MANILA, Philippines — Top foreign policy leaders from across Southeast Asia are gathering in the Philippine capital this week for annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) talks, joined by senior diplomatic representatives from major global powers including the United States, China, Russia, and the European Union. With renewed large-scale hostilities roiling the Middle East emerging as one of the most urgent threats to global stability, the bloc’s diplomats are set to signal grave concern over escalating tensions in their first formal joint session Tuesday.
This year, the Philippines holds the rotating chairmanship of the 11-member ASEAN bloc, and will host three full days of diplomatic negotiations and high-level meetings. Confirmed attendees include U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Ukraine’s top diplomat Andrii Sybiha has received an invitation to a Friday ceremony marking the 1976 ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, but will not take part in the core working meetings that Lavrov and Rubio will attend. As of the opening of the talks, no formal or informal meetings between Rubio, Lavrov, or Sybiha have been scheduled, according to official statements.
Two anonymous Southeast Asian diplomatic sources confirmed to reporters that ASEAN foreign ministers will deliberate on the escalating cross-border hostilities between the United States and Iran, which have already spilled into neighboring Middle Eastern states and stoked widespread fears of a full-scale regional war. Following closed-door deliberations, the bloc will release a joint statement voicing alarm at the rapidly shifting security situation and calling on both Washington and Tehran to de-escalate and resume diplomatic negotiations, the sources added.
The ongoing conflict has already disrupted critical commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic maritime chokepoint through which approximately 20 percent of the world’s total oil supplies passed before the latest outbreak of fighting. For Southeast Asia — a dynamic, densely populated region home to more than 680 million people that depends heavily on imported Middle Eastern energy — the conflict has already delivered severe economic shocks. Disruptions to global energy supplies and sharp price volatility have hit the region hard, prompting Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to declare a national energy emergency back in March. The declaration was aimed at securing consistent access to fuel, food, and other essential commodities, while cracking down on hoarding and price gouging.
Beyond the immediate humanitarian and economic fallout from the Iran conflict, the crisis has sparked quiet unease across the Asia-Pacific: Washington’s deployment of additional military resources to the Middle East has diverted attention and capacity from long-standing U.S. priorities in the Indo-Pacific, including countering what regional powers describe as increasingly aggressive Chinese actions in the disputed South China Sea and around Taiwan. The Trump administration has previously made formal commitments to deter Chinese expansion in the region, leading to questions about whether those commitments will be weakened by the Middle East crisis. Rubio’s attendance at the Manila talks is designed specifically to reaffirm U.S. commitments to the region. “The secretary’s visit advances a clear U.S. priority: a free and open Indo-Pacific that delivers safety, security and prosperity for the region and for the American people,” State Department spokesperson Thomas Pigott told reporters from Washington.
On the sidelines of the formal ASEAN meetings, Rubio is also scheduled to take part in a gathering of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, better known as the Quad. The bloc, established in 2007, counts the U.S., India, Japan, and Australia as members, and is widely viewed as a core pillar of American strategy to counter growing Chinese influence across the Indo-Pacific. Beijing has repeatedly criticized the bloc as an American-led initiative designed to contain China’s rise as a global power.
Alongside the major international conflicts on the agenda, ASEAN foreign ministers are facing growing pressure to make tangible progress on long-simmering regional disputes, most notably the ongoing civil war in Myanmar and overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea. Myanmar has been mired in conflict since the country’s military seized power from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a 2021 coup. Data from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an independent human rights monitoring organization, shows that more than 8,100 people have been killed in fighting across the country, while nearly 22,500 political detainees remain in custody.
In 2021, ASEAN leaders agreed to a five-point peace plan designed to end the violence, but the framework has failed to deliver progress, largely due to non-compliance from Myanmar’s military junta. In response, ASEAN imposed a ban on junta leaders and the country’s top foreign policy official from attending the bloc’s top-level meetings, a ban that remains in place for this week’s Manila gathering. In an effort to break the years-long deadlocked, ASEAN diplomats led by Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro — who also serves as this year’s ASEAN special envoy for Myanmar — held a historic meeting with Myanmar’s top diplomat in Bangkok earlier this month, the first such engagement between the bloc and a junta representative in five years. During that meeting, ASEAN leaders reiterated calls for an immediate de-escalation of violence and renewed efforts to launch inclusive dialogue between all warring factions. A day after the Bangkok meeting, Lazaro and Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow held consultations with high-level representatives of Myanmar’s ethnic armed opposition groups in the Thai resort city of Pattaya.
Human rights organizations have sharply criticized the decision to meet junta foreign minister Tin Maung Swe, arguing that the move effectively reverses ASEAN’s long-standing ban on engaging senior junta officials and rewards military leaders without securing any concrete concessions toward peace. Lazaro pushed back against those criticisms, stressing that the engagement did not represent a departure from the bloc’s 2021 five-point consensus. “The path to peace can only be obtained through resolute diplomacy with all parties to the conflict,” she said.
On the South China Sea, ASEAN ministers will hold formal talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to advance negotiations on a long-planned code of conduct, a binding agreement designed to prevent the region’s overlapping territorial disputes from escalating into open conflict. Territorial claims in the strategically vital waters are split between China, Taiwan, and four ASEAN member states: Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. In recent years, armed confrontations between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and naval forces have become increasingly frequent, raising tensions across the region.