By Philip Iglauer
At least we now know that President Lee Myung-bak’s palpable adoration for the United States is not a case of unrequited love.
United States President Barack Obama came clean during a recent interview with Fareed Zakaria, which was published in Foreign Policy magazine’s The Cable on Thursday, as to which foreign leaders Obama has become closest in the nearly three years since he became president in 2009.
Lee made the cut.
So did Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Obama said he couldn’t compare his relationships to those of past presidents, but “the friendships and bonds of trust that I have been able to forge with a whole range of leaders is precisely — or is a big part of what has allowed us to execute effective diplomacy,” according to media reports of the Zakaria interview.
Obama then went on to name the five world leaders he feels especially close to, and Lee was included on the short list. Obama did not elaborate in the interview as to where Lee falls within the top five.
Obama then added that he is not exactly shooting hoops with them, but they at least have good working relations.
Lee has made passing the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and forging a stronger relationship with the United States the keystone foreign policy of his administration and Korea observers have noted that he may have also paid a considerable political cost here for that.
The pinnacle of Lee’s “America First” policy occurred during a visit to Washington in October when he addressed a joint session of Congress one day after the U.S. Senate ratified the Korea- U.S. FTA. The previous time a Korean head of state addressed a joint session of Congress was the late Kim Dae-jung in 1998.
Obama explained what he meant by listing his top five foreign leader as BFFs (best friends forever).
“I mean, I think that if you ask them — Angela Merkel, or Prime Minister Singh, or President Lee, or Prime Minister Erdogan, or David Cameron would say, we have a lot of trust and confidence in the President,” he said, according to the media reports of the interview.
“We believe what he says. We believe that he’ll follow through on his commitments. We think he is paying attention to our concerns and our interests,” Obama said. “And that is part of the reason why we have been able to forge these close working relationships and gotten a whole bunch of stuff done.”