By Tom Plate
LOS ANGELES ― Over the next week or so, our troubled American President, fresh from that unmistakable midterm elections rebuke, will hit the foreign-relations trail. All the stops are in Asia, the world’s fastest rising region that is perhaps slowly becoming its most important.
Thankfully, many parts of Asia are not so antagonistic to America these days. Barack Obama should find it a relief to spend time with people who like him.
In India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan, he may even find leaders who wish to work with him productively. After Tuesday’s Democratic debacle, there are fewer of those types left in Washington.
Yes, the president’s Asia journey was planned and scheduled long in advance of the congressional elections, which blew up in the Democrats’ face. But the serendipitous timing could hardly be better: The international arena still offers huge opportunities for presidential initiative and accomplishment.
The U.S. Constitution and more than two centuries of practice have created vast space for presidential action in foreign relations.
No matter how feisty or anti-Obama Congress gets, the Executive Branch is preeminent in the international arena _ that is the American way. Obama is still the commander in chief, leader of the so-called Free World and our constitutionally elected numero uno for at least two more years.
It is into this arena that Obama now needs to press his presidency. This is no time to be falling down on the job out of emotional resignation or conceptual lethargy. In fact, this road in Asia is filled with many important opportunities.
The India stop is the first one and it is as important as any. Obama should find the going relatively pleasant in the company of the brainy Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India. There may not be much more immediate substance to achieve, given the huge progress accomplished by the previous Bush administration.
But Obama doesn’t have to find a topper to Bush to succeed. Keeping warmer relations on track with the world’s second most populous nation, not to mention obvious counterweight to China, will be worthy in itself.
We should be listening carefully to India: Grounded in millennia of experience, India’s judgment on world issues is not always ours but the sensibility is often profound. Obama’s relationship with Singh, if nurtured, could prove second to none in overall value on the world stage.
China, by contrast, is not India. Obama’s meeting with the Chinese leaders takes place in Seoul, South Korea, at the G20 summit of nations next week.
Hu Jintao, China’s president, and Wen Jiabao, its number-two, will be there but they may not be much fun. The Sino-U.S. relationship has many problems.
But the Chinese, to their credit, like to point out that problems can create opportunities. For his part, Obama needs to orient his foreign policy and defense establishments to take advantage of every single opportunity that might engage China and the U.S. in a positive direction.
Doing so may help provide a kind of directional counterweight to Congress, which will tend to throw sand in the wheels of the bilateral relationship as trade and currency frictions persist.
From Japan, our strategic ally in Asia, comes yet another new face through the revolving door: Naoto Kan. He is the latest in a seemingly endless series of prime ministers, all of them casualties to ineptitude or the fraying Japanese economy.
Kan’s staying power is in great doubt. But Japan, even while slipping behind China in aggregate economic size, remains vital. Too bad its political system seems increasingly dysfunctional, even more than our own.
Its territorial quarrels with China and Russia are worrisome, even if Tokyo is not primarily to blame ― or even if it is. Obama should worry about the Japanese even more than Congressional Republicans. It is a very troubled ally.
Indonesia may offer Obama his best chance to shine and shake off the loser’s image of the last few months. In fact, he strides into tour stop Indonesia as something of a hero: Having lived there for four of his very early years, the middle-named Hussein could probably win any election in any province of this struggling new democracy.
America must be patient: Indonesia is home to the largest number of Muslims anywhere. America is still working through a proper relationship with Islam. No American in his right mind thinks every Muslim is a terrorist bent on destroying America.
But we really do need to relate to Islam in a way that does not put the issue of terrorism at the top of the list every time we think of Muslims. To this end, Obama must do even more in his speeches at home, as well as abroad, to nurture a more nuanced American understanding of and relationship with Islam.
Fortunately, we happily note, the American president does not need the approval of John Boehner, the putative next speaker of the House of Representatives, or any other Republican or for that matter Democrat enemy to reiterate this nation’s respect for Islam and support of religious freedom and tolerance.
In fact, these plain old homespun virtues comprise the best and most virtuous part of America’s foreign policy platform. Obama, as our foreign-policy president, needs to take it to a new level.
Syndicated American columnist Tom Plate is Loyola Marymount University’s distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies. He is the author of “Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew,” the first in the Giants of Asia series published by Marshall Cavendish Asia. He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com.