Biden may pitch his ‘China challenge’ strategy at Washington meeting
United States President Joe Biden will meet his counterparts from Southeast Asia for a special summit in Washington next month, but getting all the leaders of the regional bloc to attend still appears in doubt.
The meeting, which will be held with heads of Asean, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, on May 12 and 13, will demonstrate Washington’s commitment to the regional bloc.
The summit will officially commemorate the 45-year relationship between the two sides.
It will also be Biden’s first in-person meeting with his Southeast Asian counterparts, following his participation in a virtual Asean-US summit in October.
This summit, originally scheduled for March, was postponed due to scheduling problems.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, political science professor in Thailand’s
Chulalongkorn University said the conference’s arrangements felt “hasty”.
“It is as if the Biden Administration wants to tick boxes for continuing what Obama started and for keeping Asean onside in view of China’s assertiveness,” Pongsudhirak said, referring to Barack Obama’s efforts to pivot to the region during his own term in office.
While most Southeast Asian heads of government are expected to attend, Myanmar’s junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing will be excluded due to the regime’s failure to make progress on a peace plan and the continuation of violence against the Myanmar people.
Charles Santiago, chairman of the Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights said not inviting the junta was the right decision because it is not recognised internationally as Myanmar’s rightful government.
However, shunning the illegal junta is not enough, Santiago said, noting that the US and Asean should have taken the opportunity to invite the
National Unity Government that comprises the democratically elected lawmakers ousted in the coup.
Outgoing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, a frequent critic of the US, may also not attend.
Tan See Seng, research adviser at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore said the likely absence of some leaders would not be a concern for the US, as the Biden administration’s Southeast Asia strategy has been on the key Asean states “[which] are arguably Indonesia, Vietnam, and Singapore, whose leaders, barring unexpected changes, will be at the summit”.
Hanh Nguyen, a non-resident WSD Handa fellow at the Honolulu-based Pacific Forum, said the “incomplete guest list” was a sign that US cooperation with Asean members under the Biden administration continued to be uneven.
“Countries that consider cooperation with the US a priority will definitely attend the summit and are more susceptible to cooperation,”
Hanh said, adding that the opposite was true for countries whose strategic alignment was closer to China.
Charles Dunst, an associate at The Asia Group and a fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said even if Duterte and Min Aung Hlaing do not attend, getting leaders from eight of 10 countries to take part would be considered a success.
“Duterte could still attend, though; nothing has been ruled out,” Dunst said, adding the US may also invite a representative from Myanmar’s embassy in Washington, “although the expectation is that they will decline”.
Chulalongkorn University’s Pongsudhirak said without the full set of Asean leaders there, the impression could be of an Asean in “disarray”.
While the meeting will build on Biden’s participation at a similar summit last year, many analysts have said the high-level meeting is a way to counter China’s growing influence in Southeast Asia.
On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he would soon address a long-awaited national security strategy to deal with the emergence of China as a great power.
Pointing out that the summit had “a strong symbolic nature”, Pacific Forum’s Hanh said the meeting was also being held to reassure Southeast Asia that “the US will not be distracted by the war in Ukraine and the looming threat of Russia over European security”.
Hanh said the US had a reputation of a distracted superpower among Southeast Asian nations, so this summit could re-engage Washington’s commitment with Asean.
Former US administrations have previously ignored the region due to its focus on security in the post 9/11 era, or, as in the case of former president Donald Trump, just skipped summits entirely.
Dunst, from The Asia Group and CSIS, said that being able to host an in-person, leaders-level summit at a time when China was unable to because of the pandemic was a “symbolic win for the US”.
The consensus among experts was that there was unlikely to be further details during the summit about the new US-led initiative to counter China’s influence – the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.
Pacific Forum’s Hanh said that Southeast Asian countries were concerned the framework might include demands from the US on fair trade, decarbonisation, tax, and anti-corruption, but did not offer them market access to the US.
It is as if Biden ... wants to tick boxes for continuing what Obama started
THITINAN PONGSUDHIRAK, CHULALONGKORN UNIVERSITY