US Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to Southeast Asia this week to deepen ties with Washington’s strategic allies, including a visit to Manila on July 30, as the United States seeks to bolster its regional stance against an increasingly assertive China.
On a 10-day trip that will see him visit Vietnam, Laos, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Mongolia, Blinken will carry a message of US commitment to its allies in the region, said Daniel Kritenbrink, a senior US State Department official.
“We’re deepening our bilateral relationships, we’re expanding our allied and partner relationships, which have reached unprecedented heights, and we are creating a latticework of mutually reinforcing partnerships together,” he said.
The United States has, in recent years, significantly increased its engagement with several countries in Southeast Asia, particularly those locked in territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea.
Blinken’s tour will include his participation in an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) ministerial meeting in Laos, where he will also meet with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines.
President Joe Biden has made expanding US alliances in the region a core part of his administration’s foreign policy, and Kritenbrink said there was “strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for our allies and partners and our approach to the region.”
Under Biden, Washington has doubled down on its engagement in what it terms the “Indo-Pacific” region, upgrading ties with several countries in the region and forming the so-called Quad alliance, which includes the United States, Japan, Australia and India.
Blinken’s visit to Asia will be his 18th to the region since he took office more than three years ago.
“The message that the secretary is going to be conveying to the region is that America is all in on the Indo-Pacific,” said Kritenbrink.
Blinken will begin his six-nation tour in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, where he will attend the funeral of late communist leader Nguyen Phu Trong, which is scheduled to begin on Thursday.
In Laos, Blinken will participate on Friday and Saturday in the Asean ministerial meeting, where foreign ministers will discuss the dispute in the South China Sea and the conflict in Myanmar.
Blinken will meet Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the event, at which he will “discuss the importance of adherence to international law in the South China Sea,” the US State Department said.
Beijing claims the waterway — through which trillions of dollars of trade passes annually — almost in its entirety despite an international court ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.
A series of clashes between Philippine and Chinese vessels at flash point reefs in recent months have fueled fears of a conflict that could drag in the United States owing to its mutual defense treaty with Manila.
Asean ministers are expected to issue a joint communique after their meeting on Thursday.
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