Against a backdrop of continuing maritime clashes in the South China Sea, China’s suspension of bilateral US nuclear dialogue in July, and continued militarization of existing regional disputes, the role of ASEAN as a forum for promoting regional stability appears more crucial than ever.

However, the countries of Southeast Asia and their two most consequential interlocutors, China and the United States, have distinct and at times mutually exclusive views of regional stability and how to attain it.  

Nevertheless, there is a limited set of conditions related to stability in Southeast Asia where the United States and China have compatible interests – or at least might agree that compromising on some interests is better than losing all. 

In her APLN report, “The United States: An Increasingly Incidental Provider of Regional Stability in the Asia-Pacific?”Amb. (ret.) Piper Campbell, Chair of the Department of Foreign Policy and Global Security in the School of International Studies at American University, examined these shifting regional dynamics and proposes new initiatives for the US and ASEAN toward building Asia-Pacific stability in this context.

This discussion took place just as the US and leading regional actors prepared to gather for the ASEAN Summit in early October.

Piper Campbell was joined by Elina Noor, Senior Fellow in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Prashanth Parameswaran, Founder of the ASEAN Wonk Newsletter and Fellow at the Wilson Center. The discussion was moderated by Frank O’Donnell, Senior Research Adviser at APLN.

The panelists discussed the US-China relationship’s effects on Southeast Asia and made several observations, including:

• “Bounded competition” between the United States and China could be the most ideal end-state for Southeast Asian countries, but the securitization of economic relationships is making that end-state difficult to accomplish.
• US policy towards Southeast Asia should focus less on inducing alignment of regional states with the US Indo-Pacific policy, and more on enhancing the agency of regional states. US policy should not only focus on the big players in Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia and Vietnam, but also pay attention and seek to find ways to support smaller states.
• Expectations for the upcoming East Asia Summit (EAS) are low. The panelists hoped that media coverage of the event would focus on substance rather than who did and did not attend. Unfortunately, no major substantive breakthroughs at the EAS on substantive issues, such as the South China Sea, were predicted.

The event is part of the Asia-Dialogue on China-US Relations, a project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

 

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Webinar transcript

Note: This transcript has been automatically transcribed using AI-assisted software, and lightly edited for clarity. Any quotes should be checked against the original recording.

Frank O’Donnell: Good morning, afternoon or evening, depending on where you are. And thank you for joining this Asia-Pacific Leadership Network webinar, discussing challenges and opportunities for the US and Southeast Asian states in building stability in the Asia-Pacific.

This paper and webinar are part of our broader Asia Dialogue on China-US Relations project. I encourage you to look at our project page and engage with us on this ongoing work. I’m Frank O’Donnell, moderator for this event, and Senior Research Advisor at APLN.

We’re here to discuss a thought-provoking paper on these topics that we recently published by Ambassador Piper Campbell, whose distinguished diplomatic career culminated in serving as Head of the US Mission to ASEAN from June to December of 2018. She is now chair of the Department of Foreign Policy and Global Security at the School of International Service at American University. And I’m thrilled that we have a truly all-star group of close Southeast Asia watchers here for this discussion today.

We first have Elina Noor, who is Senior Fellow in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And we have Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran, who is the founder of the must-read ASEAN Wonk newsletter, and a Fellow in the Asia Program of the Wilson Center.

In terms of the structure of today’s event we’ll first go to Piper, who will discuss some of the key analysis, findings, and recommendations from her paper, before moving to a moderated Q&A with our panel.

Toward the end we’ll take some questions from our online attendees so please do drop those in the Zoom chat box. So with that, I am happy to turn over to Piper.

Piper Campbell: Thank you, Frank, and thank you to APLN for asking me to contribute to this project. I also want to say how honored I am to have the chance to participate in a webinar with Elina and Prashanth, both people who I admire and regularly read, and that I’m so delighted as well to have some of the students from American University and from the ASEAN and Indo-Pacific Studies Initiative here at AU, participating in the talk.

I was asked to think about how the US contributes to regional stability in the Asia-Pacific. When I got that seemingly simple prompt, I had to think about a number of issues and do some definitional thinking in my mind. The first of which was, is this “Asia-Pacific” the same as the “Indo-Pacific?” And, does it matter?

My answers to those two questions were no, the Asia-Pacific is not the same as the Indo-Pacific. And yes, it does matter. And therefore, as I was recharacterizing the prompt in order to write the report, I chose to focus more on Southeast Asia, but to recognize that Southeast Asia today exists within two overlapping broader concepts.

The first would be the US-favored Indo-Pacific, which importantly incorporates India and arguably has a more maritime focus than the Asia-Pacific, which I would argue is less well defined. Other folks in the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network might not agree with that, but I think when we refer to the Asia-Pacific, it can be unclear whether we have an “APEC Asia-Pacific” in mind, going all the way from North and South American countries on the Pacific coast; or whether we’re thinking about something that’s closer to the “Asia for Asians” idea; or even something closer to the Pacific-focused Asia-Pacific, something closer to the “Partners of the Blue Pacific”.

