(MENAFN- Asia Times) Speaking at the ASEAN Future Forum in Hanoi in February, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim envisioned an ASEAN that must “shine” as it navigates great-power rivalries while addressing the bloc's most pressing crises.

And shine throughout 2025, Anwar did. Sadly for Thailand, though, Malaysia's mediation efforts as ASEAN chair have amounted to a series of dashed hopes.

There have been no seismic shifts in Myanmar's conflict-ridden chaos. The peace process in Thailand's Deep South remains stalled. And the rapid deterioration of security along the Thailand-Cambodia border offers a study in contrast with Anwar's flashy breakthroughs, notably the Kuala Lumpur Accord signed last month in front of a grinning President Donald Trump.

For Thailand, Malaysia's turn at chairing ASEAN must have initially looked like a potential political lifeline promising breakthroughs in Myanmar and Thailand's restive southern border provinces.

What Anwar didn't say was who would benefit from these breakthroughs – it certainly wasn't ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra's daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who was removed from office in July by Thailand's constitutional court following her now infamous phone call with“Uncle” Hun Sen, predecessor and father of Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Manet.

Anwar's flamboyant hosting of high-profile summits in Kuala Lumpur has burnished his image as a mediator and senior statesman, attracting praise from global powers like the United States and China. Meanwhile, beleaguered Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul's problems are multiplying at home as he heads towards elections in early 2026.

In September this year, Anutin inherited a political minefield – literally and figuratively – littered with fallen foes and frenemies. This minefield included open conflict with Cambodia, an economy in the doldrums and a conservative establishment in a pugilistic mood.

Perhaps the more apt metaphor would be that of a prized gladiator fighting in Ancient Rome's coliseum, replete with the emperor, his plotting generals and a restive court looking on. Out there in the middle of everyone's glare, danger is coming at him from all sides.

Anutin has to thread a very stubborn needle. In September, he signed a confidence-and-supply agreement with the largest political party in the country, the rebranded People's Party, which requires him to dissolve parliament within four months and hold an election in the first half of 2026.

In addition, Anutin has to elevate his party, Bhumjaithai, from an also-ran (albeit with the wind at his back) to a winning coalition.

To do all of this, he needs to whip up support from a disgruntled and bemused electorate that has legitimate gripes about the state of the economy. Unfortunately for Anutin, he is seen by many in Thailand as too passive. Voters, or coliseum-goers as it were, come for the spectacle, gore and emotion, not the sensible restraint of the warriors in the middle.

On top of this, Thailand is hemmed in by conflict. To the North and West, he has an immovable behemoth, Myanmar, stuck in the quagmire of forever-civil-war, to the South, a lethal insurgency has intensified significantly over the last two years, and to the East, Thailand's old feud with Cambodia has flared up again.

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And yet, this should have been a year in which Thailand's friend on its southern border, Malaysia, finally came to their aid. Thailand was justifiably confident with Thaksin serving as Anwar's ASEAN advisor. Unfortunately, things have not worked out this way. Malaysia, under its mercurial and perennially ambitious captain, has bent every foreign muddle to its own short-term advantage.

The Myanmar crisis, following the 2021 military coup, entered its most dangerous episode since the 1988 uprising, and has become ASEAN's most glaring failure. Cross-border instability, increased refugee hosting pressures in the face of 3.6 million internally displaced people, and a sclerotic government-in-exile often working out of Chiang Mai has given Thailand many headaches.

For its part, Malaysia in 2025 inherited ASEAN's toothless Five-Point Consensus that Myanmar's junta has largely ignored. In May, at a closed-door meeting in Bangkok with junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, Anwar sought to jumpstart ASEAN's faltering Myanmar peace process, saying“in matters of peace, even a fragile bridge is better than a widening gulf.”

Human rights groups like the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights called on Malaysia to leverage its chairmanship to push ASEAN beyond its current ineffective approach and ensure that Myanmar's pro-democracy forces are given more ASEAN recognition. What they got was a hastily slapped together ceasefire in April following Myanmar's earthquake on March 28, which was violated almost immediately.

By the ASEAN Summit in October, Anwar was calling again for an immediate ceasefire and appeared unable to respond to plans by Myanmar's junta to hold elections in late 2025 or early 2026.

With its stint as ASEAN chair almost over, the prospect of a Malaysia-led breakthrough on Myanmar has evaporated. Violence continues to escalate, while the junta's planned elections will only confirm the bloc's incompetence and tendency to reinforce impunity.

In contrast with the genuine behind-the-scenes efforts by Malaysia's envoy Tan Sri Othman Hashim throughout the year, which unfortunately failed to yield significant outcomes, Malaysia's coast guard and navy have continued to engage in systematic repulsions of overcrowded Rohingya refugee boats.

Survivors report of denial of food and water, usage of water cannons and the towing of dangerously crowded vessels out to sea. These reports are consistent with past patterns, including the tragic sinking earlier this month off waters between Malaysia and Thailand, which claimed 21 Rohingya lives.

