What does Donald Trump’s East Asia Summit absence mean for China’s regional influence?
- Observers believe the president’s absence reflects his disdain for long-distance trips that do not culminate in blockbuster deals
- Southeast Asian countries have sought to keep the US engaged as a means to counter China’s increasing strategic assertions
In an announcement late on Tuesday, the White House said national security adviser Robert O’Brien would lead a delegation to the November 3-4 forum in Bangkok alongside commerce secretary Wilbur Ross.
Ross and O’Brien, while key players of Trump’s cabinet, are the lowest-ranking American officials to lead the US delegation since the Western superpower formally joined the East Asia Summit in 2011.
President Trump’s real preference for long travel … is that some kind of a deal must be in the making
There had been hopes that the Trump administration’s so-called Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy meant the US was keen to play this role, despite the president’s inward looking “America First” doctrine.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a Bangkok-based observer of affairs within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said the development was “disappointing but not unsurprising”.
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The Chulalongkorn University international relations professor said Trump’s sole East Asia Summit appearance in 2017 – during which then secretary of state Rex Tillerson deputised for him in the main plenary session – “was an aberration”.
“President Trump’s real preference for long travel and consultative dialogues is that some kind of a deal must be in the making,” Thitinan said.
President Obama attended every summit from 2011 to 2016, apart from the 2013 edition when the US government was shut down due to political gridlock.
Vice-President Pence attended last year’s forum in Singapore.
The East Asia Summit was initially thought up as a platform for Asean to hold dialogues with China, Japan and South Korea. Over the years, the forum was expanded to include the bloc’s other major trading partners – Australia, New Zealand, India, Russia, and the US.
The 18-nation summit is traditionally held alongside the second of the biannual Asean summits – usually held in the fourth quarter of the year.
Regional observers echoed concerns among diplomats that Trump’s repeated snub of the summit was further evidence that Washington’s Free and Open Indo Pacific Strategy might be nothing more than a paper tiger.
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“The region is already well aware that US interest in the Indo-Pacific, outside the trade war with China, is marginal and superficial,” said Greg Raymond, a research fellow focusing on Southeast Asian security at the Australian National University.
On the question of whether there was a silver lining to the weakened US presence at the summit, Raymond said “the only upside” was that middle powers such as Australia, Indonesia, India, Japan and South Korea – along with the Asean nations – were now “having to think more creatively and actively about how to shape a region which is not China-dominated and or subject to coercion of various types”.
Thitinan said the weakened delegation “will reinforce perceptions among US allies, partners and friends that the Trump administration has its eye elsewhere, that Asean-centred regional architecture for peace and stability is not important in the Trump White House.”
Kashish Parpiani, a US foreign policy observer for India’s Observer Research Foundation, said it was likely that “countries like China may tap into [the] American vacuum, to purport itself as the standard bearer of globalisation, away from conversations on its predatory economics”.
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The analysts, however, stressed that the presence of Ross and O’Brien – both seen as Trump loyalists – was not to be written off.
Ross has held the commerce secretary job since Trump took office, a novelty of sorts in an administration with a high turnover rate.
O’Brien, a former chief hostage negotiator for the state department, took over as national security adviser in September after Trump fired John Bolton, the third permanent appointee to the position since the president’s 2017 inauguration.
Ross is expected to speak at the Indo-Pacific Business Forum to be held alongside the East Asia Summit, and Parpiani said the commerce secretary’s attendance “signifies the Trump administration’s elevation of trade matters in America’s foreign policy”.
The American officials will not be part of what is expected to be the biggest event at the summit – the Asean bloc’s bid to tie up the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) pact with India, China, South Korea Japan, New Zealand and Australia.
Trade negotiators of the 16 countries involved in the RCEP have arrived in Bangkok for a final round of talks that are being held with the hope that the long-delayed pact – which will create the world’s biggest free-trade zone – can be finalised when leaders meet over the weekend.