When we talk about this region of the world, words we use to describe the region are important, and I’ll start out by saying that, as I was thinking about this report, I was thinking primarily about Southeast Asia. But the countries of Southeast Asia exist within these broader formats.

I also thought about whether a country, in this case the United States, can both contribute to stability and be a source of tension and instability. And my answer to that question is, again, yes, I think it’s important to acknowledge that the United States has both consistently over time, been an important contributor to stability in the Asia-Pacific and the Indo-Pacific and yet at the same time – I will obviously speak about this more and I imagine it’s going to be one of the themes of the panel – that US-China competition is certainly one of the major sources of tension or instability in the region.

Also, the other question that really animated me was how has US thinking about its role and responsibilities related to regional stability changed? My answer there is US thinking about its role has changed quite a bit, and this is shaped both by China, by the US tension with China, and also by domestic developments. I think it’s especially important for thinkers and leaders in Southeast Asia to be aware of the domestic developments in the United States and how some of those developments are shaping and impacting what the US is able to do and what the US is willing to do in Southeast Asia. So those are some things that really shaped how I approached this question about how the US contributes to regional stability in the Asia-Pacific.

In the report, I start with something that I think is quite self-evident, but which bears saying: Southeast Asia, China and the United States have different priorities regarding regional stability.

The United States is predominantly concerned with – and this would be one of the areas where I think there is some difference in between the United States today and the US of 20 or 40 years ago – the US is predominantly concerned with three things: Maintaining economic access to the Indo-Pacific region; ensuring US freedom of movement within and across the region and US friends and allies’ freedom of movement within and across the region; and not ceding the region to China.

The second shift within the United States is a domestic one, where successive administrations, certainly notable in the Trump administration, but I would say equally notable in the current Biden administration and in the debates and the election-related conversation in the United States right now, where US administrations increasingly are viewing foreign policy through a domestic lens, demanding that America’s foreign policy prioritize making America great and meeting the needs of America’s middle class. The idea of a US foreign policy designed for the common good – or for a common good – has declined.

I think that as we’ve seen US administrations taking trade deals off the table, and also justifying foreign commitments explicitly by what those commitments can provide to the American people, we can trace some of those changes in the US policy approach.

The US and China are engaged in an intense and deepening strategic competition, within which an increasing range of priorities are in direct opposition. We see that weekly. We certainly saw that, I’d say, in the relatively small number of things that came out of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s recent trip to China and the smallness of areas where Jake anticipated that the United States and China might be able to work together in a positive way.

The areas for cooperation are narrowing. The areas of competition are increasing. That means that there is an interesting dynamic for the countries of Southeast Asia, as they think and discuss and strategize about how they navigate US-China competition. I am a real fan of Malaysian scholar Cheng-Chwee Kuik’s work, and I’m just going to quote, as I did in the report, something that he said, because he says this so much better than I would.

And Cheng-Chwee Kuik hypothesizes that enabling Southeast Asian states to hedge is good for all powers. Southeast Asian hedging means that no state wants to side with one power against another. This helps ensure ASEAN neutrality, maintains Southeast Asian autonomy, and prevents regional polarization, keeping the space for countries of diverse interests to continue forging inclusive region wide cooperation.

Here’s the most important part of this quote:

This is not an ideal situation for any of the giants, but precisely because this is not the best scenario for any of the rivaling powers, it is the next best scenario for all under the current circumstances.

And so, after trying to set the table with my thinking about the US approach to regional stability – what is the region, what does regional stability mean? – I really focus in the report on this idea of the “next best scenario.” How do we figure out what that next best scenario is? Who should be the cheerleaders for this idea that neither the United States nor China are going to meet all of their interests, but that there is a scenario that perhaps allows multiple parties to meet some minimally acceptable set of conditions?

I need to be very clear, that I am not a China scholar. I look at Southeast Asia. I look at the United States. I would very humbly say I did not make any recommendations as to Chinese actions because I don’t feel that I’m equipped to, but obviously that’s a third piece of this puzzle that clearly needs to be addressed. So my recommendations were for the countries of Southeast Asia and for the United States.

For the countries of Southeast Asia, I would love to see them adopting this kind of framework that I’ve put forward, which is examining in a really clear-eyed way US and Chinese goals for the region, and perhaps being more direct in terms of how they ask the United States and China what US and Chinese goals for the region are.

