US President Barack Obama’s pivotal absence in Asia

Obama’s pivotal absence

President Barack Obama is failing dismally in Asian diplomacy and policy. Only the fact the US starts from a position of almost incomparable strength, and one key institution, its military, still functions properly, has stopped the mess from being much worse.

Obama’s failure in Asia is part of the failure of his foreign policy more generally. It is not that he has dared greatly and come unstuck. He has on occasion dared great rhetoric but this has meant nothing. In substance, Obama is just presiding over a decline in US influence. He leads a weak administration that is weak everywhere.

This does not necessarily represent long-term American decline. It is the weakness of this one administration. But it is a situation full of danger and is laid out well in America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder by The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens.

America’s enemies, and the forces generally of violence and disorder, are everywhere encouraged. The US position is weak in eastern Europe, and Vladimir Putin intensified his campaign in Ukraine after Obama ostentatiously drew a red line in Syria and then decided not to enforce it. Obama is losing influence all over the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Central Asia.

But it is the US position in Asia that is most important to Australia. It is more complex than any of the other situations and it is full of cross currents. The first Obama administration did not do too badly in Asia. It had big beasts in Defence and State — Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton — and the outstanding force of nature, Kurt Campbell, as assistant secretary of state for Asia.

As it transpired Gates and Clinton had less power with the White House than is normal for such cabinet secretaries, but they did produce the “pivot” to Asia. This was meant to be a comprehensive deepening of engagement by the US in Asia, of which the military component was just one part. But since the departure of Gates, Clinton and Campbell, the Obama strategy in Asia has turned to mush.

The US handling of China’s new Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank is a colossal mess, a diplomatic cock-up of epic proportion, representing bad judgment and bad execution in equal measure. Washington lobbied all its Asian allies to stay out of the bank and it seems that Japan is the only one that will follow US advice. Nothing could better encapsulate the incompetence and ineffectiveness of US diplomacy in Asia today than this episode.

Then there is the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. It is essential that the US have a positive trade and economic agenda in Asia but until five minutes ago Obama virtually never uttered the TPP’s name in public. Striking, despite his undergraduate rhetoric about loving Asia and being the first Pacific president, Obama probably mentions Asia less often to American audiences than any president since Jimmy Carter.

Asia figures neither as opportunity nor challenge in Obama’s discourse to the American people. It figures not at all. Obama got in the habit of making fine speeches about Asia when he was in Asia, but never said anything about Asia at home. So far he has not been able to get trade promotion authority for the TPP because his influence with congressional Democrats — yes, Democrats — is too weak.

The pivot was also meant to involve a substantial redirection of US military resources to Asia. But Obama has presided over such substantial cuts to US defence spending that whatever the percentage going to Asia, the absolute quantum was steady or in decline. Obama seems, bizarrely, to view defence spending as primarily a bargaining chip in his never ending congressional battles with the Republicans.

Meanwhile China is involved in a furious territorial dispute with Japan in the East China Sea, and an even more dangerous territorial dispute with several Southeast Asian nations in the South China Sea, where it has been building military-size runways on artificial islands and reclaimed land in disputed territories. Incidentally, its claim to these territories is inherently ridiculous.

China’s general extreme assertiveness partly flows from its correct perception of Obama’s weakness. It has pushed Southeast Asian nations into a tight embrace of the US in security terms. At the same time, the only US government agency that actually works as it is supposed to in Asia is the US military.

This is consoling but also a bit dangerous because it makes US strategy in Asia look very lopsided.

We have also seen now all the serious players in Asia trying hard to inject some backbone into the Obama administration. Thus Japan’s Shinzo Abe in Washington recently promised to bear a much greater security burden with the US, to change Japan’s legislation and the interpretation of its constitution to allow it to support US military endeavours in Asia and beyond. This was a historic development much neglected in Australia.

Abe, incidentally, in his magnificent speech to the US congress, gave in evidence of Japan’s new seriousness about pulling its weight in security that it had strengthened its strategic relationship with Australia and India.

When Obama was in India recently, Narendra Modi tried to have the same effect on him that Abe is trying for. Modi promised unprecedented defence and security co-operation and, in a joint statement with Obama, reaffirmed India commitment to “ensuring freedom of navigation and over flight throughout the region, especially the South China Sea”.

This language is obviously directed at China. Modi also urged nations to abide by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is a barely disguised reference to The Philippines’ effort to have its dispute with China adjudicated under UNCLOS.

In a very significant speech yesterday, Australia’s Defence Minister, Kevin Andrews, reaffirmed Canberra’s opposition to Beijing’s air defence identification zone over the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. And, most significantly, he explicitly reaffirmed Canberra’s opposition to Beijing’s land reclamation activities in the South China Sea.

Tony Abbott, like Abe and Modi and a number of Southeast Asian leaders, is trying to get Obama to behave like a president of the US, trying to inject some ­resolve and traction into his ­behaviour.

The clumsy misstatement by US Assistant Defence Secretary David Shear, which implied that the US might station B1 bombers in Australia, confused just how much Australia is really doing in the rotation of US forces, none of them based in Australia, through northern Australia.

This rotation has always been part of the Pentagon’s efforts to disperse its forces in Asia, especially from Okinawa, so that they would be less concentrated and less vulnerable to missile strike. This is clear in many Pentagon policy documents.

China is never mentioned by name in such policy documents but it is the case that the only Asian nation that could possibly threaten US forces with missiles is China.

I wrote this week that I believe we will host B1 bombers, and also US reconnaissance aircraft and air to air refuellers, on rotation in northern Australia, although no formal decision has yet been made on this. Although these planes will rotate in and out rather than being based in Australia, this is part of the Pentagon’s strategy to disperse its Asian forces.

Abbott, who has been extremely effective in foreign policy, is acting in line with Abe, Modi and a raft of Asian leaders. They are trying to get Obama to behave like an American president. And they are doing their best to help American policy in Asia. It’s no small task.