U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to visit Indonesia and Malaysia next week as Southeast Asia becomes a priority for Washington amid rising tensions with an increasingly aggressive China, analysts said Monday.
It will be Blinken’s first visit to Southeast Asia as America’s top diplomat. During his trip to Jakarta on Dec. 13 and 14, he is to give a lecture on Washington’s new Indo-Pacific strategy, according to the Indonesian foreign ministry.
Blinken’s visit “will initiate an increasingly high-level interaction between Indonesia and the United States in the context of the strategic partnership between the two countries,” I Gede Ngurah Swajaya, director general of the Americas and Europe desk at Indonesia’s foreign ministry, told reporters.
To read the full article by Radio Free Asia, please click here.