President Obama Didn't Impress Asia
Barack Obama's first visit to Asia since his inauguration was one of the most disappointing trips by any U.S. president to the region in decades, especially given media-generated expectations that "Obamamania" would make it yet another triumphal progression. It was a journey of startlingly few concrete accomplishments, demonstrable proof that neither personal popularity nor media deference really means much in the hard world of international affairs.
The contrast between Asia's reception for Obama and Europe's is significant. Although considered a global phenomenon, Obamamania's real center is Europe. There, Mr. Obama reigns as a "post-American" president, a multilateralist carbon copy of a European social democrat. Asians operate under no such illusions, notwithstanding the "Oba-Mao" T shirts briefly on sale in China. Whatever Mr. Obama's allure in Europe, Asian leaders want to know what he means for peace and security in their region. On that score, opinion poll ratings mean little.
What the president lacked in popular adulation, however, he more than made up for in self-adulation. In Asia, he labeled himself "America's first Pacific president," ignoring over a century of contrary evidence. The Pacific has been important to America since the Empress of China became the first trading ship from the newly independent country to reach the Far East in 1784. Theodore Roosevelt created a new Pacific country (Panama) and started construction on the Panama Canal to ensure that America's navy could move rapidly from its traditional Atlantic bases to meet Pacific challenges. William Howard Taft did not merely live on Pacific islands as a boy, like Obama, but actually governed several thousand of them as Governor-General of the Philippines in 1901-1903. Dwight Eisenhower served in Manila from 1935 to 1939, and five other presidents wore their country's uniform in the Pacific theater during World War II—two of whom, John F. Kennedy and George H.W. Bush, very nearly perished in the effort.
Click here to read full article in the Wall Street Journal.
John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI.
A JOINT PROGRAM OF
