From May 12 to 13, the United States and ASEAN held a special U.S.-ASEAN summit in Washington, D.C., and the two sides issued a joint vision statement to elevate the relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership. Biden said the summit will open a "new era" in U.S.-ASEAN relations, but the Biden administration did not take advantage of the opportunity to release pragmatic benefits to ASEAN countries.
What does it mean to go to Washington for a meeting?
The United States has stressed several times that this is the first time in history that the United States-ASEAN summit has been held in Washington, which seems to be intended to emphasize that this is a major "reward" for southeast Asian countries by the United States.
Southeast Asian countries once demanded that a special summit be held online, but the Biden administration insisted on "greeting the leaders in Washington." For most Southeast Asian leaders, Washington means a longer distance and a tighter schedule— in other words, more annoyance and discomfort.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo had to abandon the presidential plane and opt for Garuda Indonesia's commercial flights, transiting through Amsterdam, the Netherlands. A spokesman for Indonesia's presidential office said that if a special plane is used, it will stop twice and send two advance teams. Similarly, Laos Prime Minister Kanpan departed from Vientiane Wattay Airport late at night on the 10th to transfer to Suvarnabhumi Airport in Thailand to take a commercial flight to the United States. In contrast, Obama's choice to hold the U.S.-ASEAN summit in California and President Trump's proposal to hold a summit in Las Vegas (cancelled due to the pandemic) have taken care of the hardships of world leaders as much as possible.
The US protocol is also puzzling. Indonesian President Joko Widodo and his wife spent 24 hours arriving at Andrews Air Base at 9:40 p.m. local time, and there was not a single senior US official present to greet them. Indonesia's Foreign Ministry then issued a statement saying that the special summit was different from the bilateral meeting, cambodian prime minister Hun Sen, Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Shabiri and Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Binh Jeong arrived at the port without senior US officials greeting them, and the US side did not treat President Jokowi specially. Although the Indonesian side intends to ease the cheeks of the United States, it has exposed the true views of the United States on the leaders of Southeast Asian countries. If President Biden visits any of these countries, although he has never done so, the same situation will never happen.
Another reason why the US side chose Washington is to allow the leaders of Southeast Asian countries to communicate directly with members of the US Congress and senior cabinet officials of both parties and to show the "unanimous position" of all walks of life in the United States on Southeast Asia. To this end, the United States has arranged seven events in 13 hours, constantly highlighting the importance of bilateral relations and repeating U.S. support for ASEAN, with the intention of showing through the summit that the United States has not forgotten Southeast Asia. But deeds speak louder than words, and there is not much difference between saying one thing once and saying seven times, on the contrary, pragmatic cooperation will be very different as long as it is done once. After the Cold War, the ASEAN-centered regional cooperation order has long been widely supported and has a solid foundation of legitimacy, and ASEAN countries attach more importance to the sincerity of the United States with practical actions.
Familiar recipe
In Washington, the United States announced that it would invest $150 million in the U.S.-ASEAN comprehensive strategic partnership, an increase of $48 million over the amount the United States provided to ASEAN at the end of last year, but only about 1/267 of the amount covered by the Biden administration's previous "Lend-Lease Bill" to Congress.
U.S. cooperation initiatives in Southeast Asia are increasingly path-dependent. The "list of facts" released by the White House shows that the United States will promote cooperation with ASEAN from the four aspects of gas change, education, maritime law enforcement and anti-epidemic, basically continuing the basic framework of cooperation between the United States and Southeast Asia during the Trump era, and the economic and trade cooperation, infrastructure, supply chain and other issues that Southeast Asian countries are most concerned about are still not much or even missing. For the United States, these four areas can not only reflect the "advantages" accumulated by the United States, but also leave most of the actual investment in the United States. 40 percent ($60 million) of the $150 million will be used to strengthen the deployment, equipment, and staffing of the U.S. Coast Guard in the Indo-Pacific region, with Southeast Asian countries receiving only a few official ship and personnel training opportunities.
