Communist-ruled Vietnam last month named Luong Cuong, a military general and former director of the People’s Army’s political department, as its new president.

Shortly afterward, Prabowo Subianto, a former special forces commander who was dismissed in 1998 amid allegations of military abuses, was sworn in as president of Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country. of the world.

Prabowo’s government has been described as Indonesia’s “most militarized cabinet” since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998, according to a report. report by New Mandala, a Southeast Asian affairs website hosted by the Australian National University (ANU).

Elsewhere, much of Myanmar has been under the control of a military junta since the 2021 coup.

Cambodia’s longtime leader, Hun Sen, handed over power last year to his eldest son, Hun Manet, a former military leader. The Thai military, which controlled the country between 2014 and last year, continues to exert significant influence over politics.

Civilian leadership in decline

Only Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore have consistently maintained civilian control over their armies, analysts note.

Brunei is an absolute monarchy, while the dominant political parties in Malaysia and Singapore have historically ruled out military interference.

The Philippines experienced military intervention in politics in 1986, when the armed forces helped overthrow dictator Ferdinand Marcos in a popular revolution. Since then, however, the armed forces of the Philippines have come under civilian control.

However, the rise of militarized leadership in Southeast Asia reflects broader global trends, according to Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The military, once thought to have died out as rulers, with a few minor exceptions, such as Thailand, has come back to life and seized power in many places, even outside South Asia- East,” Kurlantzick told DW.

Recent military coups in Africa’s Sahel region and renewed military influence in Pakistan and Egypt are part of this global shift.

Explaining Militarization

Paul Chambers, a senior lecturer and international affairs advisor at Thailand’s Naresuan University, says the militarization of Southeast Asia has accelerated since 2014, coinciding with the region’s shift toward authoritarianism .

“The appearance of sudden militarization in 2024 is a deception because the political power of the military has always existed – even if it is sometimes in the shadows,” Chambers said.

Growing security concerns, particularly in the South China Sea, may also have amplified the military’s influence.

China’s growing assertiveness in the region has heightened tensions, granting the military greater influence over policymaking in countries like Vietnam and Indonesia.

However, the Philippines, at the forefront of conflicts with Beijing, has resisted the militarization of politics.

Rising military budgets

Military spending in Southeast Asia more than doubled between 2000 and 2021, from 19.2 billion euros to 41 billion euros ($20.3 billion to $43.3 billion), according to the Institute Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Military Expenditure Database.

However, the countries that spend the most on defense as a percentage of GDP – including Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia – are mainly countries where the military has not exercised power over civilian politicians.

Instead, experts cite domestic politics as the reason. Chambers says there are “varying degrees of militarization” in the region, sometimes due to “the ability of active duty or retired generals to carve out leadership positions in the party.”

In Thailand, the powerful monarchy “has supported military coups for decades, making Thailand still on the verge of democratization but still lost in military rule,” Chambers said.

Myanmar’s military, by comparison, ruled almost continuously from 1962 to 2015 before returning to power in 2021 to protect its own entrenched interests.

The ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) wields enormous influence over the military, which has become a “tool of violent power” for the dominant Hun family, according to an essay published by Chambers in 2020.

The Vietnamese Communist Party is increasingly divided between different security agencies. Two-thirds of the 18-member Politburo, the party’s most powerful decision-making body, now come from the police or military, Channel News Asia reported recently.

Monetary policy

Le Hong Hiep, a senior fellow at the Vietnam Studies Program at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, says this is partly due to the power wielded by military-run businesses.

The Vietnamese People’s Army runs some of the country’s largest companies, including Viettel, the country’s largest telecommunications company, and Sai Gon New Port, the largest container terminal operator.

A August report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank, has highlighted a global trend of military influence driven by power dynamics between militaries, heads of state and the private sector.

Conventional theory of democracy, he argued, assumed that greater autonomy and influence of the private sector would result in democratization.

However, the report suggests that military-business relations often stifle democratization and sometimes result in military intervention in politics to advance the interests of the private sector, particularly when it is dominated by powerful oligarchs, as is the case in much of Southeast Asia. .

Prabowo, Indonesia’s president, is the brother of the country’s richest entrepreneur, Hashim Djojohadikusumo. Myanmar’s military dominates the country’s most important economic sectors.

“The fact that the military is wielding more and more power is, in almost all cases, a negative outcome for democracy and rights,” Kurlantzick said.

“This has often created a situation in which the military aligns with oligarchs and politicians willing to undermine economic growth and innovation,” he added.

One exception is Timor-Leste, the region’s smallest and youngest country, ruled by former guerrillas and military leaders since its independence in 2002.

Xanana Gusmao, the current Prime Minister, led the Falintil rebel army that fought against Indonesian colonialism.

Yet Timor-Leste is the only country in Southeast Asia regularly classified as “free” by nonprofit groups like Freedom House.

Edited by: Keith Walker