Why Biden has been a disappointment to Southeast Asia so far | South China Morning Post

"They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing," French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord once reportedly lamented in response to the House of Bourbon's inability to learn from even recent history. Soon, France was gripped by another revolution, led by Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, which swept away the ancien régime for good. Two centuries later, the world's reigning superpower has exhibited a similar inability to learn from even what it remembers perfectly. And it's in Southeast Asia where this dynamic of benign neglect and strategic amnesia is on full display. After four years of Trumpian disruption, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations…