Abstract:

In 2018, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir was asked: “Can ASEAN maintain the pact's neutrality between major powers?” His reply was that Malaysia would be as neutral as it could. This article’s objective is to examine critically the idea of neutrality for Malaysia. Neutrality could be a perpetual status independent of any armed conflict. The outbreak of armed conflict activates the international laws of neutrality. States are not required to declare their neutrality for the law of neutrality to be triggered. A state complying with neutrals’ legal obligations receives its correlating rights, unless there is a UN Security Council resolution to the contrary, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The research question is how Malaysia can be effectively neutral in the absence of the outbreak of war. The article will try to show that Malaysia can deploy a policy of neutrality by its domestic internal order, its arrangements for group military exercises and its particpiation in regional alliances. Malaysia operates an advance self-help policy of strategic alliances to prevent being subject to the international wrong of violation of neutrality. Belligerents enjoying an implied sovereign right to be the judge in their own cause, infers a correlated right in Malaysia to a form of neutrality, to the extent of the belligerence. Proponants of the Five Power Defence Arrangements, tactically arranged with British Commonwealth states, can argue that it is an effective kind of armed neutrality, for Malaysia, under the customary international law. Malaysia’s Islamic trajectory, within its society, helps it make early identification of foreign incursions, of evidence of pre-war madness behaviour, and then arrange for these to be cauterised quickly by vigilant Police.