One of the aspects of this APLN project which was the most enjoyable was a conference APLN hosted in Jakarta as part of the project where academics from Southeast Asia had the opportunities to speak with me and other individuals from the United States, as well as academics from China, and to call out where they see differences between what the United States and China says and what the United States and China do, and to really try to drill down a bit in terms of understanding what US and Chinese goals and interests in the region are. I think that’s an extremely important conversation which needs to continue. And I would say as part of that, I would like to see Southeast Asian countries following more the path that I would say that the Philippines has, which is calling out incongruities, especially between Chinese actions and Chinese statements, which are, I would say, extremely problematic.

Southeast Asian countries, as part of this, also need to find new ways to communicate to US officials their worries of abandonment and being forced to choose sides. We have certainly seen some communications, but those are primarily in the executive branch to executive branch. And given that so much of the evolution in US policy is related to the domestic side, I would like to see Southeast Asian countries thinking more strategically about how to engage, especially the US legislative branch. I also advocate that ASEAN member states and the Southeast Asian countries should strengthen their work within the ASEAN context towards ASEAN’s own goals.

Nobody’s going to care about Southeast Asia more than the countries of Southeast Asia. And so they need to be leaders, to show leadership. And I’m confident that we will see that, for example, as Malaysia becomes chair of ASEAN next year, and works, among other things, to develop a new vision statement, a long-term vision statement for ASEAN. It’s an important time for ASEAN to advocate for the regional interests of Southeast Asia.

As far as the United States is concerned, one of my recommendations is that as the US Government competes with China for influence it should avoid self-inflicted wounds. I certainly know both from my time in government, but now from my new perch sitting outside of government and critiquing it, that there are actions and things that I’ve seen the US government take where I go, “Oh, we didn’t need to do that.” And so, I certainly hope that the next administration will listen to Southeast Asian experts and listen to Southeast Asians and think about how to design the smartest and most effective policy possible.

Personally, I like the idea of a latticework, but I think that most people don’t really know what a latticework is or what it means. I believe the United States can do a much better job of explaining the logic of its policy, explaining how the different pieces, the different actions come together into something that is stronger.

It’s not just an idea. It’s something that needs to be made real, and I don’t think that’s fully happened yet. I worry that some of the many groupings that have occurred in at times seem overlapping, competitive, and confusing. I was speaking just this week with a Southeast Asian diplomat and asked what they thought of the outcomes of the Quad meeting, which had occurred over the weekend in Delaware. There’s still a bit of lack of confidence in terms of how some of those new and evolving groupings map onto the already complex patchwork that we see in the region.

My last two recommendations are that the United States should support ASEAN in a pragmatic and measured way. I think that sometimes we see US officials paying lip service to ASEAN and ASEAN centrality. I am certainly fully aware of the challenges of working within the ASEAN context and fully aware of how slowly ASEAN works and how often it can be frustrating. But I think there are some areas where ASEAN deserves credit and ASEAN is doing really interesting things; for example, in increasing trade within the countries of ASEAN, and increasing the ability of countries outside of ASEAN to work with ASEAN on conversations around technology.

I would very much like to see the United States fully engaged with ASEAN mechanisms in those many areas. I would also like to see the United States being comfortable with the idea that countries of Southeast Asia will balance – that countries of Southeast Asia will engage with the United States and with China.

Just as the countries of Southeast Asia say “don’t make us choose,” I’d like to see the United States communicating clearly that “we are not going to make you choose.” Our goals – the goals of the United States – are to keep a system as open and as inclusive as possible. Thank you very much.

Frank O’Donnell: Thank you, Piper. Excellent overview. And you’ve given us a lot to dig into. When reading your paper, I was especially struck by your argument about US core interests in the region, and how they’re a bit narrower than what you might expect from a “regional security provider” writ large. And indeed, your argument is that the US core interests are not those of a regional security provider. This obviously has implications for Southeast Asian states as they conceptualize their own role in the region, including building regional stability, if US interests are narrower than is often communicated. And with that, I’d like to go to Elina first. I feel that some of Piper’s recommendations resonate with your own analysis.

You’ve commented that ASEAN shouldn’t be waiting for new US initiatives on regional trade and security and instead begin developing its own. This includes, I quote, “reviving the idea of comprehensive regional security – the idea that all elements of security can only be secured in an economically interdependent and politically cooperative regional system.”

I think, with that background, I’d love to get your reflections on Piper’s recommendation that ASEAN works toward developing an agreed definition of regional stability with the US and China. What would be the prospects or potential hurdles for this ASEAN move? How could it begin taking meaningful steps in this direction?

Elina Noor: Thanks very much, Frank. It’s such a pleasure and privilege to be a part of this discussion. I found myself agreeing with a lot of the report and a lot of Piper’s recommendations. But if I could, maybe I would just highlight a few challenges in practical terms to this otherwise excellent recommendation of mapping some of the converging areas of regional stability amongst ASEAN member states, the United States and China.

