ASEAN Summit Report on the Report of the U.S. Support of the Restoration of Democracy: The High-Density Case of the Military Juntanism
Biden’s efforts at this year’s ASEAN summit were meant to prepare him for a face-to-face meeting with the Chinese President that the US considers to be the most powerful economic and military force on Earth.
The leaders of the world’s largest economies will meet next week on the Indonesian island ofBali for the Group of 20 summit.
Freedom of navigation refers to a dispute involving the South China Sea, where the United States says it can sail and fly wherever international law allows and China believes such missions are destabilizing. Sullivan said the U.S. has a key role to play as a stabilizing force in the region and in prevention of any one nation from engaging in “sustained intimidation and coercion that would be fundamentally adverse to the nations of ASEAN and other countries.”
“There’s a real demand signal for that,” Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday. The PRC may not like that fact, but they know it and are aware of it.
Sullivan said one new initiative that Biden will discuss Saturday is maritime awareness and that it uses radio frequencies from commercial satellites to better track dark shipping.
Earlier Sunday, Biden attended the East Asia Summit, building on Saturday’s appearance at the ASEAN Summit aimed at boosting US-Indo-Pacific relations. The White House said that Biden brought up North Korea, China and other countries during his meeting with Asian leaders.
ASEAN this year is elevating the U.S. to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” status — a largely symbolic enhancement of their relationship but one that puts Washington on the same level as China, which was granted the distinction last year.
The most talked about topic is where the military junta overthrew the ruling government and arrested the elected leader of the people. The US was committed to the return of democracy in a country which had suffered a coup before, Vice President Biden said during his meeting with Hun Sen.
The White House said Biden pushed Hun Sen to free Theary Seng, a Cambodian-American lawyer who was convicted of treason for opposing the Prime Minister’s rule. The White House said Biden raised concerns about the activities at Ream Naval Base, which is believed to be a joint venture between Cambodia and China.
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At the U.S.-ASEAN summit, there was an empty chair where a representative from Myanmar would have sat had its leaders not been barred from participating in official ASEAN meetings.
In his brief remarks Saturday, Biden mistakenly identified host nation Cambodia as “Colombia.” Biden made the mistake on Thursday while leaving the U.S.
The relationship between China and the United States is positive and in the interests of both nations according to Biden when he visited Beijing in 2011.
The two leaders are expected to have a discussion at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia on Monday. The mood of the room won’t be as warm as near the location.
The Democrats are projected to keep the Senate in a major victory after a better-than- expected performance by their party in the US Midterm elections. Biden said Sunday that he would go into Monday’s face-to-face with a stronger hand. “I know I’m coming in stronger,” he told reporters.
Other key topics on the agenda include Russia’s war in Ukraine – another significant point of tension, as well as areas where the US hopes to cooperate with China – such as North Korea’s ongoing provocations and climate change.
“On the issue of Ukraine, China has already made its position clear many times. The talks with the US President won’t affect it in a negative way. On North Korea, since March last year, China has already stopped treating the denuclearization of North Korea as a fundamental element of its Korean Peninsular policy,” he said.
The Biden administration isn’t looking to come out of the meeting with specific deliverables, according to US officials previewing the meeting. Rather, the setting is aimed at offering both Biden and Xi a significant opportunity to better share their respective countries’ goals and perspectives.
Jake Sullivan said to reporters that the meeting is unlikely to result in any big breakthrough or dramatic shift in the relationship.
Hopes for a reset with Washington are similarly low in Beijing. Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University, said it would be an “enormous over-expectation” to believe the meeting can lead to any lasting and significant improvement in bilateral ties.
The Chinese believe the US goal is to keep China under control. Scott Kennedy, senior adviser in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that the US believes that China wants to make the world safer, push the US out of Asia and weaken the alliance system.
Kennedy, who recently returned from a weeks-long visit to China, said that each side blames the other for the state of the relationship, and each believes they are better than the other in the situation.
The Chinese and Americans are willing to pay the costs because they think they are winning. Kennedy said that the other side is probably not going to make any significant changes. All of those things will reduce the likelihood of changes.
The fact that the two leaders are talking to each other is positive, experts say. Keeping dialogue open is crucial for reducing risks of misunderstanding and miscalculations, especially when suspicions run deep and tensions run high.
It is all the more important given that there is a possibility to rule for life and that Xi has just got a third term with a tighter grip on power. “There is no one else in their system who can really communicate authoritatively other than Xi Jinping,” national security adviser Sullivan said.
Biden told reporters that they need to figure out where the red lines are and what’s the most important things in the next two years.
I want to be a fly on the wall and watch it because I do not think the US or China is very precise about their red lines. And I also don’t think either has been very clear about what positive rewards the other side would reap from staying within those red lines,” said Kennedy, of CSIS.
We agree with what we said at the time. And that there’s ‘one China’ policy, and Taiwan makes their own judgments about their independence. We are not moving – we’re not encouraging their being independent. He said that it was their decision.
Biden has made repeated statements on the American obligation to protect Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. The latest came during an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in September.
China launched military exercises around Taiwan that resulted in a blockade and stopped dialogue with the US in a number of areas.
Now the two leaders are sitting down in the same room – a result of weeks of intensive discussions between the two sides – Taiwan is widely expected to top their agenda. barbs have already been traded in a sign of contentiousness.
