Imperfect Partners: The United States and Southeast Asia – A Conversation with Ambassador Scot Marciel

690 million people. 11 countries.  A $3 trillion-plus GDP.  Southeast Asia is a critical region of growing strategic and economic importance. Yet in the United States it does not receive the attention and study it deserves.  Ambassador Scot Marciel, who spent the bulk of his 35-year diplomatic career working in and on the region, has written an essential new book – “Imperfect Partners:  The United States and Southeast Asia” – that combines extensive research and his first-hand experience to explore the ups and downs in U.S. relations with key partners in the region over the past 30-40 years.  The book offers practical, timely recommendations on how to strengthen U.S.-Southeast Asian ties in this new era of U.S.-China competition.

Please join APARC’s Southeast Asia Program for Ambassador Marciel’s conversation with Program Director Professor Don Emmerson.  Ambassador Marciel will discuss how and why U.S.-Southeast Asian relations have brought both benefits and disappointments on both sides of the Pacific.  He will argue that the U.S. can best advance its strategic interests by engaging the region on its own substantial merits rather than viewing it through a lens focused on China. 

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Ambassador Scot Marciel is the Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  He retired from the U.S. State Department in April 2022 after a 37-year career that included assignments as the first U.S. Ambassador to ASEAN, Ambassador to Indonesia and to Myanmar, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific.  He witnessed the Philippine People Power revolt as a junior foreign service officer in Manila and was the first U.S. diplomat to serve in Hanoi after the Vietnam War.