I think the first of those challenges is that, so long as the US and China stay locked into this geopolitical competition, it’ll be difficult in practical terms to figure out what those converging areas of regional stability are going to be, because some of those goals are going to be diametrically opposed to each other.

Which leads me to the second challenge. I think Piper has done a terrific job of starting us off on this matrix. I urge everyone on this webinar to check out the report, particularly the table that Piper has already started laying out for us, mapping things like what sovereignty means to the United States and ASEAN, for example, and what it could mean for China.

But I think if we were to unpack some of these elements of regional stability in specific contexts, we’re going to run up against some tensions between and among these elements, but also some inherent paradoxes or contradictions within each of these elements. For example, in the table, Piper had suggested that the United States, motivated by a desire to avoid a security and arms race, has come up with this latticework of arrangements, whether it’s the Free and Open Indo-Pacific or whether it’s the Quad.

But I think paradoxically, what we saw, particularly with the initiation and launch of the AUKUS arrangement, you saw more of an insecurity in the region about what this could all mean for an arms race. Especially when, Pillar 1 of AUKUS is all about the nuclear submarines.

Pillar 2 is going to be high tech, which many countries in Southeast Asia don’t have the capacity or capability to keep up with. So it already sets in motion this framework that there is going to be some sort of a race to advanced technology that only the US and its partners, and China on the other hand, are going to be engaged in, minus the other countries in Southeast Asia.

That leads me to my third identified challenge. I think the more we scrutinize each of these components, we’re also going to realize that some of these elements and their meanings have changed over time. And what we might assume to be a universally understood concept, like a rules-based order, is increasingly being questioned when set against current developments.

But I also think we should take a longer historical trajectory. These concepts have always been questioned, and I think this is going to be more acute and apparent in the coming years, particularly as Southeast Asian countries become more vocal in trying to express their own agency, but also trying to change some of those elements of what constitutes a rules-based order as loosely understood.

Gaza, and what’s going on in Lebanon right, now is a particularly striking example of this commitment to a so called rules-based order, how that sits alongside – and I would argue very awkwardly alongside – an international legal framework that smaller states are more inclined to commit themselves to, rather than an increasingly abstract order that privileges only a few.

I’ll end my comments with my agreement with Piper’s recommendation that ASEAN countries should focus on their priorities within the ASEAN framework. I think – to  ASEAN’s undervalued credit – the region has done quite a lot, particularly in the economic community.

And thank you, Frank, for bringing up the reference to comprehensive security. This was 20 years ago, 10 years ago. It’s lost a bit of footing – but I think if we were to refocus within ASEAN priorities on this mantra that we keep hearing – “a people-oriented or people-centered ASEAN” – in more concrete terms, then I think we can start to ground ourselves in the region on some very practical issues.

A lot of this effort is, as I mentioned, currently being undertaken within the economic pillar. For example, the local currency transaction initiative that’s been initiated, particularly, I think, over the last week or so between Malaysia and Cambodia with a QR code payment that’s going to be facilitated across borders.

In practical terms, this works for micro-, small-, and medium enterprises in Southeast Asia, which constitute the largest group of enterprises in the region. So, it has real benefits for people on the ground, for users of this technology, but also for entrepreneurs. What this means in other areas in tech, for example, even in the political security realm is still a work in progress. And I think that work in progress needs to be re-energized within ASEAN.

Frank O’Donnell: Thank you, Elina. I really appreciated in particular your comments about how ASEAN interacts with the evolving security architecture, which I think dovetails with some of what Piper is talking about in terms of the latticework, and a need for greater clarity and communication between the US and the regional states on that kind of direction.

Prashant, I’d like to turn to you next and pick your brain on how the US engages with ASEAN. In your recent book, Elusive Balances: Shaping US-Southeast Asia Strategy, you talk about the need for greater capacity within the US government and Congress for understanding and sensitively managing the complexities of ASEAN relations; and especially, the states of Southeast Asia and their consistent desire to not get boxed into a US-China duopoly, or feel that they are forced to choose.

Piper’s report suggests that ASEAN states, as she said, “must find new ways to communicate to US officials their worries of abandonment or being forced to choose sides” and that it is in the US interest for the foreign policy independence of the countries of Southeast Asia to be preserved. This is as opposed to what I think is often an expectation in Washington with its partners, of expecting closer alignments of the Southeast Asian states with the US.

In your experience, how receptive do you think the US Government and Congress would be to this ASEAN state messaging about it being in the US interest for the ASEAN states to have ultimately more foreign policy flexibility and more foreign policy independence, when this is also paired with your own call for a more predictable US commitment to Southeast Asia? How might Southeast Asian states and the US bridge any gaps here?

Prashanth Parameswaran: First of all, let me say thanks to Frank and APLN for the invitation. Congrats to Piper on the paper, and it’s great to be on the panel with both Piper and Elina.

