I'm John Bachelor with Gregory Coppley, my colleague, the editor and publisher of Defense

and Foreign Affairs going to a part of the world.

I am stumbling through learning the

first time. Malaysia is a newly elected king Sultan Ibrahim Iskander of

Johor. He's a very well-to-do man, also eccentric. He rides Harley-Davidson's

and gives prizes to the people of Jahore. He's now the Supreme monarch of Malaysia, which I was falsely assuming was a straight-up

democracy.

It's a constitutional monarchy.

I'm going to stop because I learned from Gregory. What is the significance of Malaysia in the region?

Its its neighbors are unknown. You just named one of them Indonesia.

What is its stance towards China, towards the region, gladly?

Well, Malaysia, as a member of the Commonwealth,

has always been a very significant geographic entity

and a geopolitical entity in the West's camp, and this has not been changed.

They have been relatively independent in their defense procurement and so on, but it's basically

a British style defense capability.

It is absolutely as much a democracy as Australia or New Zealand or the United States and in some ways they

would argue that it's even more of a democracy.

The fact that it has a king is something which safeguards the Constitution and the

constitutional rights to democracy and an elected government by the

people and the interesting thing is that we're an elected government by the people.

And the interesting thing is that when Malaysia became independent,

...