Inside Out | Biden’s blurry Indo-Pacific economic vision brings few new ideas to benefit Asia
- The US president’s visit to Asia holds symbolic importance, but it is unclear what tangible benefits will emerge
- Details on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework are in short supply, and the plan seems to offer little that Asia’s current bilateral and multilateral deals do not
Whether the meetings succeed in generating any substantive messages, or what those messages might be, remains open to question. Just before flying out on Air Force One, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan did his best. He said the president would be bringing “a message of an affirmative vision of what the world can look like if the democracies and open societies of the world stand together to shape the rules of the road to define the security architecture of the region to reinforce strong, powerful historic alliances”. Clear as mud.
These include the “war on terror” following the destruction of the World Trade Centre towers in New York in 2001, the invasion of Iraq and other Middle Eastern conflicts, and the latest Russian assault on Ukraine. The shape of any strategy to build alliances across Asia remains elusive.
