Austin’s Southeast Asian tour shows a better way for the US to counter China

After over a decade of neglect, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin struck the right note in promoting relations with Southeast Asia for their own sake, rather than denouncing China at every turn

Douglas H. Paal

Published: 1:00am, 5 Aug 2021

Why you can trust SCMP

The still-new administration of President Joe Biden has worked hard to recover from the damage caused by his predecessor. Allies and partners, often alienated or ignored by Donald Trump, have welcomed with relief the return to civil behaviour by the United States.

The major exception to this change in atmosphere and priorities is policy regarding China.

In a strategy that either does not exist or has not yet been publicly revealed, Washington has maintained a level of caustic commentary and inaction that is out of step with policy elsewhere, but in keeping with Trump’s hostility towards Beijing. The most recent display was by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who visited China only to exchange barbs with her hosts.

For its part, Beijing showed itself eager to complain and equally bereft of ideas and initiatives to change the narrative.

For those of us concerned that the US, given the high stakes and potential costs involved, needs to get its China policy right, a glimmer of hope has emerged in Southeast Asia. Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin visited the region last week, after an earlier delay caused by the Covid-19 cancellation of the annual security-focused Shangri-La Dialogue.

In both rhetoric and action, Austin put America in a better position to balance China in the competition for influence there.

This week, Secretary of State Tony Blinken plans to follow up with a series of virtual conferences with leaders of the region. An earlier attempt by Blinken in May to meet online with counterparts in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations fell apart embarrassingly for technical reasons that suggested high priorities elsewhere. Sherman also passed through the region in late May-early June.

To understand the potential importance of these developments, it pays to look back at the sorrowful record of the past few decades. In the early 1990s, Southeast Asia enjoyed a boom in interest, especially from America. The best hotels were filled with investment bankers eager to cash in on the region’s promise as a manufacturing hub and growing market.

The boom went bust in 1997, in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. In the ensuing clean-up, Washington looked churlish and unhelpful, and Beijing scored points by modestly offering support for the region’s central banks, well before China’s economic take-off in the next decade and a half.

When George W. Bush was elected, he emphasised strategic competition with China, and it looked as if Asean would benefit from greater attention. But that hope proved short-lived after September 11 and Washington’s attention turned fully towards countering terrorism. For Southeast Asia, that meant reduced participation by Americans in regional diplomatic and other activities, and lectures about terrorism when they managed to show up.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo (left) chats with former US president Barack Obama at the presidential palace in Bogor while Obama was on a family holiday in Indonesia, in this photo released by the Indonesian Presidential Palace on June 30, 2017. The election of Obama, who spent part of his youth in Indonesia, raised hopes for sustained US attention to the region. Photo: AFP / Indonesian Presidential Palace

Barack Obama, who spent part of his youth in Indonesia, raised hopes again for sustained attention to the region. In 2011, he famously promised a rebalance or pivot to Asia, reflecting its growing importance relative to the burdens of conflict in the Middle East.

He also took up the call from regional leaders to pursue a Trans-Pacific Partnership to rewrite the rules for trade in the new era. In the end, Obama disappointed on both counts.

Trump also had an early, apparently staff-driven impulse to engage the region’s leaders, which they duly appreciated. But by the end of his term, the early attention had become outright disregard. Major meetings were attended not by America’s leaders, but by their horse holders. In Asean, where showing up counts for more than most, the US was running yet another deficit.

In the meantime, China secured its place as the major trading partner of all the region’s economies, a major donor of aid for most of those who needed it, the leader and banker for the Belt and Road Initiative to upgrade the region’s infrastructure, and an attentive diplomatic force. In the Covid-19 pandemic, Chinese officials have been quick to steal the march on America’s more distant and changing cast of characters.

Biden’s policy team must play catch-up and show it is in the game for the long haul. Defence Secretary Austin struck the right note at the Fullerton Lecture in Singapore and a subsequent visit to Vietnam, not following the Trumpian playbook of denouncing China at every turn, but promoting positive relations with the region for their own sake.

In the Philippines, he presided over the reinstatement of the Visiting Forces Agreement which Philippine President Duterte, an America sceptic, had threatened to trash.

Austin in Manila would be a good lesson for American officials to study. There is substantial goodwill still in the Philippines for the US. Washington would be smart to restore the tradition of strong representation there to remind friendly Filipinos that the Chinese do not have the only game in town.

Douglas H. Paal is a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace