JANUARY 21 — Regardless of what has been said about American designs on Greenland – or even without personalising the issue around President Donald Trump – the underlying reality is far more enduring and troubling.

What we are witnessing is not merely a transactional demand for leverage over Denmark, but the re-emergence of a mindset that many assumed had been buried with the end of the formal empire.

A colonial boomerang is at work, and it is returning with force.

At the Davos Economic Forum, Emmanuel Macron warned that the United States is transforming the world into a new colonial order. The remark sounded provocative, even dramatic.

Yet it touched a nerve precisely because it revealed something uncomfortable: the post-1945 international system has never been entirely post-colonial in spirit. It merely replaced empires with hierarchies, and flags with institutions.

The world order constructed after World War II was built around power, not equality.

The United Nations, often celebrated as humanity’s moral compass, rests ultimately on the authority of five permanent members of the Security Council – the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China.

These states retain veto power not because of universal consent, but because they emerged victorious from war. Colonial logic, in other words, never disappeared; it was institutionalised.

As more critical issues are resolved outside the United Nations – through ad hoc coalitions, sanctions regimes, security alliances, and unilateral actions – the organisation’s moral authority continues to erode.

This does not signal the immediate collapse of the UN or regional organisations inspired by its Charter.

But it does expose their fragility when values are not internalised, adapted, and defended through regional ownership.

Here lies the key distinction between regions that survive turbulence and those that fracture under pressure. When regional organisations fail to cultivate their own identity – adding substance, values, and strategic purpose to inherited norms – they become vulnerable.

In this sense, the European Union is faring poorly in its confrontation with Washington. Many of its 27 members were themselves colonial powers, and the EU has struggled to speak with a unified voice when faced with assertive American demands.

President Macron’s sensitivity to the dangers of colonial wars is not accidental.

France’s traumatic experience during the Algerian War of Independence left deep scars, shaping its understanding of how coercion abroad rebounds domestically and internationally.

France still retains overseas territories scattered across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, reminders that colonial legacies are neither distant nor abstract. In fact one wonders if France should not relinquish its colonies in their oceans first before excoriating the US foreign policy as “crazy”. Why?

By retaining these colonies in Indian and the Pacific Oceans, France is effectively the European country with the largest Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) in the world eclipsing the US, Russia, the UK, Australia and Indonesia, even Japan and Canada.

The boomerang effect of imperial ambition is something Europe, more than most regions, should understand. They were the global colonial powers first. In warning US, France’s legacy as a Republic is not completely lilly white either.

By contrast, the Association of South-east Asian Nations – Asean – is a collection of 10 out of 11 former colonial states. Its members inherited borders drawn by imperial administrators, not by consent.

That Asean managed to avoid ruinous inter-state wars for decades is remarkable.

Between 1979 and the late 2000s, South-east Asia remained largely peaceful despite unresolved historical grievances. Inter-state wars were reduced by 99 percent.

Only in 2008, 2011, and again in 2025 tensions between Thailand and Cambodia flared seriously over colonial-era boundaries.

These episodes underscore why Asean instinctively avoids entanglement in great-power quarrels.

Asean should not be drawn into disputes between the United States and its transatlantic partners for the same reason it cannot afford to be sucked into the confrontation between China and Taiwan.

Asean is built on norm entrepreneurship, not coercive enforcement. It shapes behaviour through dialogue, patience, and consensus, not through force.

This also explains Asean’s limits. It cannot uphold the entire corpus of international law alone.

South-east Asia remains a developing region, not a collection of powerful states with global reach. Expecting Asean to behave like a moral enforcer misunderstands its nature and its strengths.

Its role is to preserve space for diplomacy, not to pass judgement on rival power blocs. The late Professor Robert J. Art once described the Cold War as the West’s civil war – a struggle within the same civilisation over leadership, ideology, and hierarchy.

Today’s tensions between Washington and its transatlantic partners echo that pattern. They are family disputes within a Western order that Asean neither created nor controls.

If the United States ultimately prevails in imposing its will – whether over Greenland or other strategic interests – it will do so because of overwhelming power, not moral persuasion. That outcome, however, carries consequences.

It weakens norms, legitimises unilateralism, and encourages imitation by other powers. This is the colonial boomerang in motion.

Asean must therefore remain clear-eyed and pragmatic. This is not its fight.

Wading into transatlantic disputes would only erode Asean’s credibility and distract from its core mission: regional stability, economic resilience, and inclusive growth.

Silence, however, should not be confused with abdication. Asean must continue to uphold international law through consistency, not rhetoric.

One lesson Asean can learn from Europe is economic diversification.

Trade agreements beyond traditional partners – whether with Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, or South Asia – reduce dependence on any single power centre.

The EU’s outreach to Mercosur, encompassing nearly 700 million people, demonstrates how economic statecraft can buffer political pressure.

Asean should pursue similar strategies without importing Europe’s internal divisions.

History teaches that when powerful states revive imperial instincts, smaller states suffer first.

But history also shows that restraint, norm-building, and strategic autonomy can blunt the impact of great-power rivalry. Asean’s quiet diplomacy may lack drama, but it has preserved peace in one of the world’s most diverse regions.

The colonial boomerang is real because power, once exercised without restraint, rarely stops where intended. Asean’s task is not to moralise or align reflexively, but to prevent the return of an order it knows too well. In an age when old instincts resurface under new justifications, prudence is not weakness. It is survival.

* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies at the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University of Malaysia

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.