Laos President Bounnhang Vorachith greets (from left) Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak and Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi during the opening ceremony of Asean Summit in Vientiane, Laos September 6, 2016. Last month he said he expected to have bilateral talks within the year, only to warn China the next day of a “bloody” war if Beijing attacked. Obama’s term is soon coming to an end, and Duterte is hard to read.
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Asked what first lady Michelle Obama planned to do following her time at the White House, Obama said she will expand the scope of her nutrition and education programs.
Any easing of tensions between China and the Philippines could start with areas like maritime research, environmental protection and trade, according to Kang Lin, a deputy director of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies’s Research Centre for Oceans Law and Policy in Hainan province. While Obama likes to repeatedly release drug dealers back on to the streets all over the United States, Duterte has a slightly different way of dealing with his nation’s drug problem.
“For most ASEAN leaders, Duterte represents a throwback to an uglier and more brutal form of Asian state, which taints ASEAN efforts to market itself as an increasingly progressive, modernizing trade block with a focus on trade data, rather than daily police-killing body counts”, said Phelim Kine of New York-based Human Rights Watch. I can’t say how long they met. In August, he called USA ambassador to Manila Philip Goldberg a “gay son of a b****” and said Secretary of State John Kerry was “crazy”.
Despite these claims, images from the dinner quickly revealed that Duterte was not, in fact, seated next to Obama or Ban. That prompted Washington to summon officials from the Philippine Embassy to complain. “We believe that such political developments and concerns if unchecked would have a more profound impact on markets and the economy”.
Obama said America’s interest in the Asia-Pacific isn’t new and is not a passing fad.
“He is trying to craft what he calls an independent foreign policy for the Philippines”.
ASEAN members like the Philippines and Vietnam are now in dispute with China over claims to parts of the South China Sea.
The case, which pre-dates the current administration in Manila, was seen as a turning point in the South China Sea controversy – but Duterte’s unilateral approach could water down its impact.
He hailed China’s proposal to formulate a framework for a Code of Conduct for rules of engagement in the South China Sea by the first half of 2017, and promised that Singapore – as coordinator of ASEAN-China relations – would work with Beijing to “fast-track negotiations”. More than 2,000 people have been killed in the crackdown since he took office on June 30.
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The United States also sought to ensure there was no enduring fallout with one of its most important allies in Asia and former colony. The White House made the announcement of the bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in its official announcement of the President’s schedule. “It will take a while for Duterte to find his footing on foreign policy, so the expectations for the relationship need to be dampened a little bit”.
