Summary
President Barack Obama signaled to the world last year that 2012 marks the beginning of a new chapter for the United States in its long history of involvement in Asia and the Pacific. Each day of the president’s trip to the region in November illustrated America’s renewed focus. Here was President Obama hosting Asian nations in Hawaii to sign trade deals, there he was in Australia giving a major speech to Parliament and announcing a new basing arrangement, and there he was in Bali, Indonesia, attending the East Asia summit, the first U.S. president ever to do so. Taken together, these steps spoke to the American public about a new chapter in our foreign policy now unfolding after a decade of preoccupation with wars in the Middle East. This story tells of progress, not retrenchment; hope, not fear; opportunity, not threat. The future is in Asia, and America is going to be a part of it. A rebalancing toward America’s Pacific priorities is long overdue. This shift, however, is also intensifying insecurities in Asia’s biggest economic power, China. Each of President Obama’s appearances, as well as the many other Asia initiatives announced alongside by members of his administration, confirmed for many observers in China the deep and pervasive, though inaccurate, conviction that America wants to check China’s economic growth, contain its geopolitical ambitions, and keep it down.
