Biden hosts Asean leaders, showing US commitment to Pacific

WASHINGTON (AP) – US President Joe Biden is hosting leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as his administration makes an extended effort to demonstrate that the United States hasn’t lost focus on the Pacific even while dealing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Biden will begin his talks over dinner Friday evening with leaders from eight ASEAN nations attending the two-day summit. It will be the group’s first meeting at the White House. Leaders will take part in more formal talks at the State Department on Saturday.

The ASEAN nations include Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Leaders from the other two ASEAN members, Myanmar and the Philippines, are not expected to attend the summit.

President Duterte declined to attend as the summit is taking place after the Philippine elections, with his successor already known.

The special summit in Washington comes before Biden departs next week for a whirlwind visit to South Korea and Japan – his first visit to Asia as president – for talks with those two countries’ leaders.

He will also meet during the trip with leaders from the Indo-Pacific strategic alliance with the US known as the Quad: Australia, India and Japan.

Biden has sought to put greater focus on the Quad and improving relations with Pacific nations in the early going of his presidency as he sees a rising China as the most threatening economic and national security adversary to the United States.

Biden, who vowed to make the Pacific a greater focal point of US policy, has seen his attempt at an “Asia pivot” complicated by the most serious fighting in Europe since World War II, which has consumed much of his foreign policy bandwidth in recent months.

“There has been a sense that in previous administrations that we had set off with a determined pace to focus on East Asia or in the Indo-Pacific and then find ourselves with other pressing challenges that perhaps draws (us) away a little bit,” Kurt Campbell, coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs on the White House National Security Council, said at an event on Wednesday hosted by the US Institute of Peace.