Obama and Asia's Autocrats

Human Rights Watch Asia Director Brad Adams on President Obama’s missed opportunity at the Asean summit in Sunnylands, California.

BRAD ADAMS: We were very disappointed the meeting even took place at all because Obama invited people who previously had been persona non grata to the United States and gave them a lot of profile and legitimacy. This included Hun Sen, the long-serving dictator of Cambodia, General Prayuth, who carried out a coup in 2014 in Thailand. And the very obvious purpose of the meeting was to create an anti-China alliance in Southeast Asia. The United States is in a long-term competition with the Chinese for the support and allegiance of countries in Southeast Asia. The United States is basically setting up a containment policy toward China and they are trying to woo the countries in Southeast Asia to be more supportive of the U.S. than China. And they're using the wedge issue of the controversy over the South China Sea as a way to try and bring Southeast Asian countries on-.board