I think this focus, as you mentioned, Frank, in your question is less about alignment and more, I think, in the way I read Piper’s paper, focusing more on agency.

So, more focus on agency rather than alignment makes it much easier for the United States to engage Southeast Asia as a region more generally, rather than the so-called “like minded partners.” Singapore and the Philippines are examples where the latticework, whether you’re talking about the Quad, you’re talking about AUKUS, or even, frankly, talking about more mechanisms in the US-Philippine alliance, more of a stronger sort of partnership with the US and Singapore – I worry less about those countries.

I actually worry a lot more about, how is the United States going to engage a country like Laos for example? We talk a lot about US-China competition in Washington DC, as you flagged Frank, and I think Piper does a really good job in the paper of going through what exactly do we mean by competition.

At the same time, we also have a reality where, for low-income countries in particular, we’ve had a pandemic; we’ve had a series of wars that have increased food and energy prices; and a vast majority of these low-income countries – we have the data from the United Nations – are spending more on debt servicing than they are on health and education. This is a reality where the United States is going to have to balance the realities of competition with the vast challenges that a lot of these smaller countries and low-income countries are facing in the region. I would say even for major countries like Indonesia or Vietnam, they’re also struggling – in spite of the fact that they’re very capable countries – due to severe geoeconomic competition in particular sectors, whether it’s critical minerals, semiconductors, or supply chain shifts.

These are big issues, and frankly, I think that even if you talk to some of the principals that are running US foreign policy, like (US Deputy Secretary of State) Kurt Campbell, they’ve said this publicly, that the US government hasn’t really historically had the expertise to engage on these new emerging areas. I think we’re actually beginning to talk about it and having a conversation about it, but we actually need to be talking more about these areas.

I actually worry a lot less about the Quad and exercises. If you look at exercises in the United States and the region, the United States alone does – I think the Lowy Institute just did an estimate that came out a few months ago – a third of all military exercises in Southeast Asia.

If you include Japan and Australia, it’s somewhere in the range of 60 per cent. China accounts for about 6 or 7 per cent of those exercises. On the security side the United States is doing quite well.

But if you look at the economic side, China is running almost a trillion dollars in terms of trade. The United States is around or thereabouts just over $500 billion. So it’s nearly a two-to-one difference. The US used to have an advantage when it comes to private investment. So, if you look at the stocks, it’s about a two-to-one ratio to the United States.

But, if you look at some of the data that the Lowy Institute has recently released, China is about $200 billion in the past decade in terms of new investments in Southeast Asia. The United States is about $150 billion. And we’re not even talking about the quality of investments. The type of investments, whether you’re looking at critical minerals, electric vehicles, high-speed rail, is where China has really hit the accelerator. Now, obviously we’re going to have a conversation about the quality of those investments whether they’re actually benefiting the people of Southeast Asia, which Elina flagged correctly about a people-centric community.

But the fact is that we are in a very different conversation about competitiveness when it comes to the United States than we were 10 or 20 years ago. Now, what does that mean for the United States? Going back to the point that I stressed, which I think Piper does a really good job of mentioning in the report: focusing more on agency rather than alignment.

We hear a lot in some circles in Washington about how the US really needs to focus on swing states in the region. So really, they say we don’t really need to care about these countries like Laos or Myanmar, because these are very small, inconsequential countries. We really need to care about just a few countries like Indonesia and Vietnam, which are in the middle of the US-China competition. They’re not close to the United States, like the Philippines is, or close to China, as Laos is perceived to be. We just really need to focus on just two or three countries in our strategy. I think that really is missing a lot of the opportunities for US policy and missing a lot of the regional realities.

I think we would be much better served in terms of a strategy of bounded competition: so defining exactly what are we competing over and where do our interests align with Southeast Asian countries.

I did a report for the Wilson Center a few months ago, which Piper was kind enough to flag in her report, and I visited 10 of the 11 Southeast Asian countries, all except Myanmar, given the situation there. And I think I actually see a lot of receptivity in the Southeast Asian countries for understanding competition as happening in just a few key sectors strategically. So whether it’s emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, that’s a very different conversation from China opening a retail store in Indonesia.

We need to be very clear, first of all, as to what exactly we’re competing over. I think the second thing we need to be clear about is if we are engaged with China in a global competition, including in Southeast Asia, where are US strengths and where are US limitations? If China is going to build a high-speed rail project that benefits the people of Southeast Asia, and the United States is not in the business of offering high speed rail technology, we need to be very clear about what that means for US interests. But when the United States is leading in artificial intelligence, or has solutions to offer on the telecommunications space, then we should be offering those affirmative visions, not simply telling Southeast Asian countries that they cannot do X or Y or Z. Affirmative actions pay a lot more dividends than actions about telling a Southeast Asian country not to do X or not to do Y or not to do Z. I think that’s going to be something that’s going to be really important.

