Harris tells SE Asia it can count on U.S.
SINGAPORE — Vice President Kamala Harris sought to fortify the image of the United States as a credible ally by offering a sharp rebuke of China during an address Tuesday in Southeast Asia. Her effort comes as the White House faces growing questions about its reliability as an international partner amid continuing violence in Talibancontrolled Afghanistan.
“In the South China Sea, we know that Beijing continues to coerce, to intimidate and to make claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea,” Ms. Harris said in Singapore. She added China’s “unlawful claims” had continued “to undermine the rules-based order and threaten the sovereignty of nations.”
The White House is aiming to refocus U.S. foreign policy strategy on competing with China’s rising economic influence rather than on continuing to fight “forever wars,” such as the two-decade long conflict in Afghanistan. The chaotic effort to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies from Kabul has overshadowed the vice president’s trip, which began Sunday in Singapore and took her to Vietnam on Tuesday.
Ms. Harris’ overseas trip, her second as vice president, gained heightened urgency in the days before she boarded Air Force Two. The journey had been seen as a chance to bolster economic and security ties with key partners in Singapore and Vietnam, a crucial piece of President Joe Biden’s strategy in the South China Sea. But in the wake of the haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan, her trip became the administration’s first test of the White House efforts to reassure the world it can still be a trusted international partner.
For Ms. Harris, that has meant reassuring nations in the South China Sea of the administration’s credibility while confronting questions about whether the United States had abandoned its allies in Afghanistan.
That pressure is likely to increase when Ms. Harris has a series of meetings in Hanoi on Wednesday and Thursday. Her senior aides have faced questions about the historical parallel between the U.S. evacuation in 1975 from Saigon and the situation in Kabul — replete with scenes of desperate Afghans running behind U.S. military planes and of U.S. citizens, Afghan allies and their relatives crowded into the Kabul airport and stuck in limbo.
Even the vice president’s travel to Vietnam from Singapore faced challenges.
Her trip to Hanoi was delayed Tuesday night for more than three hours because of a report of a possible “anomalous health incident,” the term the Biden administration uses to refer to cases of so-called Havana syndrome attacks, the unexplained headaches, dizziness and memory loss reported by scores of State Department officials, CIA officers and their families.
Ms. Harris’ spokesperson said she was healthy and would proceed with meetings in Hanoi. And in Singapore, Ms. Harris pressed on with her message.
“I am standing here because of our commitment to a long-standing relationship, which is an enduring relationship, with the IndoPacific region, with Southeast Asian countries and, in particular, with Singapore,” she said a day earlier alongside Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, of Singapore, during a news conference dominated by questions about Afghanistan. She said the administration was “singularly focused” on evacuating Americans and Afghan allies from the country.