Michael Martin returns to Beyond the Mekong following the outbreak of the Israeli-U.S. war on Iran, which is having a profound impact across the world and on ASEAN, where oil prices have surged, supply chains are being severely disrupted, and the costs are being borne by ordinary people.

Martin, who has retired as a specialist in Asian affairs for the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress and at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt in Bangkok about the war and Trump’s foreign policy intentions.

This includes the prospects for Myanmar, which Amnesty International says is believed to have been supplied with aviation gasoline by Iran. Iranian fuel enabled the military’s relentless aerial bombing campaigns that has left thousands of civilians dead amid a five-year civil war. Alternatives supplies from Russia, which has longstanding ties with the junta, are also a prospect.

Across Southeast Asia the war on Iran is testing relations between the Trump administration and the 11 members of ASEAN on varying levels.

“We have a president who appears in his behavior and his conduct to feel that there are no constraints or restrictions on what he can do as the executive of the United States. So if he wants to go out and kidnap a leader of another country, he will do so,” Martin says.

“For the leadership in Southeast Asia, I would not be surprised that they are right now discussing what if his eye turns on us. And I think Trump has a capricious eye. Something catches his attention and he’s interested in it.

“But if there’s nothing interesting there, then he forgets about it. He doesn’t even know it exists.”

Martin, speaking from Washington, D.C., has a long history of providing Congress with political and economic analysis about China, Hong Kong, Myanmar, and Vietnam. He has taught at Hong Kong Baptist University, Doshisha University in Kyoto, Colby College, and Tufts University.