China’s ties with 4 nations at issue

The U.S. president will have the crisis in Ukraine as a backdrop.

washington » As President Barack Obama travels through Asia this week, he will confront a region that is warilywatching the crisis in Ukraine through the prism of its own territorial tensions with China.

Each of the four countries on Obama’s itinerary — Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines — has disputeswith China over islands and waters in the South and East China seas. Their leaders will beweighing Obama’s willingness to support them if those conflicts boil over.

“What we can say after seeing what happened to Ukraine is that using force to change the status quo is not acceptable,” said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose country is in one of the fiercest disputes with China.

Administration officials, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, have taken a tougher line on the territorial issues in recent weeks, sternly warning China against the use of military force and noting that the U.S. has treaty obligations to defend Japan in particular.

But in an attempt to maintain good relations with China, theU.S. has not formally taken sides on the question of which countries should controlwhich islands.

Analysts say there are concerns that China could be emboldened by the relative ease withwhich Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine over U.S. objections, as well as the possibility thatMoscow could take more land.

Moreover, some in Asia question Obama’s ability to follow through on his security pledges in light of his decision last summer to pull back on plans for amilitary strike against Syria.

“The heavyweights in the region got very scared by the Syrian decision,” said Douglas Paal, a longtimeU.S. diplomat in Asia who now is vice president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Obama’s advisers say they see little evidence thus far that China has been encouraged by Russia’s incursions intoUkraine. Instead, they say China appears to be viewing with concern the Kremlin’s attempts to sway pro-Russian populations in areas of Ukraine, given China’s own restive minority populations.

U.S. officials also have tried to keep China from supporting Russia’s moves in Ukraine by appealing to Beijing’swell-knownand vehement opposition to outside intervention in other nations’ domestic affairs.

The eight-day Asia swing is amakeup for a visit he canceled last fall because of the U.S. government shutdown.