President Donald Trump has backed away from a threat to skip a summit with Southeast Asian leaders in the Philippines later this year, with the White House saying it had accepted an invitation from host Rodrigo Duterte.
In a statement Friday, the White House said that Trump will visit Manila as part of a bumper November 3-14 tour of China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the US state of Hawaii.
The announcement tees up a meeting between Trump and President Duterte.
During a visit to ASEAN’s Jakarta headquarters in April, Vice President Mike Pence had promised allies — anxious about waning US engagement in the region — that Trump would attend the bloc’s summit in Manila this November.
Since then Trump’s souring relations with Duterte had thrown those plans in the air.
Trump said earlier this month that Duterte had extended an invitation, but the US president pointedly said he had not yet decided whether to accept.
“He invited us so we’re going to see,” Trump said, while announcing he would go to Japan, South Korea, China and, maybe, Vietnam for a regional APEC economic summit.
Philippine officials were surprised by the about face and the issue was raised during Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano’s visit to Washington this week.
Republican Senator Cory Gardner, who met Duterte in the Philippines earlier this year, was among those who urged Trump to attend.
Need to attend
“I think it’s very important that the president travel to the region to the summit,” he told AFP. “Now more than ever the United States needs to show its leadership not just in rhetoric, but in action, in visible ways.”
Aides were left trying to convince Trump — who has also been skeptical of multilateral institutions and shown modest interest in Southeast Asia — that it is important to attend.
Fast-growing Southeast Asia has become a focus point for US trade and sits astride a major geopolitical hotspot, the South China Sea.
US governments have tried to help defend the right of free passage there as China and other countries make increasingly forceful maritime and territorial claims.
“It would be very noticed — in a negative way — if he did not go, while all the other leaders are there including the Chinese premier,” said Amy Searight, a former top Pentagon official for Asia, now with the CSIS think-tank.
Pivot away?
US presidents have not always played much attention to the ASEAN bloc, which includes the fast-growing economies of Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and five other countries.
Barack Obama was the first president to regularly attend the ASEAN summit, donning flamboyant local shirts and posing arms-linked for photos with leaders as part of his much-vaunted “pivot to Asia.”
Trump has taken a wrecking ball to much of Obama’s legacy, including knocking away a key pillar of the pivot by scrapping a trans-Pacific trade deal, embraced by many ASEAN partners.
Mutual Defense Treaty
Since 1951 the United States and the Philippines have had a mutual defense treaty, meaning Washington would defend Manila in any potential war.
Gardner, who sits on the Senate foreign relations committee said engagement was essential.
“Our leaders around the globe have to have frank discussions with each other and they need to move beyond press release diplomacy, no one should be afraid of that.”
“We need to make sure concerns are stressed directly. This is not North Korea,” he said. “We are a defense treaty ally of the Philippines and there is a strategic imperative to maintain that relationship.” Agence France Presse