US-China Competition in Southeast Asia: Can Washington Overcome its “Imperfect Partnership” Challenge?
A closer look at how the United States is managing its relationship with Southeast Asia amid heightened U.S.-China competition.
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WonkCount: 1,837 words (around 9 minutes reading time)
US-China Competition in Southeast Asia: Can Washington Overcome its “Imperfect Partnership” Challenge?
Context
While the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has had a fairly successful record engaging with Southeast Asia as a region thus far — including elevating ties with ASEAN to a comprehensive strategic partnership; reinforcing alliances with the Philippines and Thailand; and getting the United States back into the economic table through the still nascent Indo-Pacific Economic Framework — broader concerns about the level and distribution of U.S. engagement persist in the region amid an unstable and more competitive U.S.-China relationship; a still-evolving economic policy and looming elections in 2024. This is a familiar story: as I noted in my book on U.S. Southeast Asia policy Elusive Balances, since the end of the Vietnam War, U.S. policymakers have faced what might be termed a “balance of commitment challenge” of calibrating power, threat and resources to shape commitments for a strategic region in an environment of divided government at home and big list of priorities abroad as a global superpower1. In that context, scholars and practitioners alike have noted that U.S. commitment to the region has seen a series of ebbs, flows and imbalances, with some of the most headline-grabbing examples being the consuming prism of terrorism in the post-September 11 context or the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership2.
A new book by longtime U.S. diplomat Scot Marciel, Imperfect Partners, argues that if the United States wants to transcend its “imperfect partnership” with Southeast Asia, it will need to step up its efforts in the region viewing the region as significant for its own sake, as opposed to its relevance to other threats and challenges3. Few watchers of U.S.-Southeast Asia policy would disagree with that general argument — Marciel himself concedes that “virtually all my friends and professional contacts in Southeast Asia have been saying some variant of this for some time”4. Yet Imperfect Partners is not just a wish list for U.S. policy: Marciel develops the argument carefully in the book through a four-part practitioner’s evaluation of individual relationships he has played a role in shaping across over several decades: 1) The Allies (the Philippines and Thailand); 2) The Former Foes (Vietnam and Cambodia); 3) Countries in Transition (Indonesia and Myanmar); and 4) ASEAN, China and the United States.
Analysis
The book’s blend of memoir and foreign policy analysis succeeds in providing a rich and nuanced take on U.S. policy in the region. Marciel provides some details on key policy inflections points that will be of interest to Southeast Asia practitioners, experts and watchers, be it being closely scrutinized by Vietnam’s internal security apparatus while setting up the initial U.S. diplomatic presence in the country amid the normalization process in the 1990s, or what he characterizes as puzzling disinterest in communications and messaging by democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi as hopes faded for reform in Myanmar in the late 2010s, which coincided with his time as ambassador there. Readers who are less familiar with Marciel’s diplomatic finesse also get a sense of how he helped advance ties in important ways, with a case in point being his literal elevator pitch that eventually saw then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pay a historic visit to the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta in 2009.
The book is also peppered with personal anecdotes that give the reader an opportunity to hear stories with Southeast Asian voices – from an Indonesian high school girl worried about U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment who the embassy engaged as part of “retail diplomacy” to boost student exchanges, to a poor Philippine farmer who refused to surrender the local ballot box to authorities during the country’s landmark 1986 elections that eventually led to the fall of President Ferdinand Marcos. On the latter, Marciel memorably writes, “I think of that man often when I hear someone suggest that poor people do not care about democracy.”5 For those looking for a sense of lessons learned, each chapter also ends with a note on how U.S. policy might move forward with these countries, in addition to the separate concluding chapter with recommendations (see just a few brief illustrative summaries below).
Table 1: Select Suggested Future Approaches for US Relationships in Southeast Asia
There is no one perfect way to fully capture U.S. policy in a region as diverse as Southeast Asia, and this book’s approach is not without its limitations. The deliberate choice of deeper dives into six of the eleven Southeast Asian countries which is clearly set out in the beginning of the book – four from mainland Southeast Asia and two from maritime Southeast Asia – means that the book concentrates much less relatively speaking on the five other countries: Brunei, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore and Timor-Leste. This results in some unevenness when the book transitions to chapters on ASEAN, China and recommendations for U.S. policy, when it broadens the lens to look at Southeast Asia as a whole.
Additionally, while the inclusion of a dedicated China chapter is understandable given the current focus on U.S.-China competition, another on engagement by U.S. allies and partners in Southeast Asia would have been a welcome addition to reflect the more multialigned reality of the region, which the book recognizes in its nuanced discussion of topics ranging from the Quad to the Mekong. That said, an additional chapter would also have added to a book that is already on the longer side relatively speaking (536 pages with the bibliography and index).
Implications
The book’s comprehensive twenty categories of recommendations (see just a few examples in the below table) also belie a bigger question: can Washington truly transcend its imperfect partnership with the region in an environment of heightened U.S.-China competition, and, if so, how far has the Biden administration gotten in this process?