Can Obama Save His Mighty Pivot to Asia?

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Can Obama Save His Mighty Pivot to Asia?

Peace in Asia is slowly slipping away. America's closest allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, are barely talking to each other. Nor are Japan and China, which are locked in a bitter territorial dispute involving the regular deployment of military and paramilitary assets to a contested area of the East China Sea. North Korea is lobbing missiles into the Sea of Japan and threatening to carry out a "new form" of nuclear test while Chinese forces in the South China Sea attempt to starve out marines stationed on a Philippine-held reef. Taiwan's Sunflower Movement has shown Beijing that its efforts at peaceful unification are making scant headway. The list goes on.

President Obama's upcoming trip to the region, then, comes at a crucial moment. And yet the Asia-Pacific's numerous challenges are heightened by perceptions of America's waning determination to stand by its commitments. U.S. allies see the Asia "pivot" as being strong on rhetoric but lacking in content. For starters, difficult U.S.-Japan negotiations are holding up the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which in any case would have a difficult time making it through the U.S. Congress.

Concerns that America's military is being starved of resources are more pressing. Following North Korea's recent test launch of two medium-range missiles, Chuck Hagel announced that the United States would deploy two more missile-defense destroyers to Japan"¦by 2017.

In testimony submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee, PACOM commander Samuel Locklear explained that, due to "budget uncertainty," over the past year PACOM has had to prioritize the readiness of forward-deployed forces "at the great expense of the readiness of the follow-on force and the critical investments needed for these forces to outpace emerging threats, potentially eroding our historic dominance in both capability and capacity."

General John M. Paxton, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, speaking about the pivot to Asia, recently asked, "Do we have enough people and enough ships to do it?" He pointed out that while 54 amphibious ships are needed for the Marines to carry out their global responsibilities, only 38 are planned for, and that number is likely to shrink. The current inventory stands at a mere 29.

Perhaps most concerning of all for U.S. allies has been what they see as the president's weak-kneed responses to the actions of Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin. It is true that America's Asian partners would rather not see the United States bogged down in new conflicts in the Middle East or in Europe. It is also true that America's lack of treaty obligations in those cases make for very different circumstance than those that hold in East Asia.

Still, there have been consequences on the far side of the Eurasian landmass. In the case of Syria, the abandonment of President Obama's "red line" left allies wary of taking the president's words at face value. Tokyo, Seoul, Manila, and others can no longer be confident that the president means what he says and says what he means. In the case of Ukraine, the allies have watched the United States fail to defend with any urgency a central principle of the post-war, American-made order: states do not forcibly annex the sovereign territory of other states. Russia has shown that to do so is no longer necessarily a casus belli. Asia is already experiencing the aftershocks.

So the president travels to Asia next week with much to address. The White House's agreement to make the president's trip to Tokyo a formal state visit sends a useful signal to allies and adversaries alike. That the president and his Philippine counterpart will sign a new security accord in Manila is likewise a positive development.

Even so, the administration may not recognize the depth of the challenge it is facing in Asia. The Washington Post reports that, with the president having canceled a trip to the region last year, "White House aides say they are confident that the president will reenergize his Asia strategy by visiting seven countries this year—Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines next week and China, Burma and Australia in the fall." Deputy national security advisory Benjamin Rhodes told the Post that "showing up matters a lot in Asia. The good news is that it's pretty easily fixable"¦We have the benefit of knowing what success will look like—and if we achieve it, people will think it was worth it."

The sentiment is astonishing both in its naiveté and its self-confidence. The president will not save his pivot by racking up frequent flyer miles. "Showing up" is important, but not nearly as important as what the president has in hand upon his arrival. Assuming that "success" is defined as preservation of the peace in Asia and the establishment of relative stability, the president's presence in the region will certainly be insufficient to achieve it.

The president has a long to-do list. He needs to reassure allies that the United States will live up to its security obligations in Asia. He likewise needs to assure them that he will not fiddle while the rest of the world burns. He needs to convince capitals across Asia that "21st century" America can play hardball with the world's "20th century" powers—and play to win. He needs to demonstrate that he has a strategy for winning the peace in Asia, that the pivot is more than a slogan.

This is a tall order. "Showing up" next week will be a start, but it is only a start. There is no easy fix to Asia's current panoply of problems. There will not be a fix of any kind until the White House accepts that reality.

Michael Mazza is a research fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Follow him on Twitter: @mike_Mazza.