Whether Biden makes a similar statement when they sit down on Monday remains to be seen. Biden demurred during the news conference when asked if he would reiterate his commitment to defend Taiwan in person.
Some progress on greater communication and access between the US and China will be viewed by experts as positive, including the restoration of suspended climate and military talks.
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President Joe Biden arrived in Cambodia on Saturday and was still happy with the results of the polls in his home state of Delaware.
A day after he arrived in Asia, he got another piece of news from back home that could give him a lift through the rest of his international swing – CNN and other outlets projected his party would retain control of the Senate.
Yet the scale of the challenges abroad, and the effort to translate 21 months of intensive engagement into tangible results for US alliances, will put the value of that political capital on the international stage to the test even as votes are still being counted.
Biden was confronted with a number of stark challenges when he met with the Prime Minister of Japan and the President of South Korea on Sunday. An assertive and confrontational China, long a central animating issue for the Biden administration, also looms large.
As recent aggression from North Korea will be a main concern for the leaders Sunday, cooperation is important. North Korea has conducted missile launches 32 days this year, according to a CNN count of both ballistic and cruise missiles. In 2020 it conducted four tests and in 2021 eight.
The military seized power in a coup in Myanmar last year and is currently fighting a conflict in Cambodia, an official said.
The leaders of the world are going to discuss how to promote respect for human rights, rule of law and good governance, and also to address the ongoing crisis in Burma.
Biden went to Egypt on Friday to attend the climate summit as well as meet with the Egyptian president.
Xi said he would come face-to-face with US officials if China were to attempt to take Taiwan and then leave the United States
It was the fourth time he’d made such a remark since taking office. He said during his tour of Tokyo that the US would intervene if China were to attempt to take Taiwan. And he told a CNN town hall in 2021 that the US would protect the island in the event of a Chinese attack.
As Nancy Pelosi was preparing to visit Taiwan with a congressional delegation, Xi warned Biden against overstepping, using a metaphor he had used before to warn against playing with fire.
Biden hopes coming face-to-face again after nearly two years communicating only by phone and video-conference can yield a more strategically valuable result, even if he enters the talks with little expectation they can produce anything concrete.
Relations have deteriorated rapidly amid economic disputes and an increasingly militarized standoff over Taiwan. The two countries were once partners in fighting climate change and preventing North Korea from building a nuclear program.
There was no expectation that the issues could be solved simply by having Biden and China’s president in the same room. The prospect of a joint statement to be released afterward was considered a nonstarter.
When Pelosi was traveling to China, plans were in place for a meeting between US and Chinese officials. The process was professional and very serious, according to the official.
“Every matter associated with this meeting, from phone calls to logistics, has been very carefully considered, negotiated, and engaged between the two sides,” a senior US administration official said.
Biden takes meetings like this seriously, and he reads extensively before them. In meetings with advisers, he runs through various scenarios for how the meeting might go.
The first official said that he goes through the process of ‘if this happens then should we handle it this way’. “He understands that this is, in many respects, the most important bilateral relationship. His role is to manage it well. and he takes that very, very seriously.”
Officials said in Monday’s meeting they expected Biden’s senior-most advisers to accompany him as part of his official delegation. And the said they expected Xi to similarly surround himself with top aides, though the US team entered the meeting expecting to see some new faces on the Chinese side amid an ongoing transition inside Xi’s inner circle.
Biden’s aides have not set a time limit for the meeting, though Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said he expected the talks to run “a couple hours” but could extend longer.
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For Xi, the trip to Bali also marks his first journey abroad since the onset of the Covid pandemic, which prompted the Chinese government to impose strict lock downs and draconian restrictions. Xi’s reemergence on the physical world stage also comes on the heels of China’s Communist Party Congress in Beijing, during which he secured a norm-breaking third term as its leader.
China’s pandemic-era isolation, US officials say, had made it relatively harder in recent years to get a read on Beijing’s intentions abroad as Xi declined to travel outside of China – but they believe that is all about to change.
“We can expect them to be more assertive on the world stage,” the senior administration said. But, they added: “What that looks like is difficult to know right now.”
Sullivan said this week that the first face-to-face meeting since Biden took office has taken the phone calls to a different level and allowed the leaders to take a more in-depth look at their intentions and priorities.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser told reporters aboard Air Force One that he will be able to sit, to be straightforward and direct, and to hear Xi speak directly in return.
The White House hopes the leaders “come out of that meeting with a better understanding and a way to responsibly manage this relationship and the competition,” Sullivan said.
Xi has indicated he is looking to appease an otherwise-fraught relationship with the U.S. “China stands ready to work with the United States to find the right way to get along with each other,” he said in a congratulatory message during a gala dinner at the U.S. nonprofit, the National Committee on United States-China Relations.
A year ago, Wang Yi presented a list of demands to American diplomats in the Chinese port city of Tianjin. To not interfere with China’s political system, to not hinder China’s development, and to respect Beijing’s claim over territories like Hong Kong are some of the other things that must be done.
“I think it’s more, how can we find ways to communicate about those issues where we have deep fundamental differences of perspective or concerns, but we need to be having continued and ongoing conversation,” said a senior administration official briefing reporters before Biden met with Xi.