By Shibani Mahtani
When world leaders gather in this city-state and Papua New Guinea for regional summits this week, there will be a conspicuous absence: President Trump.
It is summit season in Asia, with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meetings due to start this Tuesday in Singapore. The 10-member bloc hosts world leaders at the yearly East Asia Summit, a chance for regional leaders to strengthen ties with global powers. Most will then travel to Papua New Guinea for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings, held this year in Papua New Guinea, the poorest member of a 21-country bloc of Pacific economies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will be visiting Singapore for the first time, meeting leaders in a region that is increasingly looking to Moscow for arms purchases and diplomatic protection. Chinese President Xi Jinping will be in Port Moresby for the APEC summit over the weekend, underscoring Beijing’s strategic play in the South Pacific, and will be deploying Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to Singapore to expand a free-trade agreement with the city-state and “upgrade its relationship” with Southeast Asian countries.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea will also be at the regional summits.
Trump, however, will be skipping them entirely, leaving Vice President Pence and national security adviser John Bolton to lead the U.S. delegation — which analysts say is a lost opportunity and miscalculation at a time when Washington and Beijing are locked in a battle for influence over a region that is China’s backyard.
The U.S. president’s decision not to show up is a “major problem with really bad optics,” said Brian Harding, deputy director of the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“Every country in Southeast Asia is trying to forge a close relationship with the U.S. — they don’t want to live in a region that’s dominated by China. They want options and they want balance,” he said. “It doesn’t send a good signal [of U.S. commitment] that the president doesn’t want to attend the one summit he’s supposed to in Southeast Asia.”
Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, was the first U.S. president to attend the ASEAN-hosted East Asia Summit, in 2011, and made the trip every year of his presidency thereafter except during a government shutdown in 2013. The appearances were part of a broader pivot to Asia, a region where Obama believed the United States could forge deeper ties and find new allies.
Last year, Trump was in Manila for meetings related to the regional bloc, but he left early and missed the summit itself.
U.S. officials insist that Trump’s absence does not signal a lack of focus on the region. Writing in The Washington Post on Friday ahead of his trip, Pence said the U.S. commitment to the Indo-Pacific was “steadfast and enduring,” and accused some nations of undermining a “foundation” of sovereignty and free commercial trade flows in the region — a thinly veiled reference to China, which has for years been pushing sovereignty claims and expanding its military presence in the South China Sea.
Beijing also sees Southeast Asia as front and center of its Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar-plus global investment plan that countries have begun to see as a debt trap that will leave them under China’s thumb.
In a statement, the vice president’s press secretary, Alyssa Farah, said that Pence is “honored to represent President Donald Trump” and the summits and that he will “highlight American leadership in the region.”
“He will also deliver the message that authoritarianism, aggression, and the disregard for other nations’ sovereignty by any nation in the Indo-Pacific will not be tolerated by the United States,” she added.
On a trip to Europe in recent days, Trump drew criticism for failing to show up to a scheduled tour of a military cemetery, citing the weather. Analysts widely perceived the trip as evidence of how isolated the United States under Trump has become from traditional European allies.
Southeast Asia, however, is a region where leaders haven’t taken particular offense to Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, especially as many countries have moved closer toward shades of authoritarian rule under strongman leaders. Countries here continue to clamor for greater U.S. involvement and leadership, and want an alternative to China’s billion-dollar investment promises that Malaysian prime minister and ASEAN elder statesman Mahathir Mohamad recently criticized as a “new version of colonialism.”
The Trump administration recently announced a plan to support U.S.-style infrastructural development in the region, led by the private sector but backed by billions in development finance. Still, analysts say that the plan isn’t fully fleshed out, and for now, doesn’t present the region with a clear alternative. Beijing, meanwhile, has promised billions in loans to help build railways and develop infrastructure in the Philippines, courting President Rodrigo Duterte in a bid to gain influence in a country that has been among America’s closest regional allies. It is also developing economic corridors in countries like Myanmar and Thailand.
“China thinks they can solve any problems they have with their political relations in Southeast Asia with greater economic partnership,” said CSIS’s Harding. “The U.S. is not coming to the table with anything, so it is an easier card to play.”
