Back
About RSIS
Introduction
Building the Foundations
Welcome Message
Board of Governors
Staff Profiles
Executive Deputy Chairman’s Office
Dean’s Office
Management
Distinguished Fellows
Faculty and Research
Associate Research Fellows, Senior Analysts and Research Analysts
Visiting Fellows
Adjunct Fellows
Administrative Staff
Honours and Awards for RSIS Staff and Students
RSIS Endowment Fund
Endowed Professorships
Career Opportunities
Getting to RSIS
Research
Research Centres
Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS)
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)
Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS)
Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS)
International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
Research Programmes
National Security Studies Programme (NSSP)
Social Cohesion Research Programme (SCRP)
Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
Other Research
Future Issues and Technology Cluster
Research@RSIS
Science and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) (2017-2020)
Graduate Education
Graduate Programmes Office
Exchange Partners and Programmes
How to Apply
Financial Assistance
Meet the Admissions Team: Information Sessions and other events
RSIS Alumni
Outreach
Global Networks
About Global Networks
RSIS Alumni
International Programmes
About International Programmes
Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)
Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers (APPSNO)
International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS)
International Strategy Forum-Asia (ISF-Asia)
Executive Education
About Executive Education
SRP Executive Programme
Terrorism Analyst Training Course (TATC)
Public Education
About Public Education
Publications
RSIS Publications
Annual Reviews
Books
Bulletins and Newsletters
RSIS Commentary Series
Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
Commemorative / Event Reports
Future Issues
IDSS Papers
Interreligious Relations
Monographs
NTS Insight
Policy Reports
Working Papers
External Publications
Authored Books
Journal Articles
Edited Books
Chapters in Edited Books
Policy Reports
Working Papers
Op-Eds
Glossary of Abbreviations
Policy-relevant Articles Given RSIS Award
RSIS Publications for the Year
External Publications for the Year
Media
News Releases
Speeches
Video/Audio Channel
Events
Contact Us
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Think Tank and Graduate School Ponder The Improbable Since 1966
Nanyang Technological University Nanyang Technological University
  • About RSIS
      IntroductionBuilding the FoundationsWelcome MessageBoard of GovernorsHonours and Awards for RSIS Staff and StudentsRSIS Endowment FundEndowed ProfessorshipsCareer OpportunitiesGetting to RSIS
      Staff ProfilesExecutive Deputy Chairman’s OfficeDean’s OfficeManagementDistinguished FellowsFaculty and ResearchAssociate Research Fellows, Senior Analysts and Research AnalystsVisiting FellowsAdjunct FellowsAdministrative Staff
  • Research
      Research CentresCentre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS)Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS)Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS)International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
      Research ProgrammesNational Security Studies Programme (NSSP)Social Cohesion Research Programme (SCRP)Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
      Other ResearchFuture Issues and Technology ClusterResearch@RSISScience and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) (2017-2020)
  • Graduate Education
      Graduate Programmes OfficeExchange Partners and ProgrammesHow to ApplyFinancial AssistanceMeet the Admissions Team: Information Sessions and other eventsRSIS Alumni
  • Outreach
      Global NetworksAbout Global NetworksRSIS Alumni
      International ProgrammesAbout International ProgrammesAsia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers (APPSNO)International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS)International Strategy Forum-Asia (ISF-Asia)
      Executive EducationAbout Executive EducationSRP Executive ProgrammeTerrorism Analyst Training Course (TATC)
      Public EducationAbout Public Education
  • Publications
      RSIS PublicationsAnnual ReviewsBooksBulletins and NewslettersRSIS Commentary SeriesCounter Terrorist Trends and AnalysesCommemorative / Event ReportsFuture IssuesIDSS PapersInterreligious RelationsMonographsNTS InsightPolicy ReportsWorking Papers
      External PublicationsAuthored BooksJournal ArticlesEdited BooksChapters in Edited BooksPolicy ReportsWorking PapersOp-Eds
      Glossary of AbbreviationsPolicy-relevant Articles Given RSIS AwardRSIS Publications for the YearExternal Publications for the Year
  • Media
      News ReleasesSpeechesVideo/Audio Channel
  • Events
  • Contact Us
    • Connect with Us

      rsis.ntu
      rsis_ntu
      rsisntu
      rsisvideocast
      school/rsis-ntu
      rsis.sg
      rsissg
      RSIS
      RSS
      Subscribe to RSIS Publications
      Subscribe to RSIS Events

      Getting to RSIS

      Nanyang Technological University
      Block S4, Level B3,
      50 Nanyang Avenue,
      Singapore 639798

      Click here for direction to RSIS
Connect
Search
  • RSIS
  • Publication
  • RSIS Publications
  • US in Southeast Asia: Striking a New Balance?
  • Annual Reviews
  • Books
  • Bulletins and Newsletters
  • RSIS Commentary Series
  • Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
  • Commemorative / Event Reports
  • Future Issues
  • IDSS Papers
  • Interreligious Relations
  • Monographs
  • NTS Insight
  • Policy Reports
  • Working Papers

CO22014 | US in Southeast Asia: Striking a New Balance?
Prashanth Parameswaran

16 February 2022

download pdf

SYNOPSIS

The Biden administration has just unveiled its Indo-Pacific Strategy. Can the president deliver a US-Southeast Asia strategy that will manage the imbalances characteristic of US policy for decades?

