The 2023 APEC Summit – Good for Multilateralism, America, Biden, and San Francisco (and Stanford)!
Despite ongoing wars in the Middle East and Europe, the Biden team clearly has enough bandwidth to engage and deepen cooperation with Asia simultaneously.
When I worked as the Special Assistant to President Obama and the National Security Council’s Senior Director for Russia and Eurasian Affairs, I used to attend APEC summits. The last one I attended as a White House official was in November 2011 in Honolulu, Hawaii. The trip there, including the unique stopover, was half the fun. I managed to score a seat on Air Force One and got to be in the president’s entourage for the Veteran’s Day college basketball game in San Diego, which we watched from an aircraft carrier!
As the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, I attended the 2012 APEC summit Putin hosted in Vladivostok, Russia. The Russians were upset that Secretary Clinton filled in for Obama as he was fully occupied with the presidential campaign. To punish us, Putin refused to have a formal meeting – they are called “bilats” in diplomacy – with Secretary Clinton and instead insisted on a standing “pull-aside” at the leaders' reception. So goes the juvenile games of diplomacy!
For attendees and especially for hosts, APEC summits are big events. For most Americans (and maybe the rest of the world?) they are non-events. Even while living in Washington DC, I had to explain to my neighbors why I went to the Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC). What is the purpose of this multilateral gathering? And in Honolulu in 2011 or San Francisco last week, why do we Americans spend so much time, effort, and money organizing such events? What do they produce?
The fact that these meetings set deadlines for progress on multilateral economic agreements is a big deal for those involved and for American economic interests in general. Officials like the United States Trade Representative, the Commerce Secretary, and the National Security Council’s international economics directorate team work tirelessly to reach agreements with APEC partners on trade and investment. Last week in San Francisco, the Biden team did just that. For instance, the White House released a Fact Sheet at the APEC Summit to remind Americans that
“Companies based in the Asia-Pacific have announced almost $200 billion of investments into the United States since the start of the Biden-Harris Administration, which will support tens of thousands of good, new jobs for American workers.”
That’s good news!
The Biden administration also touted other new “deliverables” (another important word in State Department jargon). Progress was made on the multilateral economic agreement called the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), which is an American-inspired substitute for the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) – the more substantive trade deal that the Trump administration stepped out of. At APEC, the thirteen IPEF members announced several agreements on supply chains, “clean” economies (think reducing emissions, sharing clean technologies, and protecting biodiversity), and “fair” economies (think fighting corruption and improving tax transparency).
APEC leaders also unanimously adopted “The Golden Gate Declaration.” Despite the countless overtime of hundreds of diplomats from all two dozen APEC countries, the final declaration is a fairly bland, lowest-common-denominator statement of vague principles to
“Work together to keep our markets open, to address supply chain disruptions, and to ensure our trade and investment benefits all of our people and economies.”
The United States had to issue a separate statement to mention the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, probably because U.S. diplomats could not find consensus among all APEC countries to add it to the formal declaration. However disappointing, it is normal for multilateral statements and declarations. After a few months, few will remember either document.
While working at the White House and as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, I attended APEC meetings not for the multilateral diplomacy, but primarily to accompany President Obama or Secretary Clinton in their bilateral meetings with Russian Presidents Medvedev and Putin. These sideline meetings are often more important than the summit itself. For example, last week, the most important “bilat” by far – the most important event of the whole summit actually – was the meeting between President Joe Biden and Chairman Xi Jinping. That meeting was a major success for Biden.
Biden and Xi did not sign any treaties. They did not announce multi-billion investment or trade deals. Despite representing the world’s two greatest powers, the two leaders did not commit to working together on ending the wars in Ukraine or Gaza. But they did talk for four hours. And these days, that is an achievement for U.S.-China relations. They agreed to keep talking and re-open channels of communication – most importantly, the military-to-military contacts that Beijing imprudently suspended after Speaker Pelosi’s 2022 Taiwan visit. The two leaders further agreed to set up working groups to discuss counternarcotics (i.e. fentanyl) and artificial intelligence (AI).
Moreover, both sides committed to investing in people-to-people relations. Xi announced his invitation to 50,000 American students to visit China on scholarships in the coming five years. That’s an impossible goal to reach, but the spirit of it is a positive one. Both leaders also agreed to increase the number of direct flights, which still has not returned to pre-pandemic numbers or prices. And symbolically, Xi suggested sending new pandas to the U.S. As someone who used to bring my sons to see the pandas on loan from China at the Washington Zoo, this was very good news to me! In diplomacy, these gestures of goodwill matter. (When are we sending a buffalo to Beijing?)
According to readouts from both sides, the meeting’s mood music was positive, as were Xi’s comments to American businesspeople at a dinner the following night. For a moment, observers feared the worst when Biden for the second time called Xi a dictator in an off-the-cuff moment at a press conference. That quip could have generated real blowback from the Chinese government. Last time it did. This time it did not. That was an active choice showing Chinese leaders’ commitment to bettering U.S.-China relations. That’s a win for Biden too.
More broadly, there was a real sense, both in reporting and the conversations I had with APEC visitors, that American leadership in Asia was strong, solid, and in high demand. Biden and his team could be excused for being distracted by wars in Europe and the Middle East, but APEC showed that the Biden team had enough bandwidth to simultaneously deepen engagement in Asia. That’s good news for Biden and the world. The chatter I heard at some APEC events is that Biden’s Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimundo, played a key role in strongly representing the administration at the summit.
Finally, in my obviously biased opinion, the APEC Summit was a win for San Francisco, California, and Stanford. The city hosted over two dozen heads of state and heads of government, hundreds of ministers, and thousands of diplomatic staff, and all without a hitch. Numerous foreign dignitaries praised California as a tech leader and clean energy innovator. And at Stanford, an hour south of San Francisco, we hosted numerous ministers, and four world leaders, including a joint public event with South Korean President Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida. Given the longstanding animosities between their two countries, the event was historic, and perhaps the first time that they had ever appeared together on stage at a public event!
So, I score the 2023 APEC summit as a win for Biden, a win for multilateralism, a win for American leadership in Asia, and a win for American soft power, especially the appeal of our universities. Given the horrific news coming out of Gaza and Ukraine every day, Biden, the United States, and the world needed some good news from San Francisco.
Wow, an invitation of 50,000 scholarships to US students to go study in China is huge! Did the press cover this? Will Stanford promote this? Even a fraction of that number would benefit both countries enormously, as both sides learn from each other. The world needs more of that now and in the future.
As usual, Mr. MCGFaul spends too much time and space tooting his own horn. I find that distracting and plan to unsubscribe.