For US policy, I would say that the third thing is what Elina mentioned – the fact that there are a lot of these global issues that we’re facing today. I mentioned the pandemic, but also the Gaza war, for example, in the Middle East, the Ukraine war, and what that did to food and energy prices. These are challenges that a lot of these Southeast Asian countries are dealing with simultaneously, even as we talk about geopolitics. For me, the Indo-Pacific vision is a very interesting way of talking about an affirmative action plan for the United States, but frankly, in most of Southeast Asia there’s still a lot of skepticism about what this Indo-Pacific notion means. It is seen as a very high-level geopolitical concept, but it’s not tied to very tangible challenges and issues that countries are facing. So how do we benefit people in terms of pulling them out of poverty? How do we bridge digital divides that have exacerbated during the pandemic? How do we think about supply chains?

So even in the free and open Indo-Pacific, which the Biden administration deserves a lot of credit for building out, I do think there is a bit of a gap between that geopolitical set of challenges with the very key and basic geoeconomic challenges that the countries of Southeast Asia are facing, particularly the countries that are quote-unquote “less like-minded.”

It’s always easier to talk to people who you already agree with. But how do we actually bridge and find alignment with countries that actually have very different interests and objectives and visions than the United States does? I think that’s going to be a key challenge moving forward.

Frank O’Donnell: Thank you, Prashanth. You and Elina have both made a number of excellent points. I’d like to return the floor to Piper to respond to some of the points made by you both. And then we’ll move on to the upcoming East Asia Summit. So over to you, Piper.

Piper Campbell: I worry that this could be a very long response, so I’m actually going to make myself limit it to just four points because I’m in such active agreement with almost everything that Elina and Prashanth said.

Prashanth ended up talking about a geopolitical framing and a geoeconomic framing. I’m not sure if “geoeconomic” is exactly the right term, because there are a wider range of issues in that space, including climate change and energy. But I think that one of the interesting ways to move forward from where we are, is to try to be clearer in defining some of those areas. As Prashanth and Elina said, these in many ways are the people-to-people things. These are the issues that leaders of countries wake up in the morning thinking about and go to bed thinking about. I believe that the United States can engage with the countries of Southeast Asia in conversation on many of these areas: How do you use advanced technologies to serve the interests of people to address some of these evolving areas? How do you harness public sector and private sector engagement in energy, et cetera?

In part, the suggestion of finding the ways – as Elina talked about – the elements of areas of convergence, areas of divergence, areas of competition, but trying to have more of a conversation about which elements exist in which of those areas I think is exactly what we’re talking about here.

As both Prashanth and Elina said, I think we’ve seen the United States doing better in the security space than we have seen the United States do in other spaces. And in part, if you look at the narrative of the latticework, some of the examples given try to show that the US is engaged in areas other than the geopolitical, or beyond the security space. But when we look at those critically, I think there’s more room to critique what has actually occurred. I’d like to see the United States really engaged with ASEAN and, for example, ASEAN’s regional conversation about the Digital Economic Framework Agreement. I think that’s a perfect example of an area where the United States’ interests and the interests of the region align.

I think it’s important, as all three of us have said, to talk about alignment of interests, to shift away a bit from this academic conversation about whether somebody is hedging or is bandwagoning; instead to recognize that every country sets its strategy based on its interests and its belief on where its interests are.

I can tell you that when I was in the US Government, I was never in a conversation where somebody said, “our strategy at this point should be one of hedging.” Instead, it was: “Here’s our objective, here’s where we’re trying to go, and here are the steps that we’re going to take.”

So I think a conversation more around alignment of interests, and a closer and more critical set of thinking around where those interests align, is the way I’d like to see things move forward.

I want to close by acknowledging Elina’s point about the tension between some of these elements. Absolutely! And that’s, I think, part of what makes this so hard, and perhaps part of why this work hasn’t really fully been done, and why it’s a little more appealing perhaps not to jump in and embrace and deal with some of these tensions.

But I think US-China competition is here to stay. The most positive outcome, I would say, is going to be bounded competition. I think we need to be clear that’s the best outcome over a protracted period of time, and how do countries – both the US and China, but also others – get to bounded competition? What are the bounds of that competition and what does the system look like within that? Those are the questions.

Frank O’Donnell: Thank you, Piper. Excellent responses. We’re moving up toward the audience Q&A section. If you haven’t, please do drop your questions, either in the chat box or in the Q&A box. Don’t be shy.

In the meantime, I’d like to pose a question to all three of you. As we know, the annual East Asia Summit, in which the 10 ASEAN states are joined by the US, China, and other major regional powers, is coming up, from October 6 to 11. What are you hoping to see from this summit, and especially in terms of some of the recommendations this report makes? What kind of outcomes might qualify this summit as a success for you? And I’ll give you both, I’m afraid due to time, about two minutes each, as I would like to keep some time for audience Q&A. And whoever wants to go first raise your hand.

