Asia/Pacific

I'm late to this party, but two quick thoughts on Obama's Tokyo speech: 

1.  Last week a sharp foreign policy observer -- and a former campaign advisor for Obama -- made an interesing lexicographical observation to me about the Obama administration's foreign policy rhetoric to date.  They use the word "partnership" a hell of a lot more often than they use the word "alliance."  That's not terribly surprising, given their emphasis on talking with adversaries, forming great power concerts, etc.  Still, there are times when it's important to reach out more to one's allies than one's rivals. 

The Tokyo speech was one of those occasions, and I'm happy to report that Obama used "alliance" 12 times and "partnership" only 9 times.  Perhaps this says more about the lay of the land in the Pacific Rim than anything else, but it does suggest that the adminstration is sensitive to regional nuances.

2.  That said, I was underwhelmed with the trade outreach of the speech.  Some reports suggest that Obama announced that the U.S. would join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an APEC trade forum comprising, at the moment, of Brunei, Singapore, Chile and New Zealand (with Vietnam and Australia thinking about joining). 

What Obama actually said, however, was:  

The United States will also be engaging with the Trans-Pacific Partnership countries with the goal of shaping a regional agreement that will have broad-based membership and the high standards worthy of a 21st century trade agreement.

So what exactly does that mean?  Helene Cooper points out the ambiguities of that language in the New York Times: 

Although Mr. Obama did open the door during his speech in Tokyo on Asia policy, he did not explicitly say that the United States would join the pact. A formal announcement that the United States is beginning negotiations would undoubtedly kick off criticism from free-trade opponents in the United States and pushback from Congress.

Mr. Obama spoke, instead, of “engaging the Trans-Pacific Partnership countries with the goal of shaping a regional agreement that will have broad-based membership and the high standards worthy of a 21st century trade agreement.”

That line left many trade envoys already in Singapore scratching their heads: did Mr. Obama mean that the United States would begin formal talks to join the regional trade pact, which presently includes Singapore, Brunei and New Zealand, and could later include Vietnam — an addition that could lead to more Congressional pressure at home?

Many regional officials have been waiting for the United States to join the initiative as a demonstration that Washington will play a more active role in the region. But the Obama administration has yet to establish a firm trade policy, as it is still reviewing its options.

White House officials were not much clearer on what Mr. Obama meant when they were pressed on this after the speech. Michael Froman, an economics expert on the National Security Council, said that what Mr. Obama meant was that he would engage with the initiative “to see if this is something that could prove to be an important platform going further.”

Wow, that's some real enthusiasm coming from the G-20 sherpa.... not. 

For an administration that likes to pride itself as savvy in the ways of foreign policy subtleties, I still don't think they grasp the fact that trade policy is now embedded into foreign policy in the Asia/Pacific Region. 

My latest column in The National Interest online is up, and it sounds a warning about the Obama administration's policy malaise on both the Asia/Pacific region and the #1 issue to countries in the Asia/Pacific region -- namely, trade:

Obama’s policy malaise on trade will not win him friends in a region hell-bent on deepening economic integration. U.S. policy on trade liberalization has stalled out so badly that rumors are swirling around the Beltway that U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk is contemplating resignation. Meanwhile, countries in the region are signing free-trade agreements with each other at a record pace. The European Union has inked a free-trade deal with South Korea, and is negotiating one with Japan. In contrast, the chances of the Korea-United States free trade agreement passing this Congress is hovering around zero. The comparison with China is particularly dispiriting....

The United States has not been eclipsed yet—the bevy of activity in the Pacific Rim is a lot more about hedging than balancing against the United States. Nevertheless, if President Obama wants to be taken seriously in the region, he needs to take the region’s issues more seriously. Trade is not merely about economics—it’s about foreign policy too. Just because Washington ignores a policy issue does not mean others do not think it important. As we are learning, some regions can bypass America altogether if they so choose. 

In a very disturbing sign of the times, I see that former State Department official Evan Feigenbaum has written something similar for the Financial Times: 

[T]he business of Asia is business. Without more vigorous trade engagement, such diplomatic efforts cannot secure America’s position in a changing Asia. The US could soon face a region less willing to accommodate its commercial and financial interests.

