Colby’s Empty Charm Offensive

Colby’s Tour of Southeast Asia Undermined by Trump Administration Actions

!Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy

Get analysis and alerts more quickly in the mobile app.

Install

Back to Foreign Policy Magazine home page

* Latest
* Regions
+ Asia & the Pacific
+ China
+ Middle East & Africa
+ Americas
+ Europe
* Newsletters
Editors’ Picks
Evening roundup with our editors’ favorite stories of the day
!World Brief Icon
World Brief
Your guide to the most important world stories of the day
!China Brief Icon
China Brief
The latest news, analysis, and data from the country each week
Situation Report
Weekly update on what’s driving U.S. national security policy
FP Weekend
A curation of our best book reviews, deep dives, and other reads
!Africa Brief Icon
Africa Brief
Essential analysis of the stories shaping geopolitics on the continent
!South Asia Brief Icon
South Asia Brief
Weekly update on developments in India and its neighbors
The Reading List
Curated guides on geopolitics and current affairs
FP Bookshelf
A monthly guide to FP’s book reviews, excerpts, and reading recommendations
!Latin America Brief Icon
Latin America Brief
One-stop digest of politics, economics, and culture
!Southeast Asia Brief Icon
Southeast Asia Brief
A weekly dispatch with news from the region’s 11 countries
The New Geopolitics
A five-part masterclass in IR theory with Harvard Professor Stephen M. Walt
View All Newsletters

* FP Live

* Latest
* Trending:
* Iran war
* Colombia's earthquake recovery

Search this website

* Preferences
* My FP Feed
* Saved Articles
* Newsletters
* Magazine Archive
* Subscription Settings
* FAQs
* Log Out

Sign In

Sign In

Partner with FP at UNGA81 Partner with FP at UNGA81

Subscribe SubscribePartner with FP at UNGA81 Partner with FP at UNGA81

Southeast Asia Brief:

Colby’s Empty Charm Offensive

*
*
* Facebook
* Bluesky
* X
* LinkedIn
* WhatsApp
* Reddit

Save

1. Create an FP account to save articles to read later.
Sign Up
ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

PDF

1. **Downloadable PDFs** are a benefit of an FP subscription.
Subscribe Now
ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

Gift

*
*
* WhatsApp

1. Gifting articles is a subscriber benefit.
Subscribe Now
ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

2. This article is an Insider exclusive.
Contact us at [email protected] to learn about upgrade options, unlocking the ability to gift this article.

Southeast Asia Brief

A weekly dispatch on the politics, economics, and culture of a pivotal region, caught between China and the United States but still going its own way. Written by Bangkok-based journalist **Joseph Rachman**.

Colby’s Empty Charm Offensive

U.S. government actions undermined the Trump official’s Southeast Asian tour.

!Joseph Rachman: A pencil drawing of a man wearing glasses in a t-shirt

*Joseph Rachman: A pencil drawing of a man wearing glasses in a t-shirt*

*Joseph Rachman*

By **Joseph Rachman**, the writer of *Foreign Policy*’s weekly Southeast Asia Brief.

!U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby meets with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in Manila, Philippines, on Aug. 10.

*U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby meets with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in Manila, Philippines, on Aug. 10.*

U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby meets with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in Manila, Philippines, on Aug. 10. Presidential Communications Office/Anadou via Getty Images

*
*

August 19, 2026, 1:00 AM

*By Joseph Rachman*

Welcome to *Foreign Policy*’s Southeast Asia Brief.

*By Joseph Rachman*

Welcome to *Foreign Policy*’s Southeast Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy **Elbridge Colby travels the region**, the Myanmar military junta’s **Rohingya repatriation sham**, and Indonesia’s **naval exercises mess-up**.

---

Not bridging the gap

The message that U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby delivered on his Southeast Asia tour last week was fairly simple.

“America’s interests are more engaged than ever in the Indo-Pacific,” he said in Manila on Aug. 10. “But it is also coupled with a newfound but common sense expectation of much greater effort and contribution by our allies and partners.”

Colby, who also visited Indonesia, Thailand, and Cambodia, added that the United States would be less ideological than previous administrations, “which were hidebound by outdated convention or rigid adherence to liberal dogma.”

Notably missing from the speech was any mention of China, let alone the South China Sea. The omission was pretty glaring since this was his host’s biggest security concern.

Still, as messages go, “we’re interested in you and won’t preach about human rights” is something that many in the region could welcome. Even the lack of a China mention might be welcomed by some capitals inclined to think that U.S. hawkishness only raises tensions.

The problem is that the U.S. government’s other actions have undermined Colby’s credibility. On Thursday, the Trump administration released a report called “The Great Transshipment Scam,” which called out several Southeast Asia nations. Then, on Sunday, it was announced that the United States would have no aircraft carriers in the Pacific for a couple of months as the USS *George Washington* would be leaving the region to relieve the USS *Abraham Lincoln* in the Gulf. Also on Sunday, Trump ordered military exercises with South Korea to be cut back, citing Seoul not helping out against Iran and the U.S. president’s “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The overall impression matters more than the details. As Aaron Connelly of *The Economist*pointed out, there have been periods without U.S. carriers in the Pacific before. But as Connelly wrote, the problem is less the capacity in the region and more “the perception that the president wants summits with Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping more than he wants to deter an attack by either one on American allies.”

Colby praised the Philippines as a “model ally.” What does this mean when South Korea, also praised as a “model ally” in May by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is now treated thus?

Colby’s tour was not fruitless. In Manila, he and Marcos announced new U.S.-Philippine Coast Guard patrols in the South China Sea.

Still, Colby did not address Marcos’s complaints about how the war in Iran has created an energy crunch for the Philippines. At a press conference on Friday, Marcos again brought up the possibility of joint energy exploration with China in the South China Sea.

Marcos also clarified that if there was a war in Taiwan, he would not allow the United States to conduct strikes from Philippine soil. This seems like a deliberate distancing from his remarks last year, when he said that the Philippines would “inevitably” be dragged into a war in Taiwan, though he later clarified that he was referring to the large number of Filipinos in Taiwan.

In Bangkok, Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul refuted a *Bloomberg* report that Thailand was planning to threaten to scale down the annual Cobra Gold military exercises with the U.S. as leverage in tariff negotiations. Hegseth is expected to visit Bangkok at some point to sign a new security agreement.

In Phnom Penh, Cambodia and the United States confirmed that they would be restarting joint military drills in 2027, which were canceled in 2017. Cambodia’s small rapprochement with the United States continues.

The Indonesian leg of Colby’s trip was more disappointing, producing no visible results. The day after his visit, Indonesia’s navy confusingly participated in a joint exercise with China in waters east of Taiwan.

---

What We’re Watching

**SCAMMERS!!!** On Thursday, the U.S. government published a report entitled “The Great Transshipment Scam,” an investigation into Chinese goods routed via other countries to evade tariffs. It estimated the val