US President Joe Biden plans ‘several’ stops on Asia trip, region to remain the focus: US official

“The President will travel later this year to Tokyo for the Quad Summit, as part of our commitment to regularise our engagement through the Quad, which continues to operate at full speed,” the senior US official told Reuters in an email late Tuesday.

“The President will also make several other stops on that trip,” added the official, who declined to elaborate.

In stressing the US commitment to the region, the official pointed to US plans to host a summit with leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to visit Australia next week for a Quad foreign ministers’ meeting.

The administration also plans to launch a new Pacific Islands initiative with allies and partners that would bring together regional countries “to coordinate our actions, drive resources, and raise our ambition in the region, including on climate, maritime, and transportation issues”, the official said.

It would, at the same time, finalise negotiations on Compacts of Free Association: Agreements with three Pacific Island countries – the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau – that facilitate US military access. They are due to expire in 2023 in the case of the former two states and in 2024 in the case of Palau.

US Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell warned last month the Pacific could be the part of the world most likely to see “strategic surprise” – comments apparently referring to possible Chinese ambitions to establish Pacific-island bases.

Campbell said the United States had not done enough to assist the region and that there was a very short amount of time, working with partners like Australia, New Zealand, Japan and fellow Pacific power France, “to step up our game across the board”.

The senior administration official said an announcement of “concrete offerings” under an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework initiative Biden announced in October could also be expected “soon”. The official said progress was also being made in an agreement dubbed AUKUS for the United States and Britain to work with Australia to provide it with nuclear-powered submarines.

Biden has visited the region multiple times during his more than three decades as a senator and as vice president in the Obama administration.