Many eons ago in graduate school Only recently Evan and I woul talk about the Asia/Pacific when we were matriculating in graduate school together -- and, more often than not, we disagreed with one another.  The only times we agreed was when some serious s**t was going down.  So take this consensus for what you will. 

Throughout the course of the Bush administration, a constant irritant in the Asia/Pacific region was Bush's tendency to place antiterrorism at the top of the queue in Asia/Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) discussions.  Not that anti-terrorism wasn't important, but APEC was not the proper forum for that -- APEC is all about regional economic integration.  China, by wanting to talk about trade, made a lot of diplomatic headway by distinguishing itself from the United States.

I bring this up because, according to the FT's Edward Luce, it looks like the Obama administration's policy malaise on trade is not winning it any allies in East Asia: 

In a meeting with President Barack Obama last week, Lee Kuan Yew, the veteran former prime minister of Singapore, said he felt privileged to meet the US leader at a “time of renewal and change in America and during a period of transition where the world order is changing”.

At private meetings around Washington, however, Mr Lee’s message was rather more blunt.

“You guys are giving China a free run in Asia,” he told Fred Bergsten, the director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “The vacuum in US policy is enabling the Chinese to make the running.”

Mr Lee’s timing was apposite. On Wednesday Mr Obama leaves for Tokyo for a regional tour that will include China, South Korea and Singapore, where Mr Lee’s government is hosting a summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum this weekend. Surveys in each country show that Mr Obama’s popularity has helped to restore the battered US standing in the region.

But the views of Asian governments do not always chime with those of their public. Across the region, concern is rising about the absence of US leadership on trade since Mr Obama took office. Few believe that he has the will or power to restart the Doha round of global trade talks – and he has not asked Congress for a renewal of the presi- dent’s fast-track negotiating authority.

Fewer still believe that he will be able to ratify the landmark 2007 US-South Korea free-trade agreement in the face of strong hostility in Congress....

while globalisation gets steadily less popular in the US, other parts of the world are moving ahead. South Korea recently concluded a free-trade deal with Europe. Japan is holding similar talks with the European Union. Ironically, the EU broached the talks as a way of protecting itself against the trade-diverting effects of the now moribund US-Korea deal.

US business lobby groups are hoping Mr Obama will be able to achieve some kind of a breakthrough in Seoul next week. Given that it would be futile for him to send the free-trade agreement back to Capitol Hill, any new steps would have to include a renegotiation of the deal to include better market access for US cars.

“It is really important to understand just how badly the US is screwing itself on trade,” said Mr Bergsten. “By having an inactive trade policy, others are rushing to fill the vacuum.”

For an administration that claims it wants to have better relations with its allies, Obama and his foreign policy team have been remarkably tone-deaf when it comes to trade policy. 

At every major summit meeting since he's come to office, Obama has heard complaints about the lack of U.S. leadership on the trade front.  This administration has demonstrated that it's not afraid to tackle multiple, complex challenges at the same time -- and yet they've been either mute or worse when it comes to trade. 

Barack Obama's decision to put trade policy in a lockbox and throw away the key is utterly appalling -- and, from a foreign policy perspective, completely counterproductive. 

Your humble blogger will be MIA for the next few days, as he is attending the annual meeting of the Japanese Association of International Relations in Kobe, Japan for the next few days. 

Let me assure my readers that my decision to flee leave the country has nothing whatsoever to do with recent events.  It's just a very, very, very, very happy coincidence. 

While I'm gone, let me recomend reading Evan Feigenbaum's new Council on Foreign Relations report, "The United States in the New Asia."  I'll certainly be reading it on the flight.  The latest issue of The National Interest is also worth a gander. 

And now a request from my readers -- what's worth reading that I haven't commented on?  In other words, what should I be reading? 

Following up on my dollar post from earlier this week, I see that Paul Krugman is talking a related issue in his New York Times column today -- the refusal of the renminbi to depreciate against the dollar:

Many economists, myself included, believe that China’s asset-buying spree helped inflate the housing bubble, setting the stage for the global financial crisis. But China’s insistence on keeping the yuan/dollar rate fixed, even when the dollar declines, may be doing even more harm now.

