President Biden will spend five days in Asia — his first trip to the continent since taking office. He departs for South Korea on Thursday and will then continue on to Japan. Both countries have been vital allies in the United States' effort to compete with China, but they've also proved valuable in holding Russia accountable for its aggression in Ukraine.
Biden, like presidents before him, entered the White House with the mission of reorienting U.S. foreign policy toward Asia. He reportedly has about three times as many people working on the Indo-Pacific as he does on other regions of the globe.
The ultimate goal is to counter China, even if that is sometimes left unsaid publicly. But between the pandemic, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine, that goal seems to have, at times, taken a backseat. Experts say Russia's invasion of Ukraine has posed one of the biggest hurdles to Biden's foreign policy agenda, but it's also presented the president with an opportunity to reinforce alliances, not just across the Atlantic, but also across the Pacific.