 

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Obama Tries Again in Asia, but Ukraine May Dominate - NationalJournal.com
Stymied on multiple occasions in recent years, the president hopes to reassure Asian nations personally this week.

President Obama never seems to get Asia trips to go the way they are planned.

As he begins an ambitious weeklong visit to four Asian countries, the White House is hoping this one sticks to the agenda, which includes economic, trade, and security measures to demonstrate that his much-talked-about "pivot" to the Pacific is paying off. But the administration knows that regional tensions and instability in Ukraine are certain to force their way into the talks he will hold with other leaders—and just may steal the spotlight.

Before flying to Japan, the president on Tuesday will stop in Oso, Wash., the town about 50 miles northeast of Seattle where 41 were killed and two dozen homes were destroyed in a devastating mudslide March 22. From there, he will go to Tokyo, then to South Korea on Friday, Malaysia on Saturday, and the Philippines on Monday.



Second only to ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the pivot to Asia has been one of the signal foreign policy changes Obama has implemented as president. But his efforts to personally champion that policy overseas have often been stymied.

In 2009, Chinese officials hijacked an Obama town-hall meeting in Shanghai, packing it with communist supporters. In 2010, two planned trips to Indonesia were canceled because of the health care debate and the Gulf oil spill. When he did make it to Indonesia that year, he had to cut the trip short because volcanic ash threatened to ground Air Force One. Then, last October, the president had to cancel plans to attend two regional summits because of the government shutdown at home.

At the time, the cancellation raised questions about the depth of the Obama's commitment to the region that is leading the world in economic growth. It also offered an opening for China to fill in regional leadership.

This week, Obama gets to try again. But this trip takes place against a backdrop of Russian provocations in Ukraine that have raised questions about the U.S. resolve to come to the aid of threatened allies. That, said Michael J. Green at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is "the bad news for the president." Green, who was director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council for much of George W. Bush's presidency, said there "are questions in the region ... particularly among allies, about American staying power and the credibility of American commitments."

Green said Ukraine has exacerbated the situation, but the questions first were raised after the president failed to respond forcefully to Syria's use of chemical weapons. Obama's response to Syria, he said, "really rattled" Asian leaders dealing with Obama.

But Jeffrey A. Bader, who was senior director for East Asian Affairs on the NSC in Obama's first term, believes the fears about U.S. credibility will prove unfounded on the trip, calling it "fundamentally false" that Japan or other U.S. allies "are nervous about the U.S. reaction to Ukraine." Bader said the president will find Asian leaders even more welcoming of a robust American security presence in Asia because of Ukraine.

Indeed, the word most heard describing Obama's mission on the trip is "reassurance"—reassurance that the United States will honor its treaty obligations in the Pacific, reassurance that the president is serious about pushing a major trade deal through a balky Congress, reassurance that the pivot to Asia is more than rhetorical, and reassurance that American policy toward China is properly balanced. National Security Adviser Susan Rice called the trip "an important opportunity to underscore our continued focus on the Asia-Pacific region."

Meeting with reporters at the White House, Rice stressed the reasons for the pivot, noting that "over the next five years, nearly half of all growth outside the United States is expected to come from Asia." She said Obama sees "a significant demand for U.S. leadership in that region."

But Rice also acknowledged that Ukraine will have an impact on the agenda. "The countries of the region clearly are watching this carefully and are cognizant of the implications for the larger international order," she said.

As always, the growth and influence of China hovers over the trip, even though the president will not be stopping there. Kenneth G. Lieberthal, senior director for Asia on Bill Clinton's NSC, said that "a major underlying issue throughout the trip" will be "whether the president can strike the right balance between providing confidence that the U.S. will meet its security commitment without being drawn into language and promises that will tilt toward making China the bulls-eye." That will require some diplomatic finesse when the other leaders bring up their disputes with China over islands and territorial borders in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. And it will require the president to carefully defend his pivot without it coming across to Beijing as a strategy to "contain" China.

Another challenge for the president is finding a way to achieve progress on the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks, which are currently stalled. Talks in Tokyo resume Tuesday in a last-minute effort to break a stalemate over market access. Washington is pressing hard for the slashing of Japanese tariffs that effectively keep American beef and pork out of the Japanese market and Tokyo is pushing for easier access to the American market for Japanese autos.

"Betting is against any breakthrough," Green warned, in part because the Asian leaders are well aware that the president is unable to deliver his own party in Congress to support a trade deal, even if it is achieved. "The Japanese side argues that the president's not willing to make the case for trade promotion authority or fast track, so why should Japan take a hit and do all of the hard politics?"