Prashanth Parameswaran: I’m happy to start. I think, ideally going off of the paper and Piper’s suggestions earlier, her comment about how the United States can actually work with Southeast Asian countries on these very specific issues –that’s what you would hope to see.

I worry a little bit that the headlines are going to be dominated by who’s attending and who’s not attending, as these meetings often are, including the US President, given the fact that President Biden missed the ASEAN meetings last year and went to Vietnam. Obviously there was a double upgrade of the relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership, but it did leave a lot of questions about the US commitment to multilateralism relative to some other minilaterals and bilaterals. I would say for ASEAN and Southeast Asia, though, the big challenge is going to be – and I agree with Piper’s notion that geoeconomic and geopolitical doesn’t really capture all of these issues – climate. Climate is a big one. There is a very comprehensive set of issues there.

For ASEAN, the question is going to be how do you manage these big geopolitical issues like the South China Sea and Myanmar? But also at the same time make sure you’re making progress on these issues that don’t really make a lot of headlines, but that are extremely important, like bridging the economic divide between Mainland Southeast Asia and Maritime Southeast Asia.

Laos is chairing ASEAN this year. They’ve put aside a lot of priority economic deliverables that are really important, but are getting missed in the headlines. So I think paying a lot more attention to that – even as we see these big geopolitical events in the headlines – is going to be really important.

Elina Noor: My aspirations for the upcoming East Asia Summit are a bit, maybe a lot, more modest, because I prefer to see some pretty drastic changes within ASEAN.

I think we in the region have been misleading ourselves into talking about climate change as if there are technical and technological solutions for adaptation and mitigation. But we haven’t done enough self-reflection about some of the inherent contradictions when we’re talking about how to advance a digital economy, and how those goals sit, again, very uncomfortably with some of the climate change goals.

For example, the region wants to be this data center hub. It’s keen on attracting investment, particularly from the United States, as well as other places, to set up all these data centers. Now we know that data centers are hugely resource-intensive, not just in terms of energy, but also in terms of water. And we haven’t had those tough discussions between ourselves in the region, but also with partners like the United States. So there’s a bit of a cognitive dissonance in what is going on in the economic realm versus what is going on in the climate space realm, which cuts across all three pillars of ASEAN. But it doesn’t get enough or sufficient treatment as it really should.

Piper Campbell: I’m going to focus on the headlines. I will consider this East Asia Summit a success if there is something in the Chair’s Statement about the countries of Southeast Asia expressing concern about Chinese behavior in the South China Sea. I will consider this East Asia Summit a success if there is a headline on the substance of the summit, as opposed to attention being on who comes and who doesn’t.

Looking at the fact that this East Asia Summit is occurring a month before the US election, and obviously the countries of Southeast Asia are anxious about or interested in the outcome of the election – as we all are. I hope that Southeast Asian countries – and this will be the hardest measure – come out of the East Asia Summit, and their opportunities to engage with the US delegation at the summit, with some sense of the areas of likely continuity between US behavior, regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is elected in November.

Frank O’Donnell: Thank you each. While we wait for audience questions, I have a question of my own, using moderator’s privilege, for Prashanth and Elina:

One element of the report raises a significant issue, which is the limitations of the US trade liberalization agenda. And this is, of course, not only confined to ASEAN, as the US is now much more interested in securitizing trade than liberalizing it. Prashanth and Elina, you’ve each have written about this, including Elina, on high tech cooperation.

What key recommendation would you have for the next US administration in demonstrating some potential moderation of this approach, especially as it runs up against the ASEAN preference of states to not get locked into a choice of one or the other rival bipolar trade blocs?

Elina Noor: I can start if that’s helpful. I’m a little bit pessimistic on this front, because even though both Piper and Prashanth have talked about bounded competition, I’m not sure that there is an off-ramp that’s visible right now when it comes to the securitization of economic relations. We’ve seen this particularly with the supply chain for advanced technology, but also increasingly a little further downstream, if you will, to chips.

I think this supply chain disruption is going to affect many Southeast Asian countries, and I don’t see a way for the United States to untangle itself from all the export restrictions that it has set out over the past few years. I expect that this will continue to be a trend regardless of whichever candidate becomes president next year in the United States. I’m not, unfortunately, optimistic at all on this front.

My recommendations would be for Southeast Asian countries, rather than for the United States government, to figure out for themselves, whether individually or collectively as a group, how they’re going to not just maneuver through this obstacle, but come out in front of it, and be a little more proactive in a strategy that they can then table to the next US Government or the next US President. Just getting ahead of the situation, so to speak.

