD, is professor of ASEAN studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia. He writes regularly on Southeast Asia’s diplomacy, regionalism and security challenges.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated and revised to note Anwar’s online meeting with the National Unity Government.