Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby travels the region, the Myanmar military junta’s Rohingya repatriation sham, and Indonesia’s naval exercises mess-up.

The message that U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby delivered on his Southeast Asia tour last week was fairly simple.

“America’s interests are more engaged than ever in the Indo-Pacific,” he said in Manila on Aug. 10. “But it is also coupled with a newfound but common sense expectation of much greater effort and contribution by our allies and partners.”

Colby, who also visited Indonesia, Thailand, and Cambodia, added that the United States would be less ideological than previous administrations, “which were hidebound by outdated convention or rigid adherence to liberal dogma.”

Notably missing from the speech was any mention of China, let alone the South China Sea. The omission was pretty glaring since this was his host’s biggest security concern.

Still, as messages go, “we’re interested in you and won’t preach about human rights” is something that many in the region could welcome. Even the lack of a China mention might be welcomed by some capitals inclined to think that U.S. hawkishness only raises tensions.

The problem is that the U.S. government’s other actions have undermined Colby’s credibility. On Thursday, the Trump administration released a report called “The Great Transshipment Scam,” which called out several Southeast Asia nations. Then, on Sunday, it was announced that the United States would have no aircraft carriers in the Pacific for a couple of months as the USS George Washington would be leaving the region to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf. Also on Sunday, Trump ordered military exercises with South Korea to be cut back, citing Seoul not helping out against Iran and the U.S. president’s “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The overall impression matters more than the details. As Aaron Connelly of The Economist pointed out, there have been periods without U.S. carriers in the Pacific before. But as Connelly wrote, the problem is less the capacity in the region and more “the perception that the president wants summits with Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping more than he wants to deter an attack by either one on American allies.”

Colby praised the Philippines as a “model ally.” What does this mean when South Korea, also praised as a “model ally” in May by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is now treated thus?

Colby’s tour was not fruitless. In Manila, he and Marcos announced new U.S.-Philippine Coast Guard patrols in the South China Sea.

Still, Colby did not address Marcos’s complaints about how the war in Iran has created an energy........

© Foreign Policy