TOKYO -- Leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will gather in Washington on Thursday for a long-awaited summit with U.S. President Joe Biden, whose administration is keen to reassert itself in a region where China and Russia also have deep ties.
The special two-day summit commemorates the 45th anniversary of relations between Washington and the bloc, and will be their first in-person meeting since 2017. Eight of the 10 ASEAN leaders are expected to attend. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who will leave office in June, is skipping the summit, while Myanmar military leader Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing was not invited amid a diplomatic freeze-out of his regime.
The Biden White House is stepping up engagement in Asia through its Indo-Pacific strategy, widely seen as an effort to counter China's growing influence. A week later, Biden is due to travel to South Korea and Japan, where he is to attend a Quad security summit in Tokyo with Australia, India and Japan.
The ASEAN meeting kicks off this flurry of Asian diplomacy, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement that it will demonstrate America's "enduring commitment" to the bloc.
Alan Chong, associate professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, told Nikkei Asia that the Biden administration "is trying to make up for lost time."
Some in ASEAN "wished the U.S. would act as a more active but subtle counterbalance to China. But that was missing during the [Donald] Trump years," he said.
Biden's predecessor was often seen as treating the region with indifference. Trump skipped several high-level ASEAN events after attending a 2017 summit in Manila, where Duterte famously serenaded him with a Filipino love song, crooning lyrics that translate to, "You are the light in my world, a half of this heart of mine."
Biden on Thursday spoke with Philippine President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to congratulate him on his victory and express his intention to continue strengthening the countries' alliance.
Chong noted that in the meantime China increased its island-building efforts in the South China Sea while cutting through ASEAN by striking bilateral deals with member countries -- exemplified by its development and military assistance to Cambodia. "These kinds of signals should be read in terms of how much China [took] advantage of the Trump years to entrench itself in Southeast Asia," he said.
Trade relations and regional security are expected to top the summit agenda. While experts anticipate few groundbreaking outcomes, the meeting is nevertheless seen as a sign that the U.S. is serious about staying engaged.
As he departed for Washington on Tuesday, Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said, "ASEAN is ready to synergize with all ASEAN partner countries, including the U.S., in developing concrete, inclusive and mutually beneficial cooperation." Indonesia is currently the country coordinator of the ASEAN-U.S. partnership.
Experts see the White House as looking to deepen trade relations and upgrade its relationship with ASEAN to match China and Australia's respective "comprehensive strategic partnerships" with the bloc, forged last year. ASEAN and the U.S. have been negotiating such an enhancement of ties since October.
"It is likely that there will be joint efforts toward establishing such a [partnership] but with more progress to be expected at the end of this year," said Sharon Seah, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a Singaporean think tank.
Of interest to ASEAN will be the nascent Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), a key component of an Indo-Pacific strategy announced by the White House in February. Discussions are still in the early stages, but the framework promises cooperation on high labor and environmental standards, open cross-border data flows and secure supply chains.
Washington is eager to shore up trade ties as it finds itself on the outside looking in on major multilateral free trade deals. Former President Barack Obama had spearheaded the Trans-Pacific Partnership, only to see Trump abandon the pact, which became the 11-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
Likewise, the U.S. is not party to the 15-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world's largest trade deal, which includes China. "There is a gap for the U.S. to fill in terms of a trade agreement with the region," Seah noted.
Even so, the Biden administration has stated it will not pursue unfettered trade liberalization, with Trade Representative Katherine Tai calling free trade agreements "very 20th-century" tools. With protectionist sentiment still running high, opening American market access remains a sensitive subject.
"ASEAN countries that are looking for increased market access for exports to the U.S. may be disappointed because the IPEF will not be designed in such a way that will allow such benefits," Seah said.
The U.S. faces other challenges as well as it strives to reboot the ASEAN relationship. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, for example, has highlighted the difficulty of dealing with the bloc as a whole.
"The Ukraine issue has revealed, perhaps, the very divided nature of ASEAN," noted Chong of Nanyang Technological University.
ASEAN's reactions to the war -- roundly condemned by the U.S. and Western allies -- have been mixed. Myanmar's military rulers have vocally supported the invasion. Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines criticized the attack on Ukraine without naming Russia as the aggressor. An outlier is Singapore, which imposed its own economic sanctions on Russia.
In a statement in February, ASEAN foreign ministers together said they were "deeply concerned over the evolving situation and armed hostilities in Ukraine," stopping short of condemning Russia's actions. A follow-up statement in March went no further.
Biden is likely to call on his ASEAN counterparts for support on the Ukraine issue. He "will get support," Chong predicted. "It's just that it will be nuanced."
ASEAN members "will use language that does not completely please the Biden administration, but sufficiently for them to say that most of Asia is with the U.S. and Ukraine," Chong added.
Another delicate security subject is Myanmar, where the military continues to reign after ousting the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. ASEAN has been pushing to implement a peaceful solution based on a five-point plan agreed upon last year, but little progress has been made.
Ahead of the summit with Biden, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), a group of regional lawmakers, issued a statement on Monday urging more pressure on the Myanmar military government.
The U.S. and ASEAN governments "can no longer ignore the threat that the junta in Myanmar poses to the security of millions of people at the heart of Southeast Asia," Charles Santiago, APHR chairperson and a Malaysian member of parliament, said in a statement.
Older unresolved issues remain in play as well.
Seah of ISEAS expects the South China Sea -- where several ASEAN countries have overlapping claims with China -- will also come up. But she said the discussions "likely will not be able to go beyond the usual expressions of support for upholding international law."
Experts are also skeptical about whether the Biden administration's strategy of aligning democracies against autocracies will work in the ASEAN context. Seah suggested that the U.S. would be better served by "not pursuing a China-containment narrative at the summit."
Chong observed that ASEAN is now in a "strange gray diplomatic area of soft balancing, trying to be friends with all the important great powers." This, he added, "will have to continue."