In anticipation of Prabowo Subianto’s inauguration in October, an opinion piece appeared in Nikkei Asia claiming that he would be one of Indonesia’s “most cosmopolitan” presidents, not only because he is fluent in French, German, English, and Dutch, but also because he is “a nationalist who is an internationalist,” a claim that transgresses both history and semantics. There wasn’t much internationalism in Prabowo when he was helping to butcher the East Timorese, nor much nationalism when his Kopassus special forces were kidnapping and torturing Indonesians.

People can change, of course, and one presumes what the author intended by “internationalist” is much less than what it means: that Prabowo is more in favor of ASEAN than his predecessor and apparently, wants to project Indonesian power a little further than it has typically been felt. Yet this seems part of an obsession with trying to pin the badge of cosmopolitanism onto any Southeast Asia leader, which would be a positive development if it were true. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet is rarely mentioned in print without the adjective “Western-educated.” Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. spent most of his childhood in British boarding schools, making him, in the words of one commentator, a “cosmopolitan princeling,” which reveals little as well as being a tautology. (Which Southeast Asian princeling wasn’t expensively educated abroad?)

Give a man a reputation as an early riser, and he can sleep until noon. And give a political leader the distinction of being cosmopolitan, and he can safely have his foreign policy judged on its reputation alone. Even before Hun Manet took over from his father in Cambodia last year, for instance, a good number of commentators and diplomats had already decided that he would be a reformist, pro-Western ruler because of the simple fact that he was educated in America and speaks English fairly decently. Similarly, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was the region’s arch-cosmopolitan before taking power in 2022, and look at how that worked out: he spent most of the year accusing the West of the same “double standards” in the Middle East that he’s guilty of over Russia and Ukraine, the chasm that now almost defines the breakdown of understanding between the West and East.

Writing in 1998, the journalist Thomas Fuller made a telling observation about Anwar. He was then “portrayed as a cosmopolitan leader free from the ‘hang-ups’ of the colonial experience,” which was a “direct dig at the older Mr. Mahathir,” a reference to his former boss, Mahathir Mohamad. All too often, indeed, the distinction of being a cosmopolitan only makes sense in comparison: Hun Manet is more worldly than his father; Marcos is far less narrow-minded than Rodrigo Duterte; Anwar is more globalist than Mahathir; Prabowo wants to do more abroad than Joko Widodo.

Even so, cosmopolitanism must be distinguished from someone’s ability to speak a foreign language or where they were educated or whether they want a slightly more active foreign policy than their predecessor. Instead, what you should actually want from a cosmopolitan leader in Southeast Asia is the ability to explain the East to the West and the West to the East. At this moment, at least, the only ones seemingly capable of doing so are either Singaporeans or Vietnamese. Yes, Marcos is something of a dragoman, but only really with respect to his country’s tensions with Beijing in the South China Sea. Aung San Suu Kyi, the deposed leader of Myanmar, was able to communicate her vision to the West and understand what the West wanted from her, but then the West learned a little more than it desired about the way Suu Kyi thinks when she visited the Netherlands to defend the military’s attempted eradication of her country’s Rohingya population.

Because of the specifics of their city-state, Singaporean leaders cannot afford the same parochialism as their Southeast Asian colleagues. Quite simply, Singapore can’t feed itself unless it obsesses over what’s happening outside its borders. By definition, Singaporeans have to think globally and act locally, whereas the reverse is true for most of the rest of the region. Vietnam, more surprisingly, has emerged as a trusted interlocutor but only for the sole reason that its international engagement is so singly focused: Vietnam wants to make money off foreign companies, and foreign companies (and so foreign governments) want to make money off Vietnam.

All that said, one can hardly blame a Southeast Asian premier for misunderstanding the West; it has become quite impossible to understand where the West stands on any one issue. As Western governments have become more divided and more parochial in recent years, gone is their surety that democracy, the rule of law, and individual liberty are triumphant and ought to be seeded globally.

Most Western governments still cannot accurately describe their position on Israel and its Middle East wars. None can say whether Beijing is a “rival,” a “competitor,” or a “partner,” so all those positions are simply thrown together and their China policies are made up on the hoof. Should they actually help defend Taiwan? Should they roll back Russian imperialism or only when it can be done on the cheap? Also gone is their surety over free trade. Hence, Trump is about to re-enter the White House next month, and the European Union is busy erecting trade barriers. How is a Southeast Asian leader supposed to articulate to their own people the West’s stance on democracy, wars of aggression, or globalization when the entire political elite of most Western countries are split on these issues?

Yet, perhaps one of the ironies of Trump is that although he has almost zero interest in what motivates the East, the East will not find it difficult to understand what motivates him. It has become commonplace over the past few months to say that his foreign policy is “transactional,” as though this is novel in a U.S. president. Untempered transactionalism, perhaps. Or unrepentant transactionalism. At least one imagines other U.S. presidents holding their noses when trying to ferret money out of the pockets of dictators. But it’s the sort of diplomacy Southeast Asian governments know all too well. And the least cosmopolitan president to sit in the White House in many years may be far easier for Southeast Asian governments to understand than the apparent cosmopolitans who came before him.