Daniel Kritenbrink, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, will be in the region from Saturday to December 4, a State Department statement said.
Kritenbrink would reaffirm the U.S. commitment to work together to tackle the most serious global and regional challenges and stress the US support for a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific, a reference to China's increasingly assertive behavior in the region, which Washington has denounced as coercive. Kritenbrink will discuss human rights challenges, seek to bolster cooperation on climate change and talk about ways to pressure Myanmar's military government to cease violence and allow unhindered humanitarian access, the statement said.
He will talk about how to strengthen economic relationships and build back better from the COVID-19 epidemic, it said.
Biden attended a virtual summit last month with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the first time in four years Washington had engaged at the top level of the bloc.
He pledged to stand with the ASEAN in defending freedom of the seas and democracy, and said Washington would begin talks on developing a regional economic framework, something critics say has lacked since his predecessor Donald Trump left a regional trade pact. An Asian diplomat said regional countries were still awaiting details of the plan, and that Biden's focus on rebuilding domestic economic strength was a limiting factor.
Daniel Russel, a predecessor of Kritenbrink in the Obama administration, said the United States doesn't have a viable economic strategy for the region.
He said that the pledge to discuss ways to strengthen U.S. economic engagement with ASEAN countries was music to their ears, even though they may be underwhelmed by the 'economic framework' so far.
Kritenbrink's trip announcement emphasised the centrality of the 10 member ASEAN to regional affairs, but he won't visit the bloc's new chair, Cambodia, which has shifted closer to China.
According to the Asian diplomat and Russel, Kritenbrink was likely to visit other ASEAN countries before long, and Russel noted that Indonesia's capital Jakarta is home to the bloc's permanent headquarters.
While it is important to discuss the ASEAN agenda with the chair in 2022, visiting the ASEAN headquarters in Jakarta will give him the chance to start that conversation, Russel said.