Vice President Harris to attend the Southeast Asian nations summit

Vice President Kamala Harris will deepen her outreach to Southeast Asia this week at a global summit in Jakarta, Indonesia, where she’ll attempt to erase doubts about U.S. commitment to the region stirred by President Joe Biden’s absence.

It’s Harris’ third trip to Southeast Asia and fourth to Asia overall, and he or she’s touched down in additional countries there than another continent. The repeat visits, along with meetings that she’s hosted in Washington, have positioned Harris as a key interlocutor for the Democratic administration because it tries to bolster a network of partnerships to counterbalance Chinese influence.

This latest journey is one other opportunity for Harris to burnish her foreign policy credentials as she prepares for a bruising campaign 12 months. She’s already come under attack from Republican presidential candidates who say she’s unprepared to step up if Biden, the oldest U.S. president in history, cannot finish a second term.

John Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, said Harris has “made our alliances and partnerships within the Indo-Pacific a key a part of her agenda as vice chairman,” and he described her itinerary as “perfectly in line with the problems that she’s been focused on.”

But Biden’s decision to skip the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, referred to as ASEAN, has caused some frustration, particularly because he’s already going to be in India and Vietnam around the identical time. The president’s proximity makes his nonattendance “all of the more more glaring than would otherwise be the case,” said Marty Natalegawa, Indonesia’s former foreign affairs minister.

Nevertheless, Natalegawa conceded that ASEAN is struggling to persuade world leaders that it deserves to play a central role within the region. That is despite the fact that the alliance represents greater than 650 million people across 10 nations that collectively have the world’s fifth largest economy.

The organization has not resolved civil strife in Myanmar, which saw a military coup two years ago and has been disinvited from meetings. A peace plan reached with the country’s top general didn’t result in any progress.

Negotiations over territorial claims within the South China Sea remain bogged down as well, and ASEAN faces internal disagreements over global competition between the US and China. Some members, reminiscent of the Philippines and Vietnam, have sought closer ties with Washington, while Cambodia stays firmly in Beijing’s orbit.

“We will complain all we would like about other countries not respecting us or not coming to our summits,” Natalegawa said. “But ultimately, it is definitely a degree of reflection.”

Unless ASEAN becomes more practical, Natalegawa said, “we may find yourself with less and fewer leaders turning up.”

Kirby, the national security spokesman, rejected the concept Biden was snubbing the organization or the region.

“It’s just unimaginable to have a look at the record that this administration has recommend and say that we’re one way or the other walking away,” Kirby said, noting that Biden already hosted the primary Washington summit with ASEAN leaders last 12 months.

Phil Gordon, a national security adviser to Harris, said “every country wants the president of the US to indicate up” when it holds an event, but “there’s an excellent amount of enthusiasm” for the vice chairman’s stop in Jakarta as well.

He also said the summit was a helpful opportunity to have interaction with countries within the region.

“There are differences amongst them, but there’s also loads of common ground,” Gordon said. “And there is common ground with us.”

Ja-Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science on the National University of Singapore, said Harris’ presence helps the U.S. cover its bases at an event that won’t prove productive on key issues.

“You must show that you just’re being attentive, you send the vice chairman,” he said.

Harris departed Monday morning and is scheduled to spend two days enmeshed in meetings in Jakarta. Her office has not yet detailed her schedule, but she’s expected to attend summit events and hold individual talks with some foreign leaders.

Soon after Harris returns from Indonesia, Biden is headed to India for the annual Group of 20 summit, which pulls together lots of the world’s richest countries and is a staple of any president’s calendar. Then he plans to stop in Vietnam, where he’s focused on strengthening ties with a rustic that’s an emerging economic power.

“I do not fault the administration for the selection that they made. It’s just unlucky that they’d to make that selection,” said Gregory B. Poling, who directs the Southeast Asia program on the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Leaders are gathering in Jakarta amid heightened tension over the South China Sea after Beijing released a recent official map that emphasizes its territorial claims there.

The map has angered other nations that consider the waters to be a part of their very own territory or international byways. The South China Sea is a critical crossroads for global trade.

U.S. officials and analysts imagine Beijing’s aggressive approach to the region has created a gap for Washington to forge stronger partnerships.

“In some ways, the PRC is doing its work for us,” said David Stilwell, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China. Stilwell served because the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs under President Donald Trump.

Although much of Biden’s recent attention has been on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he’s left little doubt that he considers China to be the highest foreign policy challenge for the U.S. He’s described much of his agenda, each domestic and overseas, as an effort to discourage Beijing from supplanting Washington as essentially the most powerful worldwide force.

Sometimes his warnings take a darker turn. During a recent fundraiser for his reelection campaign in Park City, Utah, Biden described China as a “ticking time bomb” due to its economic and demographic challenges.

“That is not good because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things,” he said.

Harris has previously visited Singapore and Vietnam, Japan and South Korea, and the Philippines and Thailand.

A lot of her travels have been geared toward the worldwide rivalry with China.

Speaking from the deck of a U.S. Navy destroyer docked near Tokyo last 12 months, Harris said China has “challenged freedom of the seas” and “flexed its military and economic might to coerce and intimidate its neighbors.”

Harris also became the highest-ranking U.S. official to go to Palawan, a Filipino island adjoining to the South China Sea that has been a front line for the territorial disputes. She said that Washington would support the Philippines “within the face of intimidation and coercion.”