U.S. Ambassador to ASEAN Johnny Abraham
Biden announced Johnny Abraham as the new U.S. ambassador to ASEAN at a dinner on the 12th. Abraham was Obama's "disciple soldier" who has been an election aid since 2007, especially in Virginia's "first red turn blue in 44 years" process, and has long served in the White House during the Obama era. After Biden's victory, Tammy Abraham served as executive director of his transition team and later as chief of staff of the National Security Council. Biden told the heads of state of Southeast Asia that what Abraham said was what he and the Biden administration said to show intimacy and attention. The U.S. ambassador to ASEAN has been vacant since January 2017, during which time the chargé d'affaires in charge have been replaced twice, leaving the position unoccupied for more than five years. The new arrivals, although they are presidential brachios, have no diplomatic experience abroad. Biden's appointment is more like a political reward for years of Abraham,000- and similar to Nina Hachigian, the previous U.S. ambassador to ASEAN (2014-2017). Ambassador Hutchingen, a think tank by training, served in the National Security Council at the end of his presidency and was co-director of Asia-Pacific policy on Obama's campaign in 2012, stepping down as ambassador the day before President Trump took office.
Southeast Asia suspended
Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore, once said that the United States views Southeast Asia as a video, and can press the pause button and the play button at any time. This twist-and-turn, laborious and symbolic special summit is like the pause button pressed by the United States to Southeast Asian countries: do as I say, don't do what I don't say.
But what Southeast Asian countries are really concerned about is precisely what the United States has not said. In recent years, the Biden administration's combination of geopolitics and value diplomacy has challenged the post-Cold War ASEAN-centered Asia-Pacific order from the level of low-level rules, and it is necessary to completely change the original humble and symbiotic tone of regional cooperation, in an attempt to open the floodgates of fierce competition and even confrontation among major powers. ASEAN countries have repeatedly emphasized open regionalism and the position of not taking sides to avoid falling prey to confrontation provoked by the United States. Hun Sen, for example, said in Washington that Cambodia wants to be a friend of the United States, but not a side between the United States and China. In the joint outlook statement released at the special summit, the ASEAN side resisted the pressure and adhered to its established position on Myanmar and Ukraine, and did not let the United States ride on the issue. In fact, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand issued a joint statement before the summit, stating that they would invite all member states to participate in the relevant summits in the second half of the year, which was interpreted by the outside world as a counterweight to the hegemonic demands of the United States to refuse Russia's invitation to Ukraine.
But on the issue of the "Indo-Pacific economic framework", ASEAN will hardly have such influence. The U.S. side did not announce the "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework" first proposed by Biden at the U.S.-ASEAN summit last October, apparently intending to leave it to its own "Quad Security Dialogue" summit. The "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework" began in ASEAN, and the high probability finally ended on quad, becoming more and more of a "family law rule" of the United States, highlighting the difficulty of ASEAN to beak on this issue, and the central position of ASEAN has been weakened. Although Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has repeated his usual proposition in Washington (which can be regarded as the voice of most Southeast Asian countries) that the "Indo-Pacific economic framework" has the characteristics of openness and inclusiveness, it seems that the core demands of Southeast Asian countries will not be taken into account, and the United States has no intention of changing its exclusive approach.
Most ASEAN leaders chose to return home as soon as the two-day trip ended, and no follow-up itinerary was arranged in the United States. They met Biden twice, a total of 4 hours, but almost no opportunity to meet with Biden alone; every American official and business person they met had a high opinion of ASEAN, but the actual input was better than nothing; they wrote the ASEAN position into the text on specific issues, but it was difficult to confront the US-led subversive restructuring of the Asia-Pacific order.
In Washington, Southeast Asia remains unseen.
The author 丨 Liu Chang is an assistant researcher at the Institute of American Studies of the China Institute of International Studies
Editor 丨Liu Liping, the chief writer of Shenzhen Satellite TV