The visit is being billed as the starting point for more high-level talks between the two countries, just as Indonesia takes on the presidency of the Group of 20 and is set to host the world’s leaders in Bali next year.

However, this sudden boost in engagement has had the Indonesian side “confused” and asking what the country could possibly get out of the top US diplomat’s visit.

The two partners have had to push through a period of relatively cool relations under former US president Donald Trump, who unseated the last US envoy to ASEAN and almost immediately placed most Southeast Asian nations on an economic “hit list” based on how much of a trade deficit they had with Washington.

Trump also erased many of the expectations the US had built up with its “Pivot to Asia” – a remnant from the Barack Obama administration, when President Joe Biden was still vice president. But as the strategic rivalry with China heats up, the US is increasingly putting a premium on engagement with allies and partners in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia.

“There is a high degree of expectation from the Indonesian side that Biden would [restore] US global leadership and engagement in Asia,” Dino Patti Djalal, a former Indonesian ambassador to the US, said on Monday.

But Washington also had Jakarta guessing all this time, the former deputy foreign minister said, considering how there was no immediate communication among the leaders of the second- and third-largest democracies after Biden’s inauguration earlier this year.

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