President Obama is hoping the historic two-day summit he wraps up Tuesday afternoon with 10 Asian leaders in Southern California will cement his legacy and his “pivot” to Asia, but it’s not at all clear whether his successors will follow the precedent.
“This reflects my personal commitment, and the national commitment of the United States, to a strong and enduring partnership with your 10 nations individually, and to Southeast Asia as one region, as one community,” Obama told leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as they arrived at Sunnylands resort in Rancho Mirage, Calif., on Monday.
“As part of our deeper engagement [in Asia], I’m proud to be the first U.S. president to meet with leaders of all 10 ASEAN countries,” Obama said. “I’ve made now seven visits to the ASEAN region, more than any previous American president.”
Ernest Bower, an expert on Southeast Asia with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Obama wants the summit to become permanent, but nothing beyond the expectations his action may instill in ASEAN leaders is compelling subsequent presidents to make it a tradition.
“It’s clearly the president and the White House trying to establish a precedent that they hope whoever becomes president of the United States will continue,” he said on a conference call ahead of the meeting.
The conference, the first of its kind held on U.S. soil, is focused on economic, maritime, trade, environmental, governance and security issues.
Among other things, leaders discussed ways to fight climate change and the international agreement on carbon emissions reached in Paris late last year. Obama, who is joined by Secretary of State John Kerry, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, and U.S. Trade Rep. Michael Froman, are also underscoring the need to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership and what requisites the six ASEAN countries not part of the initial group of 12 TPP nations need to meet to join.
The only accord expected to emerge from the summit is some sort of statement on freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
China has developed and built up reefs, islands and atolls as part of a series of strategic land claims in the South China Sea, which has angered almost every nation in the region. Four members of ASEAN, as well as Japan and other countries in the region, are disputing those land claims.
Kerry said on Tuesday that he expected the group to issue a unanimous statement, and that he hoped it would be stronger than previous ones.
Trade issues were the topic of one working session. Member nations collectively compose the world’s seventh-largest economy and constitute the U.S.’s fourth-largest trading partner.
The conference kicks off a year of significant Asian engagement for Obama.
The president is slated to visit the region in May when he travels to Japan for the G-7, and twice in September when China hosts the G-20 and Laos hosts ASEAN’s annual summit. By the time he leaves office, he will have visited every Southeast Asian nation.
Bower said it all plays into Obama’s sprint to use his last year in office to solidify his self-declared hope of being “the first ‘Pacific president.’ That was his goal when he started in the White House; and I think he very much sees this as a legacy.”
Part of that legacy is establishing an initiative called U.S.-ASEAN Connect. The Obama administration is opening regional offices led by different U.S. agencies in Bangkok, Thailand; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Singapore.
“[I]t’s basically an all-U.S.-government effort to help, where possible, on things like infrastructure projects … often ASEAN can’t come up with bankable projects that you can actually get credit, raise lending for; and it’s an effort to build capacity” as the association tries to better economically integrate poorer member nations such as Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia, said CSIS’s Murray Hiebert, a regional expert.
Hiebert said he thinks the administration chose Sunnylands as the location to denote how important the meeting is to Obama, and that he is willing to leave Washington and devote two days to nothing but engaging with leaders of the member nations: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
However, his guests may not see it that way.
“[M]any of these guys have not ever been to Washington; many of them have not been to the White House. And I think they … would see an enormous tip in being invited to the White House and having pictures taken with the president there,” Hiebert said. “I suspect that the next version of this meeting will be held in Washington, D.C.”