Prashanth Parameswaran: I would just build off of what Elina mentioned about ideas that Southeast Asian countries can propose to the United States. We’ve seen a couple of them already. The Indonesians and the Filipinos have been asking, for example, for a critical minerals agreement and, exemptions from the Inflation Reduction Act that other countries have received. For example, there have been no shortage of countries in Southeast Asia that have been asking about the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and what might happen in a future administration about the pillar that didn’t go through, which was probably the most important pillar on trade and looking at digital elements.

I should just also add that part of that is involving the United States, but frankly, some of these Southeast Asian countries are moving on with deals with other countries. Even if the conversation doesn’t involve the United States. So Singapore, for example, moving forward with the DEPA agreement (Digital Economic Partnership Agreement), with other countries. We’ve seen green economy agreements being negotiated in the region. And I think on the US side, the big thing is going to be, at least for me, the thing I’m watching beyond trade: how are the United States, and US policymakers on either administration, going to be more creative about economic tools that are being used? We’ve seen a couple of them, economic corridors, for example; the Luzon Economic Corridor that was proposed for the Philippines is a very interesting way and a new way of thinking about economic engagement that doesn’t involve traditional trade.

We’ve got the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve that’s been there for decades. But we haven’t thought about how do we use this as a net energy exporter – which the United States has become over the past decade – rather than an importer that it was before. So we actually have a lot of tools in our arsenal that extend beyond trade, but I think the thinking is only beginning about how to leverage some of these US policy tools. Even as we are in a domestically constrained environment, I think there are very creative ways that the United States can leverage economic benefits with Southeast Asia.

Frank O’Donnell: Thank you. We are running short on time, but we have one audience question I’d like to put to you:

“With the upcoming East Asia Summit, what are some outcomes that you’d like to hopefully see regarding the South China Sea issue?”

Piper, I believe you briefly touched on this in your previous response so feel free to elaborate on that. Prashanth and Elina, please feel free to chime in briefly as well.

Piper Campbell: I think that we will not see much about this. Because what would be the most important is the conversations taking place in the margins of the rooms.

When I said that what I would hope to see is a statement, or some reference to problematic behavior appearing in the Chair’s Statement, that, in a way, epitomizes some of the problems: that’s the most that we can hope for.

But right now the Philippines is feeling a bit a bit exposed, as it’s very much been in the most frontal position vis-à-vis China. And it would be important to see other ASEAN countries actually expressing support for the Philippines in the margins, and being willing to actually have that support registered in the Chair’s Statement.

Prashanth Parameswaran: I would just quickly add to that and just say, I think it’s important what Piper said about countries coming together around this issue, because it’s not going away. If you look at the next two chairmanships, you’re going to have Malaysia chairing ASEAN next year, and the Philippines is going to chair thereafter, and both of them are two of the four main claimants in the South China Sea.

For the US as well, the commitment stakes are large. There are perceptions in the region, for example, that during the first phase of China’s assertiveness in the 2010s, the US tried to mediate some of the issues with respect to Scarborough Shoal. That agreement fell apart. The Philippines lost out. And then the Chinese embarked on an artificial island building strategy and in the United States, after debates in the Obama administration – which were very tough debates – there were perceptions among some in the region that the US response wasn’t as strong. And so, I think the stakes are very high for both Southeast Asia and for the United States.

Elina Noor: I’ll just also add very briefly. I think it would be good to have a firm statement on the South China Sea. I don’t expect that there will be explicit support for the Philippines’ actions right now, its so-called transparency initiative, simply because there is an agreement among Southeast Asian claimant states that is the best way forward for their own interests.

I think for a number of countries, even those who are not claimants in the South China Sea dispute, there doesn’t seem to be an end-goal to this transparency initiative, and that lack of clarity is part of what is limiting explicit support coming out from neighboring claimants in Southeast Asia.

Frank O’Donnell: Thank you. We’ve had a few more late questions come in, but I’m afraid we are at time. So we’ll have to start to wrap up. I and APLN like to thank, firstly, Piper for this excellent, thought-provoking report; our panelists, Elina and Prashanth, for their time and insights today, and also the Carnegie Corporation of New York for their support of the APLN project.

For those watching, please do check out the broader project website, engage with APLN, and also keep an eye out for our next webinar, where we’ll discuss our recently released report from Year 1 of this project, which explores pathways toward Asia-Pacific stability. The webinar launch will be on Monday, October 28 at 9 pm US Eastern time (Tuesday October 29, 10 am Korean Standard time).

So thank you again and have a wonderful day, wherever you are.

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The opinions articulated above represent the views of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network or any of its members, board or funders. APLN’s website is a source of authoritative research and analysis and serves as a platform for debate and discussion among our senior network members, experts and practitioners, as well as the next generation of policymakers, analysts and advocates. Comments and responses can be emailed to apln@apln.network.