Source: The Washington post
When world leaders gather in this city-state and Papua New Guinea for regional summits this week, there will be a conspicuous absence: President Trump.
It is summit season in Asia, with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meetings due to start this Tuesday in Singapore. The 10-member bloc hosts world leaders at the yearly East Asia Summit, a chance for regional leaders to strengthen ties with global powers. Most will then travel to Papua New Guinea for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings, held this year in Papua New Guinea, the poorest member of a 21-country bloc of Pacific economies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will be visiting Singapore for the first time, meeting leaders in a region that is increasingly looking to Moscow for arms purchases and diplomatic protection. Chinese President Xi Jinping will be in Port Moresby for the APEC summit over the weekend, underscoring Beijing’s strategic play in the South Pacific, and will be deploying Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to Singapore to expand a free-trade agreement with the city-state and “upgrade its relationship” with Southeast Asian countries.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea will also be at the regional summits.
Trump, however, will be skipping them entirely, leaving Vice President Pence and national security adviser John Bolton to lead the U.S. delegation — which analysts say is a lost opportunity and miscalculation at a time when Washington and Beijing are locked in a battle for influence over a region that is China’s backyard.
The U.S. president’s decision not to show up is a “major problem with really bad optics,” said Brian Harding, deputy director of the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“Every country in Southeast Asia is trying to forge a close relationship with the U.S. — they don’t want to live in a region that’s dominated by China. They want options and they want balance,” he said. “It doesn’t send a good signal [of U.S. commitment] that the president doesn’t want to attend the one summit he’s supposed to in Southeast Asia.”
Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, was the first U.S. president to attend the ASEAN-hosted East Asia Summit, in 2011, and made the trip every year of his presidency thereafter except during a government shutdown in 2013. The appearances were part of a broader pivot to Asia, a region where Obama believed the United States could forge deeper ties and find new allies.
Last year, Trump was in Manila for meetings related to the regional bloc, but he left early and missed the summit itself.
U.S. officials insist that Trump’s absence does not signal a lack of focus on the region. Writing in The Washington Post on Friday ahead of his trip, Pence said the U.S. commitment to the Indo-Pacific was “steadfast and enduring,” and accused some nations of undermining a “foundation” of sovereignty and free commercial trade flows in the region — a thinly veiled reference to China, which has for years been pushing sovereignty claims and expanding its military presence in the South China Sea.
Beijing also sees Southeast Asia as front and center of its Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar-plus global investment plan that countries have begun to see as a debt trap that will leave them under China’s thumb.
In a statement, the vice president’s press secretary, Alyssa Farah, said that Pence is “honored to represent President Donald Trump” and the summits and that he will “highlight American leadership in the region.”
“He will also deliver the message that authoritarianism, aggression, and the disregard for other nations’ sovereignty by any nation in the Indo-Pacific will not be tolerated by the United States,” she added.
On a trip to Europe in recent days, Trump drew criticism for failing to show up to a scheduled tour of a military cemetery, citing the weather. Analysts widely perceived the trip as evidence of how isolated the United States under Trump has become from traditional European allies.
Southeast Asia, however, is a region where leaders haven’t taken particular offense to Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, especially as many countries have moved closer toward shades of authoritarian rule under strongman leaders. Countries here continue to clamor for greater U.S. involvement and leadership, and want an alternative to China’s billion-dollar investment promises that Malaysian prime minister and ASEAN elder statesman Mahathir Mohamad recently criticized as a “new version of colonialism.”
The Trump administration recently announced a plan to support U.S.-style infrastructural development in the region, led by the private sector but backed by billions in development finance. Still, analysts say that the plan isn’t fully fleshed out, and for now, doesn’t present the region with a clear alternative. Beijing, meanwhile, has promised billions in loans to help build railways and develop infrastructure in the Philippines, courting President Rodrigo Duterte in a bid to gain influence in a country that has been among America’s closest regional allies. It is also developing economic corridors in countries like Myanmar and Thailand.
“China thinks they can solve any problems they have with their political relations in Southeast Asia with greater economic partnership,” said CSIS’s Harding. “The U.S. is not coming to the table with anything, so it is an easier card to play.”
Source: The Washington post
