Begins four-nation visit next week
US President Barack Obama’s much-touted ‘Asian pivot’ will get a fresh airing as he undertakes a four-nation sojourn next week. The trip that takes him to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines will be his fifth Asian visit as President, but analysts have wondered if he has met the expectations raised by his administration’s plans for a strategic rebalance towards Asia.
His top aides, however, assert that the administration’s Asian focus is very much on, given its stature as the world’s largest emerging region. As National Security Advisory Susan Rice put it, the upcoming trip will only serve to “underscore our continued focus on the Asia-Pacific region”.
“Over the next five years, nearly half of all growth outside the United States is expected to come from Asia. Moreover, it is a region that includes several important US allies, developing democracies, and emerging powers,” Rice told a White House news conference.
“We increasingly see our top priorities as tied to Asia, whether it is accessing new markets or promoting exports, or protecting our security interests and promoting our core values,” Rice said.
She spoke of a significant demand for US leadership in the region, with Washington’s strategy of rebalancing being one that includes economic, political, security and cultural interests.
Asserting that no country other than the US has such a network of alliances and partnerships in Asia, Rice said: “We’re focused on modernising these alliances to make them more relevant to the 21st century and to our security challenges, while building them into platforms for cooperation on regional and global challenges.”
The US’s outreach to Asia is also driven by its own economic compulsions, having just emerged from a recession following the 2008 financial meltdown but still faced with relatively high unemployment.
While Asian nations may look to the US as “a partner of first choice” because of its technological prowess, Rice conceded that expanding trade and investment links with Asia is fundamental to America’s efforts to access new markets, create American jobs and achieve larger export turnover.
Among the countries that Obama is visiting, Japan and South Korea happen to be the US’s closest Asian allies. Obama was to have visited the other two, Malaysia and the Philippines, last year, but the trip had to be scrapped because of the Government shutdown brought by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.