April 16
The Obama administration’s foreign policy energies are fully engaged in the Middle East — negotiating the Iran deal, sending Special Operations forces into Iraq, supporting Saudi airstrikes in Yemen, working with the Syrian rebels. Whatever happened to the pivot to Asia?
Remember, the basic argument behind the pivot was that the United States was overinvested in the Middle East, a crisis-prone region of dwindling importance to the U.S. national interest. Asia, on the other hand, is the future. Of the four largest economies, three are in Asia, if measured by purchasing-power parity. As Singapore’s late leader Lee Kuan Yew often told me, “America will remain the world’s dominant power in the 21st century only if it is the dominant Pacific power.”
And yet the United States is up to its neck once more in the Middle Eastern morass. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry spend little time in Asia. Few new initiatives have been announced. Despite the deal on “fast-track” authority, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that was at the heart of the pivot, faces congressional opposition, mostly from the president’s own party. The administration lobbied hard to get its closest allies to spurn China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, only to be rebuffed by everyone — even Britain.
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