The special US-Asean summit scheduled for March 28-29 in Washington has been abruptly postponed. According to Cambodia, the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, “some Asean leaders can’t join the meeting as scheduled”. This is not a good sign for US-Asean relations or the goals the US hopes to achieve.
Most realise that Washington’s main reason for holding the summit is to enlist Southeast Asian support for its anti-China agenda. But this is not a one-way street and Asean has some leverage.
Last December, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Asean was “essential to the architecture of the Indo-Pacific region”.He said the summit would discuss routine topics such as the Myanmar crisis, pandemic recovery, climate change, and investment and infrastructure.
But the United States was also likely to raise the “China threat’ and use the Ukraine tragedy to rally Asean into joining its anti-China Indo-Pacific Strategy. The strategy warned that China was “combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological might as it pursues a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and seeks to become the world’s most influential power”.
It predicted that: “Our collective efforts over the next decade will determine whether
More to the point, Asean wants to remain the master of its own destiny – it does not want to choose sides. A choice is difficult anyway because of competing national interests. Even for Asean members more ideologically aligned with the US and which prefer its security protection, there may be longer-term economic and geopolitical reasons for their reluctance to confront China – even with US backing.
So most Asean members want to be neutral and continue benefiting from both sides. This is still possible, though as pressure mounts from both the US and China, it will become more difficult. More generally, Asean members want to be courted on their own merits and not as part of some China-targeting scheme.
Their preference is for economic help. The decline in US soft power in the region accelerated when Trump withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership – a major economic pact that the Obama administration had persuaded Southeast Asian countries to join.
At the time, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong summed up the frustration of many Southeast Asian leaders when he declared : “How can anybody believe in you any more?” The most important thing the US can do to appeal to Asean is to lead a multinational effort in economic assistance focused on the needs defined by the recipients.
Asean would also like the US to lessen its emphasis on military power and its forward projection. They do not want US-China military conflict; they fear proxy wars and interference in their political affairs.
Finally, the US should lighten up on its ideological approach. Most Asean members do not subscribe to US democratic values – embarrassingly, last December’s US democracy summit excluded seven of the 10 Asean members, including strategic partner Singapore .
In appealing to so-called common values, the US has taken a “with us or against us” approach; pushed on this, most Asean members would be “against” in terms of values. Even for the three US-deemed democracies , their leaders’ priority is staying in power and this takes precedence over idealistic considerations.
Asean needs to seek common ground among its members – or a significant core – as to what it specifically wants and does not want from America, and then forcefully communicate it.
If the US is serious about rebuilding its respect, trust and confidence in the region, it has to do so through genuine concern and respect for the region’s preferred future and a willingness to help Southeast Asia achieve it on its own terms. It can start with selecting dates and a venue for the summit more convenient to Asean leaders.
This article was first published in Asia One . All contents and images are copyright to their respective owners and sources.
