Dancing In The Malaysian Sun

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US President Donald Trump is not one to let slip an opportunity for attention and publicity. Not unlike a former president, the similarly boorish Teddy Roosevelt (1901-1909), who was described thus: “He wants to be the bridegroom at every marriage and the corpse at every funeral”.
After making Arab and Muslim countries dance to his tune with his Gaza Peace Plan, why begrudge Trump a bit of dancing to our tune with some 600 million Aseaners watching? But just in case no one noticed, his version of joget looked suspiciously similar to his trademark campaign dance/shuffle.
And never mind that the role of these same countries in supporting Trump’s peace plan is far more vague than their motives. Indonesia, Turkiye, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, and the UAE led the charge. Cautiously supporting them from the sidelines were Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
Every one of these countries had its own agenda apart from stopping the bloodletting in Gaza, which by the way is not a strip but larger than Penang island. For a start, Indonesia wants Washington as a counterweight to Beijing’s increasing influence in Asean.
And Turkiye cannot flex its muscles without F-35s. She wants to play big brother to the Muslim world. Under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, she finds it hard to forget centuries of domination of this part of the world when it was part and parcel of the Ottoman Caliphate. Frustratingly, her once Arab colonies care little for her.
Arab states struggle amid crises, rivalries
Egypt is near bankruptcy. The unemployment rate for university graduates hovers around 45 percent. To her south, Sudan is a warring mess, a civil war with the usual infighting for power and wealth without generating the latter. The war has killed tens and thousands and displaced over 12 million people. She is on humanitarian life support.
South SudanJordan, perpetually on tenterhooks, is also on American political and economic life support. In the early 1970s, King Hussein of Jordan turned on Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians, resulting in a brutal military crackdown and the death and expulsion of thousands of PLO fighters - the infamous Black September.
Small Qatar went through a profound crisis of confidence when the Arab League turned on her from 2017 to 2021. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain (where the US Fifth Fleet is stationed), and Egypt simultaneously severed bilateral relationships with her, resulting in a blockade.
In the Arab world, this is seen as a brotherly quarrel, but those familiar with Middle East history know these have gone on for millennia. But this time Qatar was accused of supporting terrorism, which, when used by Arab countries, is a euphemism for extremism. For the record, Turkiye and Iran stood by Qatar.
If Qatar is an oilfield masquerading as a country, then the UAE is surely a shopping mall passing itself off as an emirate. Her clever positioning reminds us of the line from the final scene in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire: “Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”.
Shifting alliances and cautious manoeuvres
Saudi Arabia is slowly coming to grips with a future where her vast oil production would not count for much. Their leaders, especially the crown prince, are aware that as technology advances, people without skills or creativity will become economically irrelevant.
Worse still, there are a whole class of Saudis who believe that one’s progress in life is not from hard work. Living in an environment where success is often achieved by cutting corners and taking shortcuts, they assume this is the only way to get ahead in life. Thankfully, their rulers know better!
Saudi ArabiaBut the whispers in the corridors of power as to why the Saudis did not show up for the signing ceremony were their fear that the art-of-the-deal Trump would publicly milk them to pay for the reconstruction of Gaza, flattened by American-supplied bombs and rockets.
Lebanon is on the wrong side of the Sunni Arab world, having fallen under the Shia Hezbollah, aligned with Iran. Lebanon needs war the way the desert needs sand. It’s hard to believe that Beirut was once the Paris of the Arab world. And Kuwait, invaded by Saddam Hussein, knows all about Arab solidarity.
And Pakistan, the second most populous Muslim country after Indonesia, is an army with a country and perpetually in need of an IMF bailout. Her geopolitical position in the Islamic world can best be described as “borderline relevant” with an economy the size of Tamil Nadu with twice her population.
And here we are, as Asean chair, welcoming Trump, the self-styled peacemaker, in glorious sunshine with a flag-waving crowd and an open-air dancing stage, even as a few hundred peaceful PAS supporters and an anti-American, anti-Israel keffiyeh-wearing crowd wound their way through Kuala Lumpur.
Media blunders and nostalgic memories
Meanwhile, RTM had a field day making mistakes left, right, and centre, but mostly in the area of our immediate geography - Singapore’s prime minister became Lee Hsien Loong once again, and so did Joko Widodo of Indonesia, who was called out of happy retirement by RTM to “depose” Prabowo Subianto.
And poor Thailand, our TV journalists must have grown weary of keeping up with their rather susah names. Or was it because they roped in the sports commentators for some bit of multitasking? I mean the guys who covered the last SEA Games held in Phnom Penh in 2023.
Asean leaders with US President Donald Trump at the Asean Summit in Kuala LumpurBut whatever, I was happy with my memories going back to October 1966 when then-US president Lyndon B Johnson (LBJ) came a-visiting to Negeri Sembilan. We 12-year-olds lustily waved the American flag, long after the motorcade had left for a Felda scheme later officially renamed as Felda LBJ.
The scheme also had a mosque and a primary school named after him. We mustn’t go this far with Trump. Let’s be content with making him dance to our tune. And by the way, if I were in charge of PMX’s publicity, I would start billing him as “The PM who made the US President dance to our tune”.
Eat your heart out, Dr M! Never mind that the tune was from “Hawaii Five-0”. - Mkini
MURALE PILLAI is a former GLC employee. He runs a logistics company.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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