COMMENTARY

THE BIDEN administration’s newly-released Indo-Pacific Strategy on 11 February 2022 aims to more firmly anchor the United States in the Indo-Pacific. It is comprehensive in nature, with ten core thrusts across the economic, security and diplomatic domains to be advanced across the region including Southeast Asia. As the Biden team looks to deliver on this ambitious agenda, it will need to manage the imbalance in commitment that has characterised US policy in Southeast Asia over the past few decades.

As I argue in my new book, Elusive Balances: Shaping US-Southeast Asia Strategy, American commitment to Southeast Asia has been characterised by a series of ebbs and flows through the decades as US policymakers have had to simultaneously calibrate between shifts in power, threats and resources. The imbalances in US policy have been particularly evident as Washington has deepened its commitment to Southeast Asia in the 21st century.

US Indo Pacific Strategy
US Indo-Pacific Strategy

Biden’s Commitment Challenge in Southeast Asia

For instance, President George W. Bush focused more on bilateral partnerships than multilateral institutions such as ASEAN, while President Barack Obama was viewed as being too unwilling to confront Beijing’s assertive behaviour, including in the South China Sea.

The Biden administration faces a similar challenge today. The combination of uncertainty about US power, rising threat perceptions about China and a limited ability to mobilise resources amid COVID-19 and political polarisation, risks distorting American commitment to the region.

The administration has taken a series of measures to mitigate these effects, including investing in high-level diplomatic engagement and trying to forge an economic strategy that balances out what might otherwise appear as an overly security-centric approach.

Nonetheless, it is already finding it difficult to fully fund US priorities and find a moderate course on aspects of US policy relative to the Trump years, such as on China or democracy. Getting past this challenge will require managing three particular commitment balances in the coming years.

Matching Means and Ends

The first is finding the balance between means and ends in US-Southeast Asia policy. American administrations have previously found their approaches either short on means amid periods of resource constraint such as the post-Vietnam War period. Or these had been expansive in ends to the point of distracting from core US interests in the Indo-Pacific as we saw following the post-September 11 period when the US entered into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Biden administration is well-aware that it finds itself advancing ambitious Indo-Pacific strategy in Southeast Asia amid constraints, as evidenced by a dedicated section in the newly-released strategy on “ends, ways and means”. Delivering on the strategy will require creativity about how to do more with less.

On the security side, this may come down to protecting specific line items related to Southeast Asia in the defence budget, rather than advancing ambitious new investments. On the economic side, it might mean wringing out some market access provisions in a challenging domestic environment that are attractive to at least the region’s largest economies, like Indonesia or Vietnam, to get them to sign on to the administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.

A More Calibrated China Approach

The second is finding a balance between a cooperative and competitive approach towards China. Southeast Asia has seen the most extreme manifestations of the two ends of the spectrum of US policy over the past half-century.

These range from Nixon’s trip to China in 1972 that paved the way for the normalization of ties that would alter the balance of power in the Cold War, to Trump’s confrontational approach to a risen China which shattered the already fracturing Washington Consensus that a mix of engagement and balancing was a sustainable approach.

The Biden administration’s slogan of responsible competition is a useful starting point to reassure the region that it is compartmentalising US-China ties into aspects of cooperative, competitive and adversarial components, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken has put it. The challenge in the next few years will be to find ways to cooperate with Beijing in areas of common global interest.

These includes climate change and nonproliferation, while also ensuring that China does not consume the administration’s approach to Southeast Asia and crowd out America’s own positive vision for the region. Such an approach would reassure the region while putting US-China competition on a relatively more stable path that does not foreclose the possibility of selective, positive-sum cooperation.

Balancing Interests and Ideals

The third is finding a balance between interests and ideals. US administrations have toggled between extremes on this score. The Clinton administration pursued an ambitious agenda of “enlargement” that alienated some US partners in Southeast Asia while the Obama administration took a calculated risk to improve certain rights-related areas to pursue greater engagement with Myanmar.

