Biden courts a final Indo-Pacific ally ahead of meeting with China’s Xi

President Joe Biden hosted Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the White House Monday for a series of bilateral discussions, just two days before the president is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco for a long-awaited summit.

Biden has spent the better part of the last calendar year hosting Indo-Pacific leaders, with the unspoken aim of countering China’s military and economic buildup in the region. In 2023 alone, leaders from Australia, India, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea all visited Biden at the White House, and the president also traveled to Japan for the G7 this past summer.

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Biden also traveled to Indonesia in 2022 for the G20 summit, and Vice President Kamala Harris attended a summit in the country this September.

“Today we’re talking about taking our relationship to launching the highest possible level of cooperation. A comprehensive strategic partnership. This will mark a new era of relations between the United States and Indonesia across the board, affecting everything,” the president stated during his Oval Office sit-down with Widodo. “As we mark nearly 75 years of cooperation between our nations, I believe our partnership is stronger than it’s ever been. I’m looking forward to our conversation today and our cooperation with APEC summit in San Francisco later this week.”

Still, the war in Israel and Indonesia’s current economic ties with Beijing complicate Biden’s Monday meetings.

Indonesia is the world’s highest-populated Muslim country, and Widodo visited Washington after a stop in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he condemned the Israel Defense Forces for a deadly attack on a hospital in Gaza. American defense and intelligence agencies believe that the attack was actually caused by a misfiring rocket launched by a terrorist organization in Gaza.

Indonesia has publicly called for a ceasefire in Israel, and before departing for Riyadh, Widodo told reporters that he would seek to convince Biden that the Israel-Hamas war “should immediately be stopped.”

Widodo specifically called on Biden to “do more” to end the fighting in Gaza during their bilateral meeting in the Oval Office.

“Indonesia also wishes our partnership contributes to regional and global peace and prosperity,” he told Biden and gathered reporters. “So Indonesia appeals to the U.S. to do more to stop the atrocities in Gaza. Ceasefire is a must for the sake of humanity.”

On the economic side, Jakarta has enjoyed a comprehensive relationship with Beijing since 2013, a relationship that the Biden administration hopes to counter with the announcement Monday of a new “strategic partnership” between Indonesia and the United States.

That partnership, according to senior administration officials, will include commitments to discussing future partnerships on critical minerals, semiconductors, climate, and clean energy. Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of nickel, a component critical to the president’s domestic electric vehicle and clean energy push.

Monday’s discussions centered on the need for security cooperation within the Indo-Pacific region.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre additionally told reporters last week that Biden and Wikodo “will explore opportunities to enhance cooperation on the clean energy transition, advance economic prosperity, bolster regional peace and stability, and reinforce our people-to-people ties.”

Biden is slated to meet with Xi on Wednesday during the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco. Biden is looking to de-escalate growing tension between the two countries dating back to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) trip to Taiwan in 2022.

China broke off normalized military communications with the U.S. in the wake of Pelosi’s trip, and the U.S.-China relationship further soured following the spy balloon scandal this past spring and aggressive military posturing on the part of Beijing in the South China Sea.

The Biden-Xi meeting will occur as Biden himself is pushing Congress to sign off on additional security assistance for Taiwan, married to other supplemental funding requests for Israel, Ukraine, and southern border operations.

Biden administration officials have stressed that despite current tension, China is a competitor rather than an out-and-out enemy.

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“We have a $700 billion trading relationship with China. The vast majority — 99 percent of that — has nothing to do with export controls,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said.

Xi himself told U.S. lawmakers visiting Beijing in October that there are “a thousand reasons to make U.S.-China relations better, and no reason to make them worse.”