Although there has been a lot of doomsaying about the falling dollar, that decline is actually both natural and desirable. America needs a weaker dollar to help reduce its trade deficit, and it’s getting that weaker dollar as nervous investors, who flocked into the presumed safety of U.S. debt at the peak of the crisis, have started putting their money to work elsewhere.

But China has been keeping its currency pegged to the dollar — which means that a country with a huge trade surplus and a rapidly recovering economy, a country whose currency should be rising in value, is in effect engineering a large devaluation instead.

Krugman then goes on to excoriate the U.S. Treasury department for not upbraiding the Chinese more on this. 

Fair enough, but the thing is, the United States is not the country that's hurt the most by this tactic.  It's the rest of the world -- particularly Europe and the Pacific Rim -- that are getting royally screwed by China's policy.  These countries are seeing their currencies appreciating against both the dollar and the renminbi, which means their products are less competitive in the U.S. market compared to domestic production and Chinese exports. 

This leads to the title of this post.  Krugman presumes that the U.S. has the strongest incentive to talk to China about this issue.  If one thinks of the U.S. acting as the hegemon, that's possibly true.  As a matter of direct economic interest, however, why haven't the Europeans and East Asians been screaming bloody murder about this?  China's policies are forcing them to take actions they don't want to take -- so why aren't they complaining more loudly about this? 

Why? 

Well, Glenn Kessler's rundown on what's happeing in Phuket is rich with blog-worthy goodness: 

The war of words between North Korea and the United States escalated Thursday, with North Korea's Foreign Ministry lashing out at Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in unusually personal terms for "vulgar remarks" that it said demonstrated "she is by no means intelligent."

Clinton, who earlier this week likened North Korea to an unruly child, has rallied international isolation of North Korea at a 27-member regional security forum here. She met with her Russian, Chinese, South Korean and Japanese counterparts -- the other key partners in suspended six-nation disarmament talks--and won strong statements of support from many delegations....

The Foreign Ministry statement attacking Clinton also amply demonstrated the North Korean mood. "We cannot but regard Mrs. Clinton as a funny lady as she likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said, according to North Korean media. "Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping."

The fit of pique was apparently inspired by an interview Clinton gave ABC News while visiting New Delhi.

"What we've seen is this constant demand for attention [from North Korea]," Clinton said. "And maybe it's the mother in me or the experience that I've had with small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention -- don't give it to them, they don't deserve it, they are acting out."  (emphases added)

Some random thoughts:

1.  If I'm Chelsea Clinton, I'd be pretty cheesed off right now.  I never thought of her as particularly "unruly," but what other teenagers has Hillary spent time with?  [Cough, cough!!--ed.  Oh... right.]

2.  You have to give the North Koreans major chutzpah points for accusing other countries of being "unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community."  [UPDATE:  As Rob Farley puts it, "the Nork rhetoric vaguely reminds me of Daily Kos threads from the early days of the 2008 Democratic primary."] 

3.  It's worth pointing out that we're now in a place where the Bush administration look positively dovish on North Korea compared to the Obama administration.  Here's another way of looking at it:  Both Dick Cheney and John Bolton are more comfortable with the Obama administration's Nort Korea policy than Bush administration's.  Think about that for a second. 

4.  A related point -- remember how the Bush administration got pilloried for refusing to talk with Iran, arguing that doing so would confer a reward on the regime?  Kessler quotes Clinton as saying, with regard to the Six-Party Talks:  "We are open to talks with North Korea. But we are not interested in half measures.  We do not intend to reward the North just for returning to the table."   Now there is a difference between this position and that of the Bush administration vis-à-vis Iran -- but it's not nearly as big a difference as Obama defenders are likely to claim. 

5.  What's the end game in all of this?  I think maybe, just maybe, the international community has found a status quo that makes the North Koreans less comfortable than everyone else.  Assuming that the interdiction and sanctions regime works well -- which is a robust but not entirely unreasonable assumption -- then North Korea gets nothing for thumbing its nose at the world except some more weapons-grade fissile material. 

That's not nothing, but it's not all that much either.  Pyongyang already has a deterrent to prevent invasion.  It can't threaten nuclear blackmail all that persuasively, because it's a pretty hollow threat on their part.  And if they can't sell their technology to other countries, then there's no profit in it for them either.  Which means they're stuck, wallowing in their own barren dirt, feeling very, very lonely. 

Am I missing anything?