Trump's ostensible five conditions for visiting Malaysia in October 2025 — Phar Kim Beng

Malay Mail

16-07-2025

JULY 16 — If diplomacy is akin to dexterous manoeuvres, then President Donald J. Trump is both the creative director and the post-modern impresario.
One who demands the stage be set before he even enters the theatre that is Asean and East Asian.
With the Asean and East Asian Summits scheduled for October 25 to 26 in Kuala Lumpur, speculation is mounting: will Trump show up?
The answer, it seems, depends entirely on whether Asean is prepared to meet what are now widely viewed as Trump's ostensible five conditions. These demands are not just about North Korea; they reflect Trump's worldview — coercive, hierarchical, and intensely performative.
One of Trump's key expectations is that Asean formally designates North Korea as a serious regional and strategic threat. He is no longer content with Asean's customary diplomatic expressions of concern. asean is too staid.
He wants the language sharpened, the tone unequivocal, and the verdict clear: the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is not just a problem — it is the problem. Such a public rebuke would send a powerful message to both Pyongyang and Moscow.
For Trump, this would be a strategic framing victory, reinforcing his belief that leadership means forcing clarity into ambiguity, even at the expense of consensus.
Another precondition is that Asean aligns itself with US efforts to restore the relevance of the International Atomic Energy Agency in its dealings with North Korea.
In a self-serving manner, Trump wants to resuscitate the IAEA's investigative clout—not in Vienna or Geneva, but in the Korean Peninsula, through Asean and East Asian Summit.
Russia is, after all, a member of East Asian Summit too. As is the US.
In Trump's second term, multilateralism is welcomed only when it operates under American primacy. Here, Asean is expected to echo Washington's call for full, verifiable inspections, even if it risks alienating member states who prefer the status quo of quiet diplomacy.
At the heart of Trump's nuclear agenda is a warning he believes Chairman Kim Jong Un must understand that deeply buried nuclear facilities in North Korea are not beyond reach. Iran has had a foretaste of American power when in the words of Trump, "Iran nuclear facilities were obliterated."
Although doubts linger if the bunker buster bombs had indeed got the job done at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan in Iran, this does not prevent Trump from wanting to deliver the same message to Chairman Kim Jong Un via ASEAN and East Asian Summit.
The United States wants to reinforce the image that it continues to possess Bunker Buster Bombs capable of penetrating fortified subterranean sites. Hence, North Korea is now in the sight of Trump. Asean and East Asian Summit have to up its ante to match Trump.
If diplomacy is akin to dexterous manoeuvres, then President Donald J. Trump is both the creative director and the post-modern impresario. — Reuters pic
Trump views the successful prevention of open war between Israel and Iran during his second term as evidence of his coercive deterrence strategy. He does not mind showing this brand of diplomacy to North Korea via Asean and East Asian Summit.
He expects Kim Jong-un to comprehend the credibility of that deterrent. In turn, Chairman Kim is likely to push back with his own narrative: that unlike Iran, which has been portrayed as a nuclear threshold or breakout state, North Korea is already a full-fledged nuclear weapons state.
He will emphasise that its deterrent is real, deliverable, and not easily dismantled. The contrast with Iran — whose nuclear programme has suffered setbacks through sabotage, sanctions, and cyber interference — will form the core of North Korea's argument that it cannot and will not be treated the same.
Yet Trump's expectations go beyond military strategy. He is demanding that Asean exert influence to halt North Korea's covert support for Russia's war in Ukraine. This condition stretches Asean's diplomatic imagination.
For a regional bloc that prefers balancing over band wagoning, the idea of confronting Pyongyang over its links to Moscow's artillery logistics is both unprecedented and uncomfortable.
Still, Trump insists that this war, fought in Europe, has reverberations in Asia — and that Asean's silence would equate to complicity.
Equally important to Trump is his desire for a diplomatic spectacle: a sidebar meeting with Chairman Kim Jong-un in Kuala Lumpur; provided the latter is willing to come to Kuala Lumpur as he once did to Singapore and Hanoi.
Trump views such encounters not merely as dialogues but as geopolitical theatre, validating his theory of leader-to-leader deal-making; even if they failed. The key is Trump's muscular foreign policy to match North Korea's Sparta-like approach.
Kuala Lumpur or otherwise, the setting is less important than the optics. Trump believes that in bypassing conventional diplomatic channels, breakthroughs become possible. Asean's role here is to act as discreet facilitator, a stagehand behind the curtain.
But even in facilitating such a meeting, Asean risks becoming complicit in a heavily personalized diplomacy that often sidelines collective norms. Especially when Malaysia is the Chief Coordinator of Asean China relations 2025.
Perhaps most controversially, Trump expects Asean to ensure that its Northeast Asian partners, namely Japan and South Korea, refrain from using the summit to criticize his escalating tariff regimes. In Trump's view, the East Asia Summit is no place for complaints about American protectionism.
He wants a disciplined forum — one that does not devolve into lectures on economic multilateralism.
For Asean, this means managing not only its own internal cohesion but the external optics of alliance politics. The price of Trump's presence may well be the silencing of dissent, at least in public view.
The art of the possible, or the price of admission?
Trump's ostensible five conditions are not unachievable — but meeting all of them would require Asean to surrender elements of its foundational ethos.
Non-alignment, non-interference, and regional consensus may all be strained under the weight of Trump's coercive choreography.
Still, this moment also reveals how Trump views Asean: not as an equal partner in shaping global affairs, but as a pliable platform for amplifying his strategic ambitions.
The stakes are not just about Trump's appearance in Kuala Lumpur, but whether Asean can uphold its role as a convenor of competing powers without becoming a stage for their rivalry.
If diplomacy is truly about creative manoeuvring, then Asean's greatest test now lies not in managing Trump — but in ensuring it doesn't lose itself while doing so.
* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies and director of the Institute of Internationalization and Asean Studies at the International Islamic University of Malaysia
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.