The Biden team faces its own version of this balance today, as evidenced by the controversy over last year’s Democracy Summit. That event saw only three ASEAN states participate and discontent in parts of the region over who was invited and America’s own democratic shortcomings.

Focusing more on specific governance issues of mutual concern, such as anti-corruption or an open Internet, could help advance the longstanding US objective of promoting democracy while also moving beyond black-or-white conceptions that deprive US policymakers of the flexibility to pursue avenues between the extremes of engagement and isolation.

Future Prospects under Biden and Beyond

To be sure, this is far from easy to realise under Biden and future US administrations given the shifting domestic, regional and global context. Domestically, forging commitment balances can be an even more difficult task to accomplish in the context of the upcoming midterm elections, which can consume the administration’s attention and introduce short-term political realities that supersede long-term policy investments.

Within Southeast Asia, evolving dynamics, such as the worsening   situation in Myanmar or future strategic shifts like the case of China’s security presence in Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, can come to quickly dominate Washington’s approach to the region more generally and distort Washington’s sense of its regional objectives and its own position.

And beyond the Southeast Asia, the past history of U.S. foreign policy will no doubt leave lingering anxieties about the propensity of Washington to be consumed by crises in other parts of the region and the world. There are no shortage of these as the Biden team gets underway with its Indo-Pacific strategy, including nuclear worries in Iran and North Korea, Russian maneuvers in Europe and rising militancy in the context of an Afghanistan post-U.S. withdrawal.

Nonetheless, a calibrated and comprehensive approach to US commitment in Southeast Asia offers Washington the best chance of getting past some of the challenges of the past and gaining the broadest support in the region for the future. If it plays its cards right, the Biden administration can build on the firm foundation it has established in US-Southeast Asia policy during its first year in office to make this aspiration a reality.

About the Author

Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran is a Fellow at the Asia Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars based in Washington, D.C. His new book is Elusive Balances: Shaping U.S.-Southeast Asia Strategy. Previously attached to RSIS, he contributed this to RSIS Commentary.

Categories: RSIS Commentary Series / Country and Region Studies / International Politics and Security / Americas / East Asia and Asia Pacific / Europe / South Asia / Southeast Asia and ASEAN / Global
comments powered by Disqus

SYNOPSIS

The Biden administration has just unveiled its Indo-Pacific Strategy. Can the president deliver a US-Southeast Asia strategy that will manage the imbalances characteristic of US policy for decades?

COMMENTARY

THE BIDEN administration’s newly-released Indo-Pacific Strategy on 11 February 2022 aims to more firmly anchor the United States in the Indo-Pacific. It is comprehensive in nature, with ten core thrusts across the economic, security and diplomatic domains to be advanced across the region including Southeast Asia. As the Biden team looks to deliver on this ambitious agenda, it will need to manage the imbalance in commitment that has characterised US policy in Southeast Asia over the past few decades.

As I argue in my new book, Elusive Balances: Shaping US-Southeast Asia Strategy, American commitment to Southeast Asia has been characterised by a series of ebbs and flows through the decades as US policymakers have had to simultaneously calibrate between shifts in power, threats and resources. The imbalances in US policy have been particularly evident as Washington has deepened its commitment to Southeast Asia in the 21st century.

US Indo Pacific Strategy
US Indo-Pacific Strategy

Biden’s Commitment Challenge in Southeast Asia

For instance, President George W. Bush focused more on bilateral partnerships than multilateral institutions such as ASEAN, while President Barack Obama was viewed as being too unwilling to confront Beijing’s assertive behaviour, including in the South China Sea.

The Biden administration faces a similar challenge today. The combination of uncertainty about US power, rising threat perceptions about China and a limited ability to mobilise resources amid COVID-19 and political polarisation, risks distorting American commitment to the region.

The administration has taken a series of measures to mitigate these effects, including investing in high-level diplomatic engagement and trying to forge an economic strategy that balances out what might otherwise appear as an overly security-centric approach.

Nonetheless, it is already finding it difficult to fully fund US priorities and find a moderate course on aspects of US policy relative to the Trump years, such as on China or democracy. Getting past this challenge will require managing three particular commitment balances in the coming years.

Matching Means and Ends

The first is finding the balance between means and ends in US-Southeast Asia policy. American administrations have previously found their approaches either short on means amid periods of resource constraint such as the post-Vietnam War period. Or these had been expansive in ends to the point of distracting from core US interests in the Indo-Pacific as we saw following the post-September 11 period when the US entered into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Biden administration is well-aware that it finds itself advancing ambitious Indo-Pacific strategy in Southeast Asia amid constraints, as evidenced by a dedicated section in the newly-released strategy on “ends, ways and means”. Delivering on the strategy will require creativity about how to do more with less.

