RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — President Barack Obama used a holiday honoring the holders of his office to stake his claim to a key part of his own White House legacy: the rebalance of U.S. foreign policy toward the Asia-Pacific region.
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — President Barack Obama used a holiday honoring the holders of his office to stake his claim to a key part of his own White House legacy: the rebalance of U.S. foreign policy toward the Asia-Pacific region.
Obama welcomed 10 Southeast Asian leaders on Monday, Presidents Day, to Sunnylands, the Rancho Mirage estate where he often entertains foreign dignitaries.
Obama aides said the informal setting offered “a rare opportunity for candor” to discuss issues of shared concern: territorial disputes with China, the North Korean nuclear program, the global fight against Islamic State and a pending trade agreement among the U.S. and several Asian nations.
For Obama, the gathering is chiefly another opportunity in his long-term plan to nurture relationships with Southeast Asian leaders and to bolster the regional alliance of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia.
The coalition “is central to the region’s peace and prosperity, and to our shared goal of building a regional order where all nations play by the same rules,” Obama said at the summit’s opening session.
“As president, I’ve insisted that even as the United States confronts urgent threats around the world, our foreign policy also has to seize on new opportunities, and few regions present more opportunity in the 21st century than the Asia-Pacific,” he said.
The assembly is the first gathering in the U.S. of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice said the summit on U.S. soil “reflects a return on seven years of significant and sustained investment by this administration and by President Obama personally in the Asia-Pacific and in Southeast Asia in particular.”
White House officials are not predicting grand agreements or other developments that typically signify a consequential summit. Rice sought to downplay expectations, for example, in a joint statement expected Tuesday on the South China Sea, after reports that China was pressuring some ASEAN nations to avoid using language critical of its aggressive moves there.
At an ASEAN summit in Malaysia in November, the U.S. elevated its relationship with the alliance to the level of strategic partnership. Aides said the president is also eager to showcase the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement that encompasses 40 percent of the global economy, including several ASEAN nations, even as the likelihood of its ratification in Congress in this election year becomes increasingly unlikely.
Rice said the region was becoming “the world’s political and economic center of gravity,” and noted that the 10 nations collectively were the fourth-biggest U.S. export market.
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(Memoli reported from Washington.)