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Southeast Asian View of US: 'The Superpower's Legitimacy Is Being Put to the
Test'

Ralph Jennings

   TAIPEI - When former U.S. president Barack Obama spoke seven years ago
   to a Southeast Asian youth event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, he extolled
   American democracy as a system "proven to be the most stable and
   successful form of government" and lauded countries such as Myanmar
   that he felt were on that path. President Donald Trump, speaking at a
   regional economic cooperation event in 2017, complimented Indonesia on
   decades of building democratic institutions.

   Officials from the United States have cheer-led Southeast Asian
   countries' relatively young and sometimes fragile, violence-wracked
   democratization efforts from one administration to the next, while
   slamming human rights setbacks. Asian leaders, and their people,
   listened because U.S. democracy was older than theirs and the country
   wealthier.

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