On the security side, this may come down to protecting specific line items related to Southeast Asia in the defence budget, rather than advancing ambitious new investments. On the economic side, it might mean wringing out some market access provisions in a challenging domestic environment that are attractive to at least the region’s largest economies, like Indonesia or Vietnam, to get them to sign on to the administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.

A More Calibrated China Approach

The second is finding a balance between a cooperative and competitive approach towards China. Southeast Asia has seen the most extreme manifestations of the two ends of the spectrum of US policy over the past half-century.

These range from Nixon’s trip to China in 1972 that paved the way for the normalization of ties that would alter the balance of power in the Cold War, to Trump’s confrontational approach to a risen China which shattered the already fracturing Washington Consensus that a mix of engagement and balancing was a sustainable approach.

The Biden administration’s slogan of responsible competition is a useful starting point to reassure the region that it is compartmentalising US-China ties into aspects of cooperative, competitive and adversarial components, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken has put it. The challenge in the next few years will be to find ways to cooperate with Beijing in areas of common global interest.

These includes climate change and nonproliferation, while also ensuring that China does not consume the administration’s approach to Southeast Asia and crowd out America’s own positive vision for the region. Such an approach would reassure the region while putting US-China competition on a relatively more stable path that does not foreclose the possibility of selective, positive-sum cooperation.

Balancing Interests and Ideals

The third is finding a balance between interests and ideals. US administrations have toggled between extremes on this score. The Clinton administration pursued an ambitious agenda of “enlargement” that alienated some US partners in Southeast Asia while the Obama administration took a calculated risk to improve certain rights-related areas to pursue greater engagement with Myanmar.

The Biden team faces its own version of this balance today, as evidenced by the controversy over last year’s Democracy Summit. That event saw only three ASEAN states participate and discontent in parts of the region over who was invited and America’s own democratic shortcomings.

Focusing more on specific governance issues of mutual concern, such as anti-corruption or an open Internet, could help advance the longstanding US objective of promoting democracy while also moving beyond black-or-white conceptions that deprive US policymakers of the flexibility to pursue avenues between the extremes of engagement and isolation.

Future Prospects under Biden and Beyond

To be sure, this is far from easy to realise under Biden and future US administrations given the shifting domestic, regional and global context. Domestically, forging commitment balances can be an even more difficult task to accomplish in the context of the upcoming midterm elections, which can consume the administration’s attention and introduce short-term political realities that supersede long-term policy investments.

Within Southeast Asia, evolving dynamics, such as the worsening   situation in Myanmar or future strategic shifts like the case of China’s security presence in Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, can come to quickly dominate Washington’s approach to the region more generally and distort Washington’s sense of its regional objectives and its own position.

And beyond the Southeast Asia, the past history of U.S. foreign policy will no doubt leave lingering anxieties about the propensity of Washington to be consumed by crises in other parts of the region and the world. There are no shortage of these as the Biden team gets underway with its Indo-Pacific strategy, including nuclear worries in Iran and North Korea, Russian maneuvers in Europe and rising militancy in the context of an Afghanistan post-U.S. withdrawal.

Nonetheless, a calibrated and comprehensive approach to US commitment in Southeast Asia offers Washington the best chance of getting past some of the challenges of the past and gaining the broadest support in the region for the future. If it plays its cards right, the Biden administration can build on the firm foundation it has established in US-Southeast Asia policy during its first year in office to make this aspiration a reality.

About the Author

Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran is a Fellow at the Asia Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars based in Washington, D.C. His new book is Elusive Balances: Shaping U.S.-Southeast Asia Strategy. Previously attached to RSIS, he contributed this to RSIS Commentary.

Categories: RSIS Commentary Series / Country and Region Studies / International Politics and Security

Popular Links

About RSISResearch ProgrammesGraduate EducationPublicationsEventsAdmissionsCareersVideo/Audio ChannelRSIS Intranet

Connect with Us

rsis.ntu
rsis_ntu
rsisntu
rsisvideocast
school/rsis-ntu
rsis.sg
rsissg
RSIS
RSS
Subscribe to RSIS Publications
Subscribe to RSIS Events

Getting to RSIS

Nanyang Technological University
Block S4, Level B3,
50 Nanyang Avenue,
Singapore 639798

Click here for direction to RSIS

Get in Touch

    Copyright © S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. All rights reserved.
    Privacy Statement / Terms of Use
    Help us improve

      Rate your experience with this website
      123456
      Not satisfiedVery satisfied
      What did you like?
      0/255 characters
      What can be improved?
      0/255 characters
      Your email
      Please enter a valid email.
      Thank you for your feedback.
      This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. By continuing, you are agreeing to the use of cookies on your device as described in our privacy policy. Learn more
      OK
      Latest Book
      more info