Asia pivot features steps vs. terror
Obama says 10-day trip was no distraction
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — When President Barack Obama boarded Air Force One for a 10-day, three-country tour just hours after a small group of gunmen and suicide bombers unleashed deadly terror on Paris, it seemed inevitable that his main message about countering the rise of China would be lost.
But in the president’s view, the security concerns that arose after the deadly attacks made his work to deepen ties with China’s neighbors all the more significant. The Southeast Asian nations that he has courted as a way to blunt Chinese influence share his worry about the potency of Islamic State.
Obama on Sunday made his case that his administration’s endeavor to redeploy U.S. resources toward Asia is no less critical to national security than his strategy in the Middle East. At a news conference at the close of his trip, Obama pointed to a news headline that appeared while he was abroad — “Obama’s Asian distraction?” — and said, “This region is not a distraction from the world’s central challenges, like terrorism.”
Combining a stop at the Group of 20 summit in Turkey with visits to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Manila and finally the annual ASEAN gathering of Southeast Asian nations here, the trip was laid out as an opportunity for Obama to highlight progress on his pivot to Asia.
“But the events of recent days and weeks have cast a shadow over us all,” Najib Razak, prime minister of the Muslim-majority host nation of Malaysia, said this week in a speech condemning the Paris attacks.
The Paris attacks, which killed at least 130 and for which Islamic State claimed credit, only reinforced how much countries in the region look to the U.S. for help in combating terrorists, said Ernest Bower, chair of Southeast Asia studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Already, Asian leaders were concerned about the return of their citizens who were drawn to sectarian conflicts in the Mideast. Nearly 30,000 foreigners have joined the fight in Syria, U.S. officials have estimated.
“You look around the world to where there could be problems, and Southeast Asia really stands out,” Bower said. “Though numbers of radicalized Islamists are relatively small compared to the total Muslim populations in these countries, Southeast Asia could be just as susceptible as Europe, if not more.”
When Indonesian President Joko Widodo traveled to Washington last month, he asked Obama for U.S. support for tracking and monitoring radicalized Indonesians trying to come back from war zones. And Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines are all seeking American help in building up their own counterterrorism capabilities.
“It really underlines the importance of American leadership,” Bower said.
Obama’s critics, though, doubt that his leadership will be effective for the 65-nation coalition fighting Islamic State, especially as the fallout of the Syrian crisis spreads.
On Sunday, Fran Townsend, homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, charged that the “current strategy is failing,” in part because it is too diffuse. “You can’t have a multipronged approach to fighting ISIS any longer,” Townsend said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “You must have a Syria-first policy now, in order to disrupt the global threat.”
But an approach to Islamic State that is global in its reach and makeup is critical to Obama’s formula. And on Saturday, the president announced the elevation of the U.S.-ASEAN relationship to a strategic partnership, a move largely driven by regional issues but one with added significance given what Obama noted were the key roles played by some member nations in the global coalition against Islamic State.
There were signs that China is watching the U.S. efforts in Asia closely. President Xi Jinping promoted a separate trade proposal at APEC. And in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, Premier Li Keqiang outlined a fivepoint plan to resolve the South China Sea disputes.