Political leaders like to perform on the global stage and there is no greater “performer” in this regard than US President Donald Trump, who has just been swinging across Asia, doing deals while posing as the best buddy of every national leader he met.
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That kind of showmanship may impress people at home and possibly win more political support, but it hijacks the need for genuine diplomacy and international cooperation in both an economic and political sense.
Two cases in point are the most recent summits of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in Malaysia and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum in South Korea. These organisations and the meetings they hold are supposed to be concerned primarily with regional cooperation and integration. Instead, they became platforms for great power politics.
Such gatherings, ostensibly meant to prioritise matters of common interest, are ultimately eclipsed when they become the setting for leaders seeking to resolve bilateral disputes between nations that are not even members of the group in some cases.
Trump, for example, stole the limelight at the Apec summit through his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He also effectively claimed credit for a ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia during his attendance at the Asean summit. Similarly, his meeting with new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, heralding a new “golden age” of bilateral ties, hogged the headlines between the Asean and Apec meetings.
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There are issues of critical importance, such as the impact of US tariffs on regional trade, inflated asset prices which threaten a financial crisis, rapidly ageing populations, the so-called middle-income trap and climate change, among other issues, which members of both regional organisations must contend with during summits.