Blinken, Pentagon chief, Headed to Asia To Shore Up Regional Ties, Discuss Cooperation Amid Tensions

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will head to Asia at the end of this week to discuss regional ties and to assure that Washington remains committed to the region, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

Blinken will travel to Vietnam, Laos, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Mongolia for a series of international and bilateral meetings.  Austin will join him in Japan and the Philippines to attend joint discussions aimed at shoring up ties with Indo-Pacific allies and partners.

In Laos, Blinken will attend the annual meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers as well as a larger grouping that brings in senior diplomats from not only the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations but also China, Russia, India, and often North Korea.

In Tokyo, Blinken and Austin will hold talks with their counterparts as well as will meet with Japanese and South Korean Ministers in the first meeting between the three since founding a historic trilateral alliance last year.

When asked by TURAN whether the U.S. and Japan will discuss joint cooperation on Ukraine as Japanese companies are seeking to increase Patriot production, State Department's spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday that the situation in Ukraine, and the need to continue to back Kyiv is always "near the top of the list if not at the top of the list."  

"But I don’t want to get into what the specific conversations might be before we have them," he added.

The upcoming trip also underscores the U.S. focus on the Indo-Pacific as Washington increasingly looks to counter China in the region and ensure the territorial sovereignty of Taiwan, an island nation Beijing considers part of the mainland.