This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will meet with their Japanese and Philippine counterparts this week to discuss North Korea’s nuclear program and China’s claims to the South China Sea, a senior American official said on Monday.
The trips to Tokyo and Manila will be part of a whirlwind visit to Asia by the two officials that will also include a trip by Blinken to Mongolia and a stop in the Laotian capital of Vientiane for an ASEAN meeting, during which Blinken will hold talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
The secretary of state will also meet with the three other foreign ministers of the “Quad” grouping – Australia, India and Japan – while in Tokyo, and will attend Friday’s state funeral in Hanoi for the late Vietnamese President Nguyen Phu Trong, who died last week.
Daniel Kritenbrink, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, initially told reporters in a call that the White House had expressed “our sincere condolences” about the president’s passing, but there were no plans to attend the ceremony.
However, in a statement released about an hour later, the U.S. State Department said Blinken would in fact attend the funeral and would “further underscore the strength of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with his government counterparts in Hanoi.”
Blinken already has a packed schedule for the trip, with stops also planned in Laos, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Mongolia before he returns to the United States, Kritenbrink explained.
Pressure on Myanmar’s junta
While in Tokyo and Manila, Blinken and Austin will also take part in “two plus two dialogues” with the foreign and defense ministers of Japan and the Philippines, respectively, where discussions will focus on North Korea and the South China Sea, the official said.
“This trip,” he said, “is an opportunity to highlight the unprecedented work we’ve done to strengthen relationships with our treaty allies.”
In Singapore, Blinken will also hold meetings with new Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who in May stepped down from the city-state’s top job after 20 years in power.
Kritenbrink also said the United States would aim to heap more pressure on Myanmar’s military junta at this year’s ASEAN meeting in Vientiane, noting that hosts Laos had agreed only to allow the junta to attend the meetings in an officially “downgraded” capacity.
“It’s now more than three years since the really tragic and completely unacceptable coup d’etat in Burma,” Kritenbrink said. “My understanding is there will be a representative from Burma, [but] it will be at the permanent-secretary, non-political level.”
He said he was not concerned about any diplomatic issues stemming from U.S. allies’ concerns about President Joe Biden’s decision not to contest the 2024 election, or surrounding the prospect of Donald Trump returning to power and nixing commitments made by Biden.
U.S. officials were “incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved in this administration in terms of our administrative commitment to the region,” Kritenbrink said, adding he had personally never “seen a stronger demand signal for American engagement across the region.”
