Southeast Asian leaders prove to be perfect summit hosts
Deft leadership calmed international tensions, especially between U.S. and China
Michael Vatikiotis is senior adviser at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and author of "Lives Between The Lines: A Journey in Search of the Lost Levant."
In a world that until recently had been locked down and masked up, the cavalcade of presidents and prime ministers that mingled unmasked in Southeast Asia was quite a sight.
Leaders of Europe, North America and Asia came together first at the summits of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Phnom Penh, then moved on to Bali for the Group of 20 before ending up in Bangkok for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting.
This high-level caravan was significant not just because it was the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic that so many leaders had met face to face, but also because of the timing -- in the midst of a grueling war in Ukraine, a consequent crisis in global food security and growing tensions between the U.S. and China.
There was little expectation that much could be achieved. What was will require swift and intensive follow-up.
It helped that the hosts for all of these meetings -- Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand -- were ASEAN member states with no stakes in the Ukraine war and eager to restore a sense of harmony and balance to the geopolitical landscape. Good, impartial facilitation was key.
In Bali, Indonesian officials wrestled until the eleventh hour with rancorous officials from Europe, Canada and the U.S. who were intent on a furious condemnation of Russia's war in Ukraine. The fact that a communique was agreed is testament to Jakarta's skillful use of nonconfrontational, nuanced language, which meaningless as it may be, helped preserve peaceful and cordial ties in a contested setting.
This in itself may help set the stage for more constructive discussion about ending the war in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did not walk out when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a video address, pointedly referring to the assembled leaders as the G-19, but departed that evening for Moscow, skipping the second day of the G-20.
Indonesian diplomats also persuaded India and China to agree to language calling for an end to the war, which could help with efforts to bring Moscow and Kyiv to the table, as the Asian powers have some influence on Russia.
While the war in Ukraine rages far away in Europe, its impact is being felt across the world via higher prices for grain and fertilizer. Indonesia was hoping for an extension of the critical Black Sea grain corridor that permits Ukrainian wheat to reach global markets in time for the G-20.
The extension was agreed afterward, but leaders did agree in Bali on the need to assure supplies of synthetic fertilizer, which depend heavily on Russian ammonia nitrate that transits through a pipeline to Ukraine. An agreement on fertilizers is in the works.
War and global food security aside, the wider focus of the summits, and one much more important for Asia, was the need to address growing geopolitical polarization due to the war in Ukraine and escalating tensions between China and the U.S.
At the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh, regional leaders sent a strong signal that they are unwilling to align with either China or the U.S.
"Indonesia cannot be anyone's proxy. Indonesia's stance is nonaligned," President Joko Widodo told me ahead of the G-20. "The U.S. and China understand Indonesia's stance very well."
As he found new footing on the international stage in interviews and speeches, Widodo repeated this message to leaders at the East Asia Summit. Indonesia will be assuming the chairmanship of ASEAN for the coming year.
In this sense, Widodo was fortunate that as host of the G-20, Indonesia provided the setting for an important U.S.-China bilateral meeting.
The discussions between U.S. President Joe Biden and China's Xi Jinping, which lasted more than three hours, were probably the most important outcome of the 10 days of high-level diplomacy in Southeast Asia.
Both leaders came prepared to recalibrate the bilateral relationship, which has been so rancorous in recent months that many feared armed conflict was imminent, especially over Taiwan.
It helped that Biden and Xi met on equal terms, their legitimacy secured by the Democratic Party's better-than-expected showing in the congressional election a week earlier and the Chinese Communist Party's endorsement of another term for Xi last month.
The main outcome of the Xi-Biden meeting was an agreement to resume official-level engagement across a variety of critical areas, including North Korea and climate change. This immediately sent a signal that imminent conflict between the two superpowers is unlikely.
Xi's flurry of bilateral meetings, including an important one with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Bangkok, signaled that China may at last be emerging from the debilitating isolation brought on by the pandemic.
Afterward, Australia, France and the Netherlands each toned down their rhetoric on China as a security threat and seemed relieved to restore normal trade and economic ties.
Now, however, the hard work begins. No one is betting that the thaw in U.S.-China relations will last, especially as the political atmosphere in Washington is in favor of risky recognition of Taiwan as a government -- a clear red line for China.
Nor is the resumption of dialogue necessarily a recipe for workable solutions. The U.S. and China have discussed North Korea for years and have never agreed on an effective path toward denuclearization. Beijing officials believe that Washington's ongoing reinforcement of military cooperation with South Korea is aimed primarily at the continued containment of China.
In the end, Asian leaders responsible for orchestrating the series of summits did a very good job of patching together the international system, which had been torn by recent events. They resurrected nonalignment as a respectable position, one that could help resolve some of the world's most pressing issues.
To build on this, Asia needs a bigger say in global affairs, something Western powers are still reluctant to cede.