No Biden, no problem: Asean just has to forge its own path
- Joe Biden’s no-show at next month’s Asean Summit is a calculated decision taken in US interests – nothing more, nothing less
- Instead of feeling slighted, the bloc should redouble its efforts to strengthen intraregional integration and seize emerging opportunities for strategic cooperation
Sullivan rightly points out that there has been an “unprecedented expansion in US-Asean relations” since Biden took office, especially when contrasted with the Trump administration’s record across the board. Regional states have felt heard. The United States, along with its allies and partners, seems to have taken on board Southeast Asia’s repeated exhortations of treating the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on its own merits.
However, in a high-context culture like Southeast Asia where symbols, protocols and customs are themselves a form of communication, what is unstated is as telling as what is verbalised. Silence can be deafening; absence can be revealing.
The previous exception was in 2016 when Laos, as host, combined both meetings in September to rationalise resources. This year’s earlier date for the Asean Summit is to optimise regional travel in view of the G20 meeting immediately after.
But there is great irony in Biden wanting to use the G20 to offer a value proposition to Global South countries while skipping the opportunity to engage directly with 10 Global South nations (including Timor Leste and excluding Singapore), just before.
In the chorus of centrality sung by the US and its allies, Asean is heard but not necessarily listened to.
The unspoken reality is that there is more than a communication dissonance between Southeast Asia and the United States. The US, like other great powers, is a big country and the other countries are small. That is a fact.
From Washington’s perspective, given constraints on the president’s time and attention, engaging at the highest level with 19 other countries – many of them large and ideologically like-minded – may make for a better return on investment than showing up at a meeting of ideologically disparate nations. Try as it does, the United States cannot be everything everywhere all at once.
There may be disappointment in Asean about the White House’s decision to downgrade representation at the September summit. Biden’s no-show will also give further fodder to Asean sceptics, inside and outside the region, about the grouping’s role as dialogue convenor to the stars and by extension, the credibility of its centrality.
Yet, perhaps the varying levels of calculated transactionalism the region has seen by great powers over at least the last two decades, from the so-called global war on terror to today’s Sino-American tensions, will become more of a norm.
Expanded Brics’ key message: West is not the only show in town
Asean has many weaknesses. But the success or failure of its summitry will not be determined by the presence or absence of any one leader. For Indonesia, the show will go on. For Asean, the show must go on.
Elina Noor is a senior fellow in the Asia Programme at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace