In late July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Manila for the annual ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting with a message Southeast Asian officials have heard, in one form or another, for a decade.
The United States, he assured them, remains a committed Indo-Pacific partner – devoted to Southeast Asia, dependable, and invested in the region’s security and prosperity.
“I believe very much that the future and the story of the 21st century will be written in this region,” Rubio said.
His message was designed to convince the group that despite the war in Iran, the US would not just ignore Southeast Asia. Or, flash points such as the South China Sea, China’s growing pressure on Taiwan, and Beijing’s increasing assertiveness farther out into the Pacific Ocean.
But despite Rubio’s efforts, it was clear to most ASEAN officials that his words had little meaning, and that maybe he too was out of sync with the White House.
While the summit was taking place, the Trump administration imposed new tariffs on the Philippines – a treaty ally and the strongest US supporter in the region – as well as six other ASEAN members.
Forced labor
Although the tariffs were supposedly based on findings of forced labor and nonadherence to certain reciprocal commitments with Washington, in reality they seemed almost arbitrary.
The new levies provided regional leaders with further evidence that negotiating with Washington over tariffs, as many ASEAN members had done the year before, makes no sense.
After all, recent years have shown that US tariffs are subject to revision whenever Washington finds a fresh rationale.
The same week of the group’s summit, fighting between the US and Iran reignited, with President Donald Trump considering and then putting off a ground invasion. Those choices sent energy prices skyrocketing, which is a big problem for Southeast Asia.
Anger toward Washington spilled out at the meeting, with ASEAN ministers and lower-ranking officials outraged at the possibility that renewed war with Iran would again close the Strait of Hormuz.
Southeast Asia is perhaps the region most dependent on oil and liquefied natural gas from the Persian Gulf, and has already faced one massive energy shock during the first part of the war.
ASEAN foreign ministers released a joint statement asking for assurances that the Strait of Hormuz would remain open, and pleading for all parties in the Iran war to exercise restraint. Near the end of the meeting, they issued a joint communiqué that was more explicit.
In it, they begged for peace in the Middle East and warned that a return to war could again decimate Southeast Asia’s access to energy supplies, worsen poverty, impede trade, and harm food production, as energy shortages severely disrupt fertilizer supply.
Many ASEAN officials, in conversations I had, were incensed about the Trump administration’s handling of the war. They were furious, too, that Rubio arrived with so little to offer, particularly in comparison to the aid and investment they are getting from China.
Curdling attitudes
Rubio’s most tangible response was roughly US$100 million in military financing for the Philippines, plus money to expand a coast guard pier on Palawan – an archipelagic province of the country – near what has become contested South China Sea waters.
Attitudes toward the US had already been curdling in Southeast Asia – and around the world – before Rubio and his entourage landed in Manila.
In mid-July, the Pew Research Center published a survey of more than 42,000 people in 36 countries showing that China is now seen more favorably than the United States in most of them.
The poll hardly came out of the blue. As my colleague Yanzhong Huang noted:
In Gallup’s global ratings for 2025, China’s median approval rating (36%) edged past that of the United States (31%) across more than 130 countries – the widest margin in China’s favor that Gallup has recorded in nearly 20 years.
A separate regional poll this spring by the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore found that ASEAN respondents, forced to choose between the two powers, picked China over the United States, 52% to 48%.
Against this backdrop, the summit again confirmed that ASEAN is an increasingly toothless organization that can do little about the crises on its own doorstep. It has continued to do nothing about Myanmar, even as the civil war there has become the deadliest conflict in Asia.
The country has become a de facto failed state, as its problems (refugees, drugs, disease) spill out across the region. In addition, ASEAN has at multiple meetings done little to condemn the “election” stage-managed by the Myanmar junta last winter that was entirely unfree.
It created a supposedly civilian government led by former junta head Min Aung Hlaing.
With ASEAN mostly silent, the election has given Myanmar’s junta-turned-civilian government significant legitimacy, even as it makes military gains in the civil war due to an increase in assistance from autocratic countries, including Belarus, China, and Russia.
Naypyidaw regime
Nonetheless, in July, ASEAN ministers met with Myanmar’s leaders for the first time in five years, reversing recent policy and granting a further sign of legitimacy.
The meeting failed to yield any commitments from the country’s generals, who continue to ignore the five-point peace plan the group created in the wake of the 2021 coup.
Leaders in the Philippines – this year’s ASEAN chair – still insist that the blurprint could be enacted. But ASEAN’s calls for a ceasefire, dialogue between the regime and anti-regime forces, and other measures have gone nowhere.
At this point, ASEAN seems to have simply accepted the Naypyidaw regime. As at every meeting, the organization also remained deadlocked on how to respond to China’s increasingly aggressive approach toward the South China Sea, which has several claimants.
Even the fact that Chinese and Philippine forces had several clashes in disputed South China Sea waters during the foreign ministers’ meeting could not bring the group to any consensus statement about recent maritime incidents between Manila and Beijing.
Neither was any progress made toward a South China Sea code of conduct, which has been discussed for years.
The reason for the lack of unity is obvious: China has several de facto client states in ASEAN, such as Cambodia and Laos, and through them can block consensus on anything it dislikes.
The foreign ministers’ meeting was bleak in its implications for the US and the group itself.
It remains what it has long been – a consensus body that cannot compel its own members toward a shared position, even when it faces serious strategic or economic threats, such as the energy crisis caused by the Iran war.
The US, despite its offer of warm sentiments, spent the week making itself look unreliable, while antagonizing Southeast Asian officials with the tariffs and the Iran conflict, while alienating publics as well.
Security guarantees
For years, Southeast Asian nations have tried to hedge between the US and China, relying on American security guarantees while boosting trade with Beijing. But Washington, showing ever-increasing unreliability, is making some member states abandon hedging altogether.
Even US treaty ally Thailand is now clearly leaning toward China. Other states that still want to hedge, such as Singapore, are finding it harder to do so as public sentiment turns against the US and Chinese soft power becomes more impressive.
Rubio’s visit did little to reverse this shift.
Joshua Kurlantzick is a senior fellow for Southeast Asia and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research includes the militarization of politics in Asia and around the world, China’s relations with Southeast Asia and other developing regions, the rise of global populism and populism in Asia, and global democratic regression.
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