US-ASEAN summit: Obama engagement in action

WASHINGTON DC, United States—President Barack Obama will put his new doctrine of engaging friends and foes alike into action next week, at the inaugural US summit with Southeast Asian nations, including Myanmar.

Obama, on a debut tour of Asia, is set to become the first US president to share the same room with all leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), including Myanmar’s Prime Minister Thein Sein.

In previous years, hopes for such a summit have foundered on Washington’s refusal to sit down with members of Myanmar’s junta because of their suppression of Aung San Suu Kyi’s democracy movement.

But Obama, who is seeking to transform US foreign policy, as he tries to change American life at home, has altered regional calculations.

The US-Myanmar estrangement has impacted US ties with key players in Southeast Asia, and the summit next Sunday, on the sidelines of the Apec forum in Singapore, reveals a new US focus on the dynamic region.

In the past, US officials have praised Asean as a concept, but privately bemoaned that its code of mutual non-interference hinders progress.

But now, the grouping is at the center of a new web of pan-Asian trade link-ups and consumed by debate over future, more formal pan-Pacific or pan-Asian groupings, which may, or may not include the United States.

Myanmar, or Burma, has been a constant impediment to US-Asean ties, but the US administration last week sent senior officials to the military-ruled state in a bid to promote a new dialogue after years of shunning the junta.

The Singapore summit is being welcomed in a number of Asian capitals, said Douglas Paal, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“There is a lot of frustration in capitals with Burma because it has not done more,” Paal said.

“It has restrained Asean as a corporate body’s improvement of relations with the United States because they always have Burma here causing this problem.”

Obama said during his 2008 election campaign he would talk directly to leaders of US foes, including Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, or Syria.

So far, his strategy has shown few results, but the dialogue with Myanmar, opened with junta leaders and Aung San Suu Kyi last week, represents a new front for US diplomacy.

Stressing US sanctions will stay until Myanmar embraces change, officials stress the advance is tentative.

“This approach will take time to produce results, and indeed results are not guaranteed,” said Jeffrey Bader, Obama’s senior director for East Asian Affairs.

“We will need patience and persistence to alter the results of 50 years of history.”

It is not clear if Obama will talk directly to the Myanmar delegation.

Obama’s keenness to deepen ties with Asean can be partly explained by the fact that while Washington has been distracted by Middle Eastern quagmires, China has deepened its own links with the region.

Now, some US officials fear Washington could be eclipsed as a major Asian power.

First signs of a change came earlier this year, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed a landmark friendship pact with Southeast Asian nations in a move seen as a sign of a US desire to counter Beijing’s influence.

One issue important to the region is trade, but Obama is likely to do little more than pay lip service to calls to reviving world trade talks.

Talk of free trade, and the linked image of lost US jobs to low wage Asian economies, is taboo in politically polarized Washington.

Obama has big ticket domestic priorities on which he must expend his political capital, and apart from repeated condemnations of protectionism, is seen as having little room for maneuver.

“Don’t hold your breath for big home runs coming out of that meeting,” said Ernie Bower, a veteran Asean expert, now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“I think in a way, what’s important is being there this year.”

Obama is sure to play on the fact that he spent several years growing up in Asean member Indonesia, as a child.

“Obama has got better popularity ratings than he does in Virginia and Wisconsin in places like Indonesia and Malaysia,” said Bower.

“There’s a rock star factor there.”

Apart from Myanmar and Singapore, Asean also includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. –Stephen Collinson, Agence France-Presse