Reinvigoration of US policy in Southeast Asia is an early hallmark of the Obama administration’s foreign policy.  Besides the “soft power” boost from Obama’s boyhood ties to the region, there is considerable low-hanging fruit to gather.  The administration’s commitment to multilateralism; willingness to engage former enemies or antagonists; signing the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation; and a vow that the Secretary of State would attend the annual meetings of the ASEAN Regional Forum – the last a dig at Condoleezza Rice, who missed two of the four ARF meetings – all contrast favorably to Southeast Asians’ impressions of second-term Bush administration policies.

In addition, the administration has announced an early menu of more specific innovations and adjustments.   To strengthen US relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Obama will participate in the first-ever meeting of a US President with leaders from all ten ASEAN member states, to be held on the margins of this week’s APEC meeting.  The US Ambassador for ASEAN Affairs will no longer be based in Washington but will move to Jakarta, where the ASEAN Secretariat is located.   A new initiative in the Mekong region and the decision to lift OPIC restrictions on Cambodia and Laos shore up the US presence in the smaller, poorer countries of Southeast Asia that the United States had all but ceded to China in the past decade.  But in terms of international attention, the sum of these policy shifts is overshadowed by the administration’s 45-degree turn in Burma policy, to pursue longstanding objectives of promoting political openness there by adding engagement to a sanctions-heavy policy.

These early moves augur well for more positive relations with Southeast Asia.  However, the image of the United States there is a longstanding product of an episodic approach to the region, for which administrations from both political parties share responsibility.

Paramount in this regard was the Vietnam War, an intensely bipartisan effort.   American  involvement was handed back and forth from Republicans (Eisenhower’s “advisers”) to Democrats (Kennedy’s counter-insurgency and Johnson’s commitment of ground troops) and back to Republicans (Nixon’s eventual peace agreement, albeit after five more years of war).  As in the United States, the US role in the war divides older generation Southeast Asians.  To some the war was an example of an overblown US response, ratcheting up a political split in a Southeast Asian country to one of the few “hot wars” in the superpower Cold War.  To others the 1973 withdrawal of US troops was a sign that Washington would abandon its allies when the threat to its own national security had abated.  Still others believe that the US presence in Vietnam bought critical time for the non-communist nations to fortify their political and economic systems to enable them to stop the “dominos” from falling outside of Indochina.  But few in the region are inclined to view the war as the product of American partisan rivalry.

Nor has most US policy in Southeast Asia since then been the subject of high-profile partisan wrangling.  Over two decades, US attempts to influence the Burmese junta to reconcile with the political opposition have met strong bipartisan support.  And although the war against terrorism in Southeast Asia was accelerated under the Bush administration, it too was not a source of partisan rancor, as the war in Iraq would become.  Sources of tension in US-Southeast Asian relations are also bipartisan.  Human rights and religious freedom issues have long been a bipartisan concern.  And although some Southeast Asian governments are inclined to view Republicans as more trade-friendly than Democrats, the 1980’s under the Reagan and Bush I administrations were a time of high tension with some countries in the region over intellectual property rights and other trade issues.

To be sure, the Bush II administration did make gains in Southeast Asia.   Counter-terrorism strengthened intelligence cooperation and provided an entry point into renewed ties with the Indonesian military.  The US focus on security in the Malaccan Straits was initially mishandled by Washington but sparked maritime cooperation among the littoral states themselves.  In response to a bipartisan push from the Senate, the Bush administration established the position of US Ambassador for ASEAN Affairs.  However, the unpopularity of the Iraq war hurt the Bush administration – and the US image – in Southeast Asia, as did the administration’s intense focus on that war to the detriment of diplomacy with calmer regions

In Southeast Asia, the Obama administration finds a region ripe for greater engagement.  However, this heady start carries with it the risk of high expectations of the US in the region that may present difficulties for the administration in the mid-term.    A region relatively at peace with itself, conflicts within Southeast Asia are not likely to top the list of heated issues on the US foreign policy agenda.  However, two issue areas could prove problematic.  Because many Southeast Asians view the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as products of the Bush administration, they may harbor unrealistic expectations of quick withdrawals and other dramatic policy shifts by Obama.  The complexity of both situations could dampen these expectations.  Second, as the administration raises the US profile in Southeast Asia, so are they likely to raise hopes that the United States will enter into a regional free trade agreement, as have a number of ASEAN’s external partners (first and foremost of which is China).  Regardless of the party in power, Washington is not likely to replicate these regional FTA’s in the near term, although US trade with Southeast Asia is significant for both sides and will continue to be so under Obama.  In both of these areas, Southeast Asians and Americans alike may be reminded that policy toward the region has historically enjoyed bipartisan support, and that there is a benefit in continuing this tradition.

Catharin Dalpino is Visiting Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Georgetown University and was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Clinton administration.

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