December 12, 2021

Realizing its inability to lure ASEAN members to its camp, the US is floating the idea of allying with Japan in an attempt to turn Southeast Asian countries against China, said analysts as top diplomats from Washington and Tokyo agreed on a G7 meeting to strengthen the deterrence and response capabilities of their countries' alliance to counter China in the Indo-Pacific region.

ASEAN has become what experts say the "key battlefield" of the geopolitical rivalry between the US and China. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is heading to three ASEAN states to pursue what analysts predicted a "cliché peddling of China threat," to test the bloc's unified stance on AUKUS and talk about the Myanmar issue. However, those experts believe that as usual, the ASEAN members cannot be persuaded and will maintain its centrality in the China-US rivalry. 

 Meeting on Saturday on the sidelines of the two-day G7 foreign ministerial meeting in Liverpool, England, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and Blinken underscored the need to cooperate with ASEAN as well as like-minded nations such as Australia and India, a move to strengthen their countries' alliance in a defiance against China's influence in this region, media reported.  

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