When President Biden visits Vietnam after his stop at the Group of 20 Summit in

New Delhi

this month

Sept. 7-10

He is expected to improve the bilateral relationship between our two countries

a ‘strategic partnership.

“The shift will be an important turn for both countries. But this should not come at the expense of skipping the top of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations around the same time in Indonesia. Biden’s choice to go to Hanoi and send Vice President Kamala Harris in his place in Jakarta is just retarded.

The government may argue the contrary, but by prioritizing the visit to Vietnam, it is doubling down on its efforts to build a Cold War-style security bloc, avoiding collaborating with regional groups such as ASEAN that are likely to decide the future of the Indo-Pacific region. In an increasingly multipolar world, Washington needs to become more effective at navigating fluid and flexible coalitions, not re-enacting an old playbook.

The Biden administration emphasizes that its approach is not aimed at forcing countries to choose between two options

WashingtonWashington

and Beijing, but as we have learned from interviews with former senior government officials and security experts in Southeast Asia, the country’s actions often do not match its rhetoric. And the ASEAN countries Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam are noticing this.

According to our interviews, Washington has publicly and privately pressured ASEAN members to reject China’s global infrastructure projects known as the Belt and Road Initiative, reduce their economic and technological dependence on Beijing, and expand their military partnerships with the People’s Liberation Army. To cancel. What the government is announcing as putting really big, important strategic points on the board—for example, gaining additional access to the Philippines’ military bases and holding Indonesia’s largest-ever military exercise—many in the region see as barely veiled attempts to form a new US. security block. Improving relations with Vietnam is just the latest example.

Worse still, the US’s efforts to build its network of security partnerships harm, not improve, ASEAN’s security problems. For example,

a trilateral initiative (known as AUKUS), in which the

The US and UK plan to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. This worries some ASEAN states as it puts them geographically at the center of a dangerous US-China tug-of-war.

Washington’s limited approach to ASEAN as a collective has done little to allay these fears. Biden’s hesitation is partly understandable. ASEAN can be painfully slow and bureaucratic, but that doesn’t make it any less central to the region. And unlike Beijing, Washington is outside many of the economic and political partnerships of organizations, for example the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that unites ASEAN, China, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan. Whatever points Washington puts on the board in the region, they are not the ones that count most among countries that focus on consensus-based multilateralism.

Ultimately, Washington’s push for exclusive partnerships could leave the country isolated. No US effort will consolidate ASEAN members as an anti-China bloc because these countries are economically and politically dependent on China. This long-standing stance is unlikely to change, a former Singaporean defense official told us. And if these countries turned away from China, they would be more likely to lean on the overlapping partnerships they are building with their other neighbors, such as the investments in India, Australia and Japan that have been made to give themselves strategic options. than to resolutely side with the US. .

Take Vietnam: Even as relations with the United States have progressed, Vietnam has pursued deeper defense ties with India, formalizing cooperation in military logistics and weapons development

and on the way to arms purchases from New Delhi. Vietnam also continues to maintain high-level defense and governmental ties with China, a necessity given their shared border and controversial history. When Biden improves relations with Vietnam, it will not mean that Hanoi prefers Washington over Beijing, although many will phrase the move this way.

The region has moved beyond security blocs and binary picks. The United States must do the same. The best way to do this is through robust economic involvement, for example by becoming a member

actually rejoining the now-renamed Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement that President Obama negotiated and President Trump sank. Alas, American economic nationalism

probably rule out this option.

Alternatively, the United States could formalize its participation in ASEAN’s sub-regional political and economic groups with investments in capital, material and technical expertise. Washington could also use its comparative advantages in green technology, industrial knowledge, or education to create new ASEAN subgroups, as it has done with the five-nation US-Mekong partnership established in 2020 to promote stability and promote sustainable development with initiatives aimed at energy, water and healthcare security.

Above all, Washington must stop expecting countries to take sides in their balancing act with China or risk being left out of Southeast Asia.

Kelly A. Grieco is a senior fellow in the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center, adjunct associate professor of security studies at Georgetown University, and a nonresident fellow at Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center. Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University.