U.S. pivoting to Asia where key interests increasingly lie

The U.S. is pivoting its foreign policy from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to Asia where its economic and strategic interests increasingly lie, an U.S. expert said ahead of the upcoming ASEAN summit and related meetings due to be held in Bali, Indonesia later this week. The U.S. is "reorienting" and "pivoting" its foreign policy " essentially from the Middle East, and in some sense, from a transatlantic posture into a transpacific posture," David Lampton, director of the China Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, told Xinhua in a recent interview. On the sidelines of the APEC summit in Honolulu, U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton made it clear last Thursday that as the war in Iraq winds down and transition in Afghanistan has begun, the U.S. is to pivot its foreign policy to Asia-Pacific, asserting that the 21st century will be the Pacific century of America. "I believe about 60 percent or 65 percent of U.S. trade now flows across the Pacific as opposed to across the Atlantic. As Secretary Clinton has said, we are pivoting towards the Pacific where our economic and strategic interests increasingly lie," noted Lampton. Now Asia is home to more than 50 percent of the world's economic activity, and, just as Clinton put it, "the world's strategic and economic center of gravity" will be the Asia Pacific. Against the backdrop of a rising Asia, the 19th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit and a series of back-to- back summits will be held in Bali, Indonesia from Thursday to Saturday, during which heads of state from the ASEAN countries and its dialogue partners are expected to discuss regional and global issues. The Obama administration, since it took office in early 2009, has unveiled its back-to-Asia strategy, in a bid to maintain the U. S. leadership in both economic and security arenas in Asia. As part of his efforts to re-engage Asian affairs, U.S. President Barack Obama will be the first American President to attend the ASