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| United States President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union address at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 12. AFP |
In his seventh and last state of the union speech this past week, US President Barack Obama asked Americans to ponder the economic and security challenges the United States is facing.
The US president was decidedly upbeat. Americans though may well have had reason to pause. The December shootings in San Bernardino, California, just weeks earlier became the worst terrorist attack to occur in the United States since September 11, 2001. And the latest Rasmussen reports survey had 67 per cent of Americans now saying their country is headed in the wrong direction.
Yet, the US president declared, “I stand here confident as I have ever been that the state of our union is strong.” and relative to much of the world, the US economy remains so.
Unfortunately, an important message and geography lesson went missing amidst the rhetoric. It was an opportunity missed for an administration that has added the phrase “Asia pivot” to the geopolitical conversation. That’s shorthand for a rebalance of US attention away from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Americans could well have benefited from Obama’s taking a moment to underscore how strengthened trade and security relations with the dynamic economies of southeast Asia will help the United States meet economic and security challenges.
In his address to the US Congress, Obama mentioned China specifically and Asia broadly, as he has in past years. Yet, while Myanmar and the Philippines have been mentioned in prior addresses, Southeast Asia as a region has never caught the full attention of the presidential speechwriters’ final drafts.
The region may well have expected a shout-out from a president who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia – southeast Asia’s most populous country and largest economy.
Obama did mention Vietnam in his final remarks, but it was to remind Americans of their nation’s difficult wartime legacy in that country. He looked to southeast Asia’s past, not its dynamic future.
How many in the United States would be surprised to know that this one-time enemy is now a significant American trading partner – and one seeking closer US ties amid China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea. Few likely also know that Thailand is the oldest treaty ally of the United States in Asia, by virtue of a Treaty of Amity and Cooperation signed in 1833. And Singapore remains a strong security partner of the United States.
Americans would have benefited from knowing that Obama – described by some as America’s first “Pacific President” – had invited Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung along with leaders of nine other Southeast Asian nations, collectively known as ASEAN, to a summit in California later this February.
Americans would also benefit from learning more of how a recently upgraded, and largely welcomed US “strategic partnership” with nations in the region can lead to greater cooperation on economic and security issues.
Already, there is more US investment in the 10 member nations of ASEAN than in the “BRIC” nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China, according to the US-ASEAN Business Council.
The US may well be striving to “remake” an international system to ensure greater economic and military security. That new system must engage and include the nations of Southeast Asia – described by Obama as being “critical to security, prosperity and human dignity around the world” last November at a US-ASEAN Meeting held in Kuala Lumpur.
The mutual benefits and opportunities of US-Southeast Asian partnership will become even more apparent to individuals and businesses in the near future as the just launched ASEAN Economic Community gains momentum. This market of roughly 600 million people and combined gross domestic product of $2.5 trillion deserved a mention by the US president.
Understandably, the president’s attention turned to the just concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks as an example of American leadership in Asia. That trade initiative, if implemented would increase US exports by 9.2 per cent, according to the World Bank. It does not, however, include all members of the southeast Asia region.
“With TPP, China does not set the rules in that region; we do,” said Obama in calling on the US Congress to approve the landmark trade deal. “You want to show our strength in this new century? Approve this agreement.”
The US president’s final state of the union address captured an overly cautious approach to Asia amid a rising China. Much of the region, including in Southeast Asia, hungers for a return of strong US leadership.
Our hope is that one year from now, the new president – whoever he or she might be – will make clear that America remains staunchly a Pacific economic and military power, and a force for democracy, human rights and good governance.
The 21st century may well be an Asian-Pacific Century. Yet, the state of the US union is that the United States remains an Asian-Pacific power, and with attention, investment and involvement, it will remain so to the betterment of southeast Asia, the broader region and world. That’s a tale worth telling.
Curtis S Chin, a former US ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, is managing director of advisory RM RiverPeak Group, LLC. Jose B Collazo, a Southeast Asian analyst, is an associate with RiverPeak Group. Follow them on twitter at @CurtisSChin and@JoseBCollazo.
1 comment:
TPP allows corporations to set the rules... and people harm by their products CAN NOT sue them and if gov of such country try to block such products from selling , corporations can take the gov to court where they will demand payments for loss of revenues....this is why most americans and europeans are against it.. but you won't hear obama saying it..because he is bought and paid for by the corporations which runs wall street.. where he got the most campaign contributions/money that helped him get re-elected..
at state of union , he proclaimed the US economy is doing well and those who said otherwise is '' peddling fiction '' [ his word ] then the stock market around the world crashed... walmart is laying off people , closing stores ; oil companies are getting ready to lay off workers , and banks are worried about unpaid loans by oil companies[ bankruptcy ], your deposit in bank is now at risks.. public might have to bail them out again as in 2008 when mortgages loans were unpaid. the US secretary of treasury threatened congress that there will be riots in the streets if people found out their money was gone , so congress allowed the secretary to borrow 700 billions to give to banks and taxpayers ended up paying for it - principal and interest ] note that taxpayers were against the bail-out but congress did not care.. they too are bought and paid for by bankers [ most of them ended up giving themselves bonuses with that money at end of year]
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