Don’t give away the store in Asia

I am swamped with teaching, travel and some writing deadlines the next two weeks, so my blogging output will probably be sparse. Sadly, this pindown coincides with Obama’s big Asian trip, and I regret not being able to comment at length. Given that I think the United States’ strategic attention ought to be shifting toward Asia, the trip is long overdue and I’m mostly glad Obama is taking it. 

But like Frank Rich, one does wonder about the timing of this particular journey. In his column yesterday, Rich complained that blowing town right after last week’s "shellacking" in the midterms sent exactly the wrong message, especially when India is a country that Americans tend to associate with outsourcing and lost jobs. (There’s even a new sitcom exploiting that idea.)

My concern is somewhat different. As the United States works to shore up existing alliances in Asia and to strengthen or forge some new ones, it will have to do a fair bit of hard bargaining. Even if there are strong geopolitical forces pushing states like India and the United States together, there are also lingering differences over specific policy issues (such as Afghanistan and Kashmir). Moreover, even close alliance partners will want to get others to do most of the heavy lifting, which usually means some tough negotiating. 

My fear, therefore, is that a weakened president with a weak economy will be too eager to make deals while he’s on the road. Despite our current woes, Obama should not be so desperate for symbolic foreign policy "achievements" that he ends up looking or sounding like a supplicant. Our Asian partners still need us more than we need them, and the United States hardly needs to be begging them to cooperate with us.