Anwar has deftly avoided being smeared with any of the less impressive aspects of Malaysia's handling of Myanmar-related matters.

Tense relations between Thailand and Cambodia escalated dramatically this year. Open armed conflict, including multiple landmine casualties, between two ASEAN states – in itself rare within the bloc – has sparked air strikes and artillery exchanges resulting in massive displacement and at least 48 people killed.

Once again, Anwar's interventions were swift and showed diplomatic prowess. Hosting a remarkable multilateral meeting on July 28 in Malaysia's capital with representatives of China and the US present, Anwar did the diplomatic equivalent of turning water into wine, somehow turning the minutes of a meeting into an“unconditional ceasefire.”

Then came Anwar's pièce de résistance on October 26, 2025, in which he hosted US President Donald Trump and presided over the signing of the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord with Thai and Cambodian leaders present.

To achieve this, Anwar had to make what many saw as a Faustian bargain with Trump, who had already been making furious phone calls to Cambodia's prime minister, Hun Manet, and Anutin, in addition to posting vigorously on social media calling on the parties to stop fighting and return to the negotiating table.

It's entirely beside the point that the Kuala Lumpur Accord fails to address one of the core factors driving the conflict – the complex network of highly profitable scam centers that have become a source of tremendous revenue for crime syndicates on both sides of the border, and a major irritant for Thailand-Cambodia relations.

Some account for the ambiguity and failure of the Kuala Lumpur Accord by describing it as a tactical pause rather than a strategic breakthrough. It certainly wasn't billed by Anwar that way. Moreover, the accord is extremely specific about who gets the credit in the last paragraph: President Donald J Trump and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

Since the Kuala Lumpur Accord, progress has been illusory for Thailand. Earlier this month, Anutin was compelled in the face of multiple landmine casualties to suspend the accord, citing alleged violations by Cambodia. Meanwhile, Thai nationalist accusations of foreign encroachment and ASEAN overreach have started to find their mark.

Anwar's hedging strategy in mediating between Thailand and Cambodia has effectively balanced Malaysia's reliance on China (e.g. palm oil exports, infrastructure finance) while courting Washington and securing tariff relief. Anutin got second prize, a shaky ceasefire that he gets no credit for and no easy way out of Thailand's troubles with Cambodia.

For Malaysia, and especially for Anwar, the plaudits and accolades have come thick and fast, not to mention the fact that he has bagged tariff reductions and trade perks for Malaysia from the US, whilst strategically ensuring that investment in ASEAN, notably in Cambodia, flows through Malaysian banks.

Closer to home, Anutin is struggling to devise an approach to the 21-year insurgency that has gripped Thailand's southern border provinces. In theory, Malaysia holds the trump cards – the rebel group's leaders, Barisan Revolusi Nasional Melayu Patani (BRN), all reside in Malaysia and hundreds of BRN fighters regularly operate with a relatively free hand from over the Malaysian side of the border.

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Since 2013, successive Thai governments have tried unsuccessfully to blend peace talks in Malaysia with a counterinsurgency approach on the ground. Last year, expectations soared when Anwar appointed Thaksin as special advisor, but the parties have not resumed official talks since February 2024.

Anutin has tried to summon Malaysia's better angels by signalling renewed commitment to dialogue by appointing a new peace panel and sending them to a high-level meeting earlier this month. The fact, however, remains that since 2022, when BRN agreed to discuss a political settlement short of independence, Anutin, like many others before him, seems unable to cause Malaysia to shepherd the dialogue process towards any kind of meaningful outcome.

From Anwar's perspective, his gains in 2025 are clear: an elevated global stature, economic corridors from China to Washington and a hedged foreign policy that defly navigates Trump-driven uncertainty.

ASEAN, for its part, has once again demonstrated its inability to apply effective pressure on Myanmar's military to adhere to the bloc's abortive Five-Point Consensus. For the 2 million or so people living in the Malay-speaking provinces of Thailand, they are under no illusion about Malaysia's strategic interests in Southern Thailand – and yet this is a conflict squarely within Thailand's influence and ripe for Anutin to chart a new way forward.

Crucially for Anwar, none of Malaysia's failed breakthroughs have cost him politically, either at home or abroad. Lasting breakthroughs in conflicts always demand more than mere facilitation; they require the taking of the kind of risks that Anwar has expertly avoided.

From Johannesburg last week, Anwar is already pivoting away from reputational risk in the face of Malaysia's limited achievements as ASEAN chair, explaining that“we just facilitated – to help them achieve a settlement or resolution to their conflict...we did not give them any specific prescription on how they should solve their problems.”

Across the board, Anwar's diplomacy and mediation efforts, at least for Thailand, always read impressively in the headlines, but are ultimately insignificant in terms of durable outcomes.

Throughout 2025, Anwar's playbook has been consistent and leaves no doubt about his priorities; facilitate a short-term breakthrough using diplomatic jiu-jitsu, take the credit, bask in the limelight, then, when things inevitably unravel, blame the parties.

From where his counterpart in Thailand is standing, Anutin is probably wondering,“with friends like these, who needs enemies?”

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