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US Vice President's Visit Set to Improve Ties in Crucial, Yet Wary, Southeast Asia

By Ralph Jennings August 18, 2021

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris's planned visit next week to Southeast Asia, following other diplomatic overtures from Washington, will help President Joe Biden compete with China for influence in a crucial yet wary region of 660 million people, experts say.

Harris will travel to regional financial center Singapore, and former U.S. war enemy Vietnam, a White House spokesperson said. Harris will speak with both governments about security, climate change, the pandemic and "joint efforts to promote a rules-based international order", spokesperson Symone Sanders said.

Her visit would follow Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's late July trip to the same two countries plus the Philippines and Secretary of State Antony Blinken's virtual meetings August 4 with counterparts from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations at an annual summit.

Events of this type have an "essential role" in "the U.S. vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific," the U.S. Mission to ASEAN said in a statement.

U.S. officials normally use the terms "rules-based international order" and "free and open Indo-Pacific" to advocate unblocked international access to the disputed South China Sea. China claims about 90% of the waterway, overlapping the maritime economic zones of Southeast Asian states Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Beijing has alarmed the other claimants by building up artificial islands for military use and passing ships through disputed tracts of the sea.

Biden's diplomacy is "meant to coordinate policies in a way, like make sure they are aligned with the U.S. agenda in the region, the free and open Indo Pacific, things like that, rules based international order, and the exploration of further areas of cooperation," said Aaron Rabena, research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation in Metro Manila.

Washington is "basically coming to its senses" by understanding why it should shadow Chinese diplomacy "tit for tat," Rabena said.

Although a world court arbitration court rejected China's nine-dash line claim to the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea in 2016, Beijing has offered its Southeast Asian maritime rivals aid for economically crucial new infrastructure and COVID-19 relief including early-stage vaccines. China maintains the largest military and economy in Asia and has expanded its navy over the past decade.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump's administration avoided multi-country trade arrangements in Southeast Asia, brought the region shocks from the Sino-U.S. trade dispute and left "uncertainty" due to a "break from longstanding U.S. trade policy," according to 2019 analysis of U.S.-Southeast Asia trade relations issued by the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington.

However, U.S. officials still look to Southeast Asia for allies in checking Chinese expansion, part of a two-way superpower rivalry.