President Joe Biden arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Saturday morning local time for a series of summits and meetings between the US president and Southeast Asian leaders.
The weekend of meetings in Cambodia comes ahead of next week’s highly anticipated Group of 20 Summit in Indonesia, where Biden will meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping for the first time since taking office. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meetings – along with Sunday’s East Asia Summit, also being held in Phnom Penh – will be an opportunity for the president to talk to US allies before meeting Xi.
Biden will hold a bilateral meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen as he seeks to build on a summit between Biden and ASEAN leaders in Washington earlier this year.
Biden, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One, “has been intent on strengthening our engagement in the Indo-Pacific” since the beginning of his presidency, and his participation in the ASEAN and East Asia summits this the weekend will highlight his work so far, including the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework announced earlier this year and security partnership efforts.
“He comes to this set of summits with this record of achievement and purpose behind him, and he wants to be able to use the next 36 hours to build on that foundation to advance American engagement and also deliver a series of specifically, practical initiatives,” Sullivan said.
Among those practical initiatives, Sullivan noted, are new initiatives on maritime cooperation, digital connectivity and economic investment. Biden is set to launch a new maritime sector effort “focused on the use of radio frequencies by commercial satellites to be able to monitor dark shipping, illegal and unregulated fishing, and to improve the ability of countries in the region to respond to disasters and humanitarian crises,” Sullivan said.
Biden would also emphasize a “forward-thinking stance” toward regional defense, Sullivan added, to show that the U.S. was at the forefront of security cooperation.
It will also focus on Myanmar and discuss coordination “to continue imposing costs and increasing pressure on the junta,” which seized power from the country’s democratically elected government in a February 2021 coup.
Four defining global threats loom large on Biden’s trip: Russia’s war in Ukraine, escalating tensions with China, the existential problem of climate change and the possibility of a global recession in the coming months. Other flashpoints, such as North Korea’s rapidly accelerating provocations and uncertainty over Iran’s nuclear program, will also weigh in.
While in Phnom Penh, Biden will meet with the leaders of Japan and South Korea on Sunday following multiple weapons tests by North Korea, Sullivan said. The meeting is notable given the historic tensions between Japan and South Korea, and the relationship between the two staunch US allies has been one that Biden has sought to bridge.
Both the Japanese and South Koreans are united in their concern over Kim Jong Un’s missile tests, as well as the prospect of a seventh nuclear weapons test. North Korea has ramped up its testing this year, having conducted missile tests on 32 days in 2022, according to CNN’s count. That compares to just eight in 2021 and four in 2020, with the latest release coming on Wednesday.
Sullivan suggested the tripartite meeting would not result in specific deliverables, but rather enhanced security cooperation amid a range of threats.
The trio of world leaders, Sullivan told reporters, “will be able to discuss broader security issues in the Indo-Pacific and also, specifically, the threats posed by North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs.”
Sullivan said Thursday that the administration is concerned about the North Koreans conducting a seventh nuclear test, but could not say whether it would happen during the weekend of meetings.
“Our concern remains real. Whether it happens next week or not, I can’t say,” Sullivan said earlier this week. “We are also concerned about further possible long-range missile tests in addition to the possibility of a nuclear test. And so, we’ll be keeping a close eye on both.”
But Monday’s meeting with Xi in Bali, Indonesia, will no doubt hang over summits in Cambodia and be part of those trilateral talks.
“One thing President Biden certainly wants to do with our closest allies is preview what he plans to do and also ask the leaders of (South Korea) and Japan, ‘what would you like me to touch on?’ What do you want me to go with?’ Sullivan said, adding that “it will be an issue, but it won’t be the main event of the three-way.”
Biden and Xi have spoken by phone five times since the president entered the White House. They traveled a lot together, both in China and the United States when they were both serving as their country’s vice presidents.
Both enter Monday’s meeting on the back of major political events. Biden did better than expected in the US midterm elections and Xi was elevated to an unprecedented third term by the Chinese Communist Party.
US officials declined to speculate on how the political status of the two leaders might affect the dynamics of their meeting.
The high-stakes bilateral meeting between Biden and Xi will focus on “sharpening” each leader’s understanding of the other’s priorities, Sullivan told reporters.
This includes the issue of Taiwan, which Beijing claims. Biden has previously vowed to use US military force to defend the island from invasion. The issue is one of the most contentious between Biden and Xi.
Sullivan suggested the meeting would focus on better understanding positions on a number of critical issues, but was unlikely to lead to major breakthroughs or dramatic changes in the relationship.
Instead, “it’s about leaders getting a better understanding and then delegating to their teams” to continue working on these issues, Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One as Biden traveled to Cambodia.
The meeting, to be held on the sidelines of the G-20 summit, was the result of “several weeks of intense” discussions between the two sides, Sullivan said, and is seen by Biden as the beginning of a series of engagements between the leaders and their groups.
