2005-2162

Obama in the New Asia
Amid challenges, the U.S. president finds his best reception in Korea
Diplomacy
President Barack Obama of the
United States has made his
first trip to Asia, including
visits to the two U.S. allies
Japan and South Korea, a stop at the
multilateral Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation forum summit held in Singapore,
and a rather lengthy stay in
China, the fast emerging great power.
In Japan, he made a speech with his
characteristic eloquence. While emphasizing
his Asian heritage, President
Obama called the U.S. an Asia-Pacific
nation and defined the Pacific Ocean as
binding, not separating the two. In the
general spirit of engagement and pragmatic
diplomacy, he declared the emerging
China not a country to contain but
one whose success will strengthen the
world.
The rhetoric aside, it was apparent
that he came to Asia with two goals in
mind — opening Asian markets to
American products and harnessing the
emergent power of China to buttress
America’s global leadership.
Many, Americans and others alike,
have lamented the waning of American
leadership, the cornerstone of peace and
prosperity in the world for a century,
due to the diminishing popularity of the
U.S. worldwide and the global economic
recession originating on Wall Street.
President Obama has worked hard
to renew American leadership with two
approaches. The first is his remarkable
vision of a new world, free from nuclear
weapons and the threat of climate
change, which earned him the Nobel
Peace Prize. The second is the policy of
global engagement of friends and foes
alike. At the core of global engagement
stands China.
In Obama’s eyes, the financial crisis
was due to the huge imbalance in global
trade as much as it was due to flawed
regulation of the financial system. Given
that Asian countries reap much of
America’s trade deficit, particularly
China and Japan, President Obama
would define his trip to Asia, including
the primarily economic forum of APEC,
as a market opening mission. It is too
early to judge the cost-benefit balance of
his trip. But in short run, he must have
been disappointed. What he found was
indeed a new Asia. Japan, a new government
for the first time in half a country,
was no longer as receptive to American
words as before. Prime Minister Hatoyama
was determined to shatter the image
of Japan as a junior partner.
In China, his balance sheet seems
filled with red ink. Despite the tribute he
paid to Beijing, including on sensitive
territorial issues, Chinese leaders politely
declined an invitation to a “G-2” club
of equal status with the global leader the
U.S., which ironically signified the
enhanced status of a China that can say
no to Washington.
However, President Obama finished
his trip in an upbeat mood, as he found
the most receptive ears in South Korea.
Even before his arrival, President Lee
Myung-bak extended a warm welcome
by deciding to send troops to Afghanistan,
a huge piece of symbolic support
for America’s war effort, and by setting
an ambitious target for reducing greenhouse
gas emissions, another major tenet
of President Obama’s global agenda.
During the amicable meeting, the
Dr. Taehyun Kim
presidents of the two allies agreed to a
joint effort to denuclearize the Korean
Peninsula through a “grand bargain”
with North Korea’s leadership. Although
the idea of a comprehensive approach
may not seem noble, the agreement
looms large because of the changed context.
With its second nuclear test in May,
North Korea put itself under siege, with
stiff sanctions from the international
community in UN Resolution 1874. To
President Obama, a Nobel laureate for
his vision of a nuclear free world, North
Korea’s nuclear challenge is no longer an
isolated regional security issue, but an
integral part of his grand vision.
In such a context, the allies of Korea
and the U.S. may frame a policy that
would make Pyongyang’s weapons program
more of a burden than an asset.
South Korean people are anxious to see
how it works out, starting with Ambassador
Bosworth’s visit to Pyongyang in
December.
Meanwhile, they were disappointed
as President Obama failed to make a
concrete commitment to ratification of
the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
Even those who understand that ratifying
the agreement is the job of Congress,
not the president, may think their goodwill
was not duly reciprocated.
Still, this is a new Asia in a new
world. Reciprocity may work in a more
diffuse way, across issues over time. Be
patient, Koreans!
Dr. Taehyun Kim is a professor of international relations at the
Graduate School of International Studies, and director of the
Center for the Study of Grand Strategy, both at Chung-Ang
University in Seoul, Korea.
December 2009 korea 25