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Obama hails expanded US engagement in Asia
Source: Agencies |
November 14, 2009, Saturday
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Online Edition
Online Edition
US President Barack Obama declared today that an era of American disengagement in the globe's fastest-growing region is over.
Obama also said a robust China should be welcomed, not feared, as a powerful partner on urgent challenges. Obama said: "We welcome China's efforts to play a greater role on the world stage, a role in which their growing economy is joined by growing responsibility."
In a 40-minute speech, Obama offered incentives for North Korea to abandon the nuclear weapons. He outlined a possible future of economic opportunity and greater global greater respect, saying, "this respect cannot be earned through belligerence."
More broadly, the US president's address to 1,500 prominent Japanese in a soaring downtown Tokyo concert hall was intended to showcase a United States that, under Obama's leadership, seeks deeper engagement in Asia. It was the fifth major foreign address of his 10-month presidency. He reached out to locals through several personal notes that delighted his audience, including calling himself "America's first Pacific president," referring to his time in Indonesia and travels in Asia as a boy, and saluting the residents of Obama, Japan.
Acknowledging Asia's growing power and the perceptions here of America's parallel decline, Obama aides had said the chief aim for his eight-day trip through Asia wasn't so much to bring home specific "deliverables" but to convincingly press the point that the US very much is in the Asian game.
Obama said Washington would work hard to strengthen alliances in Asia, such as with Japan and South Korea, build on newer ones with nations like China and Indonesia, and increase its participation with a burgeoning alphabet soup of Asian multilateral organizations. The involvement, the president said, is not just academic for Americans. It affects everyday, top-priority issues such as jobs, a cleaner environment and preventing dangerous weapons proliferation, he said.
"I want every American to know that we have a stake in the future of this region, because what happens here has a direct effect on our lives at home," Obama said. "The fortunes of America and the Asia-Pacific have become more closely linked than ever before."
Obama also sounded free-trade notes sure to be welcome in Asia, where nations are rapidly seeking agreements with each other even as the US hangs back on new free-trade pacts. His promises on trade, however, lacked the specifics or new announcements that many here would have preferred to hear.
"In an interconnected world, power does not need to be a zero-sum game, and nations need not fear the success of another," he said.
"Indigenous cultures and economic growth have not been stymied by respect for human rights, they have been strengthened by it," the president said. "Supporting human rights provides lasting security that cannot be purchased in any other way."
Obama's remarks came near the start of a trip presenting him with risks at every stop.
In Japan, the relationship with the US is on newly delicate footing after a change in leadership in Tokyo that has the Japanese moving toward greater independence from Washington and closer ties with the rest of Asia. Tonight, Obama arrives in Singapore, where he is to join a larger meeting.
Obama made Tokyo the venue for his speech, a symbolically important choice that displayed respect for Japan's long history as the US' chief ally in Asia.
In an effort to move relations between the world's two largest economies toward more settled footing, Obama laid on the compliments. He noted that Japan's leader was the first foreign dignitary to come to the Oval Office after he assumed the presidency and that Japan also was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's first stop on her first overseas trip
"Our efforts in the Asia-Pacific will be rooted, in no small measure, through an enduring and revitalized alliance between the United States and Japan," Obama said.
Obama also said a robust China should be welcomed, not feared, as a powerful partner on urgent challenges. Obama said: "We welcome China's efforts to play a greater role on the world stage, a role in which their growing economy is joined by growing responsibility."
In a 40-minute speech, Obama offered incentives for North Korea to abandon the nuclear weapons. He outlined a possible future of economic opportunity and greater global greater respect, saying, "this respect cannot be earned through belligerence."
More broadly, the US president's address to 1,500 prominent Japanese in a soaring downtown Tokyo concert hall was intended to showcase a United States that, under Obama's leadership, seeks deeper engagement in Asia. It was the fifth major foreign address of his 10-month presidency. He reached out to locals through several personal notes that delighted his audience, including calling himself "America's first Pacific president," referring to his time in Indonesia and travels in Asia as a boy, and saluting the residents of Obama, Japan.
Acknowledging Asia's growing power and the perceptions here of America's parallel decline, Obama aides had said the chief aim for his eight-day trip through Asia wasn't so much to bring home specific "deliverables" but to convincingly press the point that the US very much is in the Asian game.
Obama said Washington would work hard to strengthen alliances in Asia, such as with Japan and South Korea, build on newer ones with nations like China and Indonesia, and increase its participation with a burgeoning alphabet soup of Asian multilateral organizations. The involvement, the president said, is not just academic for Americans. It affects everyday, top-priority issues such as jobs, a cleaner environment and preventing dangerous weapons proliferation, he said.
"I want every American to know that we have a stake in the future of this region, because what happens here has a direct effect on our lives at home," Obama said. "The fortunes of America and the Asia-Pacific have become more closely linked than ever before."
Obama also sounded free-trade notes sure to be welcome in Asia, where nations are rapidly seeking agreements with each other even as the US hangs back on new free-trade pacts. His promises on trade, however, lacked the specifics or new announcements that many here would have preferred to hear.
"In an interconnected world, power does not need to be a zero-sum game, and nations need not fear the success of another," he said.
"Indigenous cultures and economic growth have not been stymied by respect for human rights, they have been strengthened by it," the president said. "Supporting human rights provides lasting security that cannot be purchased in any other way."
Obama's remarks came near the start of a trip presenting him with risks at every stop.
In Japan, the relationship with the US is on newly delicate footing after a change in leadership in Tokyo that has the Japanese moving toward greater independence from Washington and closer ties with the rest of Asia. Tonight, Obama arrives in Singapore, where he is to join a larger meeting.
Obama made Tokyo the venue for his speech, a symbolically important choice that displayed respect for Japan's long history as the US' chief ally in Asia.
In an effort to move relations between the world's two largest economies toward more settled footing, Obama laid on the compliments. He noted that Japan's leader was the first foreign dignitary to come to the Oval Office after he assumed the presidency and that Japan also was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's first stop on her first overseas trip
"Our efforts in the Asia-Pacific will be rooted, in no small measure, through an enduring and revitalized alliance between the United States and Japan," Obama said.
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