Southeast Asia must learn to say ‘no’

While countries in the region accept foreign aid, they must also not bend to the quiet transformation of emergency relief into structural reliance.

The year 2025 will enter Southeast Asian history not only for geopolitical rupture but for environmental reckoning.

While the Thailand–Cambodia conflict erupted for the third time in 17 years — after earlier crises in 2008 and 2011 — another, far more relentless threat battered the region: floods driven by extreme climate patterns that are no longer episodic, but structural.

From Thailand to Indonesia, Malaysia to Vietnam, inundations displaced millions, paralysed infrastructure, and devastated wildlife habitats already under severe stress.

Forest corridors collapsed, animals were forced into human settlements, and fragile ecosystems were stripped of resilience. Climate change in Southeast Asia is no longer a forecast. It is an annual condition.

Yet amid these recurring emergencies, a pattern has emerged that many outside observers misread: the region’s instinct to prioritise domestic response over immediate large-scale foreign humanitarian intervention.

Indonesia became the focal point of this misunderstanding.

Over-exuberant critics framed Indonesia’s reluctance to solicit foreign aid as arrogance, projecting claims of ego onto President Prabowo Subianto and his administration.

This critique misses the deeper logic at work — not only in Indonesia, but across post-colonial Southeast Asia.

All states can accept foreign assistance. None deny the goodwill behind it.

The danger lies not in aid itself, but in what development studies have long warned against: dependencia — the quiet transformation of emergency relief into structural reliance.

Foreign humanitarian agencies, however experienced, cannot fully grasp local geography, social hierarchies, or informal power structures.

When aid arrives mismatched to real needs, it still generates gratitude — because suffering populations feel morally obligated to thank strangers. Gratitude, however, is not governance. Nor is it effectiveness.

More perilously, uncontrolled aid inflows can fracture internal command. Relief goods may be diverted, monetised, or monopolised by local intermediaries.

What begins as humanitarian assistance can end by empowering profiteers and warlord-like actors, deepening insecurity and distorting recovery. Southeast Asia has seen this pattern before — and remembers it well.

This is where the logic of Mandiri comes in: self-reliance rooted in resilience becomes decisive.

Indonesia’s insistence on managing crises internally before opening the floodgates to foreign aid is not ideological stubbornness. It is institutional memory.

Among Asean states, all except Thailand were colonies. They learned, through painful experience, that sovereignty erodes fastest during emergencies when control is ceded in the name of urgency.

In this context, Tito Karnavian, Indonesia’s minister of home affairs, emerges as one of the region’s most underappreciated crisis managers.

Karnavian was not “strutting like a peacock” when he emphasised restraint.

As a former national police chief and counter-terrorism professional, his instincts are operational, not performative. He understands that disasters are not only humanitarian events — they are moments when governance can either consolidate or collapse.

His priority has been clear: preserve the chain of command, maintain logistical integrity, and prevent parallel authorities from emerging on the ground.

In flood zones where desperation, goodwill, and opportunism converge, this discipline is not optional — it is essential.

Karnavian’s refusal to equate compassion with permissiveness is precisely what responsible leadership looks like in an age of permanent emergency. Foreign aid is not rejected because it is unwanted; it is sequenced because it can destabilise if unmanaged.

Once relief goods circulate beyond state oversight, emergencies acquire a second life — one driven by speculation, patronage, and corruption.

This is why the first response to foreign assistance may be the most counter-intuitive yet responsible one: “No, thank you” or “not yet”. Such restraint is not crass rudeness. It is governance.

Besides Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have never been known to be a rude country. That’s how Asean as a collective polity works. It is the nettlesome netizens that try to add fuel to fire.

By insisting that domestic institutions lead first, assess second, and accept external support only when it strengthens rather than supplants national capacity, Karnavian embodies Mandiri in practice; as does Prabowo.

Karnavian carries out this role in close coordination with Prabowo, signalling a state that is neither closed nor naïve — open to cooperation, but firm on chain of command and control, especially in Sumatra where the GAM separatist movement was once active.

Thus, as climate change transforms floods into annual certainties, Southeast Asian governments will face growing pressure to internationalise every emergency.

Karnavian offers a counter-model worth studying: resilience built on institutional discipline, sovereignty preserved through restraint, and humanitarian outcomes protected by order.

In an era where leadership is often confused with visibility, Karnavian reminds us that the most consequential decisions are often the quietest.

Knowing when to say “yes” matters. But knowing when to say “no” — and why — may matter even more.

For Southeast Asia, battered annually by climate extremes, this lesson is no longer optional. It is existential. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.