The Asia-Pacific Region Mulls an Obama Presidency

It is pretty evident that the world is looking past the Bush era and anxiously awaiting an Obama Presidency though in the interim the world seems to be having a collective well now what moment. No doubt, President Obama faces an array of foreign policy challenges left adrift by the Bush Administration and no doubt an Obama Presidency will devote most of its international attention to unwinding in Iraq and resolving the war on the terror in the Hindu Kush. When it comes to the Asia-Pacific, Obama faces certainly complex challenges ranging from the economic to security issues to climatic change to environmental degradation to democratic governance and human rights. As with much of the Obama agenda, it’s not clear what an Obama Administration intends or protends.

2008 has been both a remarkable and difficult year in the Asia-Pacific region. The political landscape, for starters, is much altered. We have new leaders in South Korea (more conservative), Australia (more liberal), New Zealand (more conservative), Thailand (more disturbed), the Maldives (fresh and new), and Japan (plus c’est la meme chose, plus ça change). Lingering political crises plague the region in Malaysia and Burma and while a long civil war in Sri Lanka seems to be winding down, it is still on-going. India, which earlier this year passed a nuclear treaty with the United States, is scheduled to head to the polls next year and it’s not clear in which direction India will head. 2008 has been a year of widespread religious rioting and political turmoil across the north of India and the global downturn has been to affect India’s fast-growing economy. And there’s little question that for the past eight years with US attention so diverted, China has taken advantage to pursue its global ambitions in Asia and Africa but also increasingly in Latin America. That Venezuela just signed a military treaty of co-operation with Beijing should worry policy makers in Washington. And then there is North Korea where questions over the health of the sixty-six year old Kim Jong-Il’s arise almost on weekly basis. There are questions over the war on terror in places ranging from India to the Philippines to Indonesia. The downturn in the US economy has already impacted the export-oriented economies of the region. In short, Asian questions loom large.

Here’s a look at questions and views in the global and Asia-Pacific press looking what an Obama Presidency might mean for the region.

Obama Skeptics in Asia
By Richard Halloran for Real Clear Politics.

From Japanese commentators flowed considerable anxiety. Yomiuri, Japan’s largest circulating newspaper, said “so far, Obama has talked only in generalities.” The paper worried that he would be protectionist. Asahi, a leftist paper, said that for Japanese, Obama was an “unknown quantity.”

Yoshihisa Komori, a columnist in the conservative Sankei, called Obama “a frighteningly unknown politician” who would rely less on traditional alliances, such as that with Japan, and more on international organizations in foreign policy.

In South Korea, the largest newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, applauded Obama’s election but added: “Yet Obama has shortcomings, such as scant diplomatic experience and no administrative career. He is also inclined to protectionist trade policies on behalf of the U.S. economy.”

Filipinos split on Obama’s stance on the 600 American troops posted in the southern Philippines to help the Philippine Armed Forces fight Moro insurgents and terrorists. Some urged Obama to keep the troops there, others urged him to withdraw them.

The Thai newspaper Nation quoted Obama: “Americans have sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of red states and blue states.” The paper then lamented the bitter “red and yellow” divisions in Thailand today, wishing they “could correspond to blue and red in the US.”

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he had written to Obama: “Many issues will claim your attention. May I make a case for the importance of Southeast Asia to the US, a region which is not unfamiliar to you,” referring to Obama’s childhood in neighboring Indonesia. A writer for the Straits Times, Joanna Lee, however, was skeptical of Obama’s emphasis on hope: “Alas, I’m not sure hope is enough.”

Global Man of Mystery
By Greg Sheridan in The Australian.

One piece of good news is that he may keep Bush’s Defence Secretary Robert Gates in position. Gates knows Australia well and values the Australian alliance. He will be perhaps the only person about whom that can confidently be said at the top of an Obama administration. There is no sign that Obama has any knowledge of or interest in Australia, though it is good that he took a congratulatory call from Rudd.

It is conceivable that some American enemies, such as Iran, may use Obama’s election as the opportunity to strike a grand bargain with Washington.

It is equally possible that they may see weakness in Obama and try to exploit it, in effect testing the new president.

What Obama Means to Bangkok
By Shawn Crispin in the Asia Times.

It is precisely in places like Thailand that Obama will need to repair once strong, now strained bilateral alliances and reaffirm the US’s commitment to democracy and human rights in its foreign policy, both to restore America’s flagging credibility as a force for democratic good and to forestall China’s recent gains in the region, which have come by and large at the US’s expense.

Outgoing President George W Bush’s singular concentration on the “war on terror”, of which Southeast Asia was the campaign’s less militarized second front, came at a high cost to US credibility – including with its key strategic ally Thailand. Bangkok was a reluctant signatory to Bush’s military campaigns, providing a small number of troops to the coalition of the willing in Iraq while allowing US warplanes access its U-Tapao air base during runs to and from Afghanistan.

Obama Faces Tests in Japan and Korea
By Ian Rowley and Moon Ihlwan in Business Week.

America’s closet ally in Asia will seek assurances from Obama on regional security issues. Japan’s ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party, will closely scrutinize changes to U.S. relations with China and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force is involved in a refueling mission in the Indian Ocean in support of U.S.-led antiterrorism operations in and close to Afghanistan.

With Kim Jong Il suffering serious health problems (BusinessWeek.com, 9/9/08), the Japanese will also be looking at how Obama changes U.S. policy toward North Korea. Much of the country was outraged in October when the Bush Administration removed North Korea from a list of terrorist countries (BusinessWeek.com, 10/13/08) in exchange for Pyongyang’s agreement to verification measures for its nuclear activities. Families of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea in the late 1970s and 1980s condemned the move, and the Japanese government was upset that it was informed of the development only 30 minutes in advance. Japan’s Finance Minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, said the U.S. decision was “extremely regrettable.”

Making North Korea implement its promise to dismantle its nuclear weapons program will be a major security challenge for Obama. He has called the Bush Administration’s decision to remove North Korea from the terrorism blacklist a “modest step forward” but has said there must be an understanding of the consequences for North Korea if it does not follow through on its commitments. Obama’s willingness to talk directly to U.S. adversaries such as Pyongyang has created some worries in Seoul that South Korea’s voice in determining the fate of the Korean peninsula could weaken as there will be increasingly little room for President Lee Myung Bak’s government to play a role. Lee has criticized the so-called “sunshine policy” pursued by his predecessors, Roh Moo Hyun and Kim Dae Jung, arguing the South had only prolonged the oppressive regime of Kim Jong Il without addressing his nuclear ambitions and human rights issues in the North.

Obama And India
By C. Raja Mohan in Forbes.

As a series of recent statements from Obama on Kashmir get front-page treatment, India is waking up to the prospect of a major spat with the next administration in Washington over Kashmir. If India’s national neuralgia over Kashmir is reignited under an Obama administration, America will risk losing all the recent gains in its relationship with India under President George W. Bush.

Do recall that barely a few weeks ago, amid a gathering financial crisis, the Congressional Democrats rallied behind Bush to quickly approve a controversial nuclear cooperation agreement with India. The incoming vice president, Joseph Biden, has been a strong champion of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, and Obama, too, endorsed it, citing the importance of the strategic partnership between the two countries.

What then is driving the Obama foreign policy team to pick a new fight with India on Kashmir? It is not that the old liberal internationalists are back at wanting to solve all the world’s problems. It may not even be that the South Asia hands who served under President Clinton are stuck in a time warp about Indo-U.S. relations.

The potential conflict between India and the new administration stems from some of the big ideas Obama has articulated about America’s national security priorities. Obama has said he wants to shift America’s military energies from a needless war of choice in Iraq to the faltering war of necessity in Afghanistan.

Obama has also sensed, rightly, that the U.S. cannot stabilize Afghanistan unless it fixes Pakistan’s profound insecurities and gets its Army to level with the U.S. and stop supporting America’s enemies in Afghanistan. Few Indians disagree with Obama’s reasoning that the threats to Pakistan’s security are internal and do not come from India.

But many are beginning to get anxious about the third step in Obama’s logic: To get Pakistan to cooperate with the U.S. in Afghanistan, Washington must actively seek to resolve Islamabad’s problem with New Delhi over Kashmir. Put simply, the Indian fear is that they are being asked to pick up the political tab for America’s failed policy in Afghanistan, and for the Pakistan Army’s deliberate betrayal of U.S. interests there.

Obama to Retain Taiwan Policy
By Charles Synder in the Taipei Times.

n his comments on Taiwan, Obama has echoed the traditional views that have framed US policy toward the country since the US switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.

However, Obama is expected to appoint advisers in the mold of former president Bill Clinton’s, who will likely espouse such policies as the “three noes” that Clinton declared during a visit to Shanghai, which virtually muzzled pro-independence Taiwanese.

Obama is unlikely to embrace the strident pro-Taiwan attitude Bush advocated in the early months of his presidency, when he approved the sale of a massive arms package to Taiwan and declared publicly that he would do “whatever it takes” to defend Taiwan against a Chinese military attack.

On the other hand, with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) moving toward accommodation with Beijing, there would be no cause for the bitterness in US-Taiwan relations that marked the last years of the Bush and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) presidencies.

In its most direct statement on relations with Taiwan, the Obama campaign in May used the same boilerplate US State Department rhetoric from recent decades.

Obama and vide presidential candidate Joseph Biden “recognize the importance of maintaining the ‘one China’ policy, as laid out in the three communiques, and they also underscore that the Taiwan Relations Act” remains relevant, the statement said.

The duo “will work to ensure that a military conflict across the Taiwan Strait never arises by maintaining good relations with China and Taiwan and by making clear that we expect them to resolve their differences peacefully and through dialogue,” it said.

“While Barack Obama and Joe Biden oppose the use of force to resolve the issue, he [Obama] will act to ensure that Taiwan, a thriving democracy, is not coerced into accepting a change in its status against its will … This means maintaining our military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, strengthening our alliances, and making clear to both Beijing and Taipei that a unilateral change in the status quo in the Taiwan Strait is unacceptable,” the statement said.

While Obama, like every other policymaker in Washington, has felt constrained to pledge to provide Taiwan with the weapons it needs to defend itself under the TRA, he did not object when the Bush administration refused to sell Taiwan advanced F-16 fighter aircraft or diesel-electric submarines as part of the US$6.5 billion arms package approved last month.

President Obama and the Philippines
Editorial in The Manila Times.

We Filipinos should be concerned about how President Obama will treat the Philippines and Asean.

It may be good diplomacy for Malacanang, the National Security Adviser and the Department of Foreign Affairs to say days before the US election that whoever becomes the new American president would surely continue to pursue existing US policy toward the Philippines and Asean.

The truth is that we Filipinos should desire changes. For the Bush administration, overwhelmingly preoccupied with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and the Middle East situation, has lowered the quality of its attention to Asean and the Philippines. The USA was markedly closer to Asean during the Reagan years and the early days of APEC.

This has not been noticed or remarked upon by those among us who unceasingly make an act of will to perceive America as nothing more than a former colonizer whose influence and presence in our country should be drastically diminished.

More realistic Filipinos who correctly see America as a friend and partner in making ours a better world–as a source of foreign direct investment and aid, as the most favorite destination of the majority of Filipinos seeking to emigrate and, of course, a source of problems every now and then–have seen how the Philippines has almost disappeared from the White House’s radar screen.

This despite the Philippine media’s coverage and praise of the activities of the American ambassador and her associates. The people appreciate the cooperation of our Armed Forces and their us US counterparts in Balikatan exercises, medical missions and other civic works, especially in Mindanao.

Obama and Ties with Republik Indonesia
By Aleksius Jemadu in the Jakarta Post.

The most important lesson the U.S. can learn from Bush’s failure is that in this era of globalization, its leadership in tackling critical world issues should be made more participatory. Now that its economy has become the main victim of the fallacies of the so called “market-oriented capitalism”, there is a need on the part of U.S. leaders to acknowledge the indispensability of other major powers such as China and Russia in solving acute world problems. Gone is the era of, “If you are not with me, I’ll do it my own way”.

Obama is believed to have a unique cultural background which should give him diplomatic shrewdness in winning the hearts and minds of those who became disappointed by Bush’s hawkish policies. It is at this particular juncture that Obama’s multicultural proclivities should meet the obsession of the Indonesian government under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to portray Indonesia as a leading representative of moderate Islam.

The synergy of Obama’s cultural openness and Indonesia’s moderate brand of Islamic politics may constitute a great contribution to the construction of more humane intercivilizational relationships.

Just because Obama has spent his childhood years in Indonesia is not a guarantee that he will be nice at all times to Indonesia. We must not forget the fact that all U.S. presidents from the Democratic Party have the tendency to spotlight human rights records of developing countries. When Bill Clinton was in the White House Indonesia was a vulnerable object of his criticisms over its widespread violations of human rights.

Although our human rights record today is improving, there are still some trouble spots that could affect ties between the two nations. First, over the last few years Indonesia has been strongly criticized by the U.S. government regarding its poor implementation of religious freedoms.

The powerlessness and indifference of Indonesian security authorities in preventing the destruction and forced closure of houses of worship of minority groups by certain radical Islamic groups remain a source of concern among U.S. policy makers. It is very likely that Obama’s liberal administration will seek clarification from the Indonesian government about this unfortunate reality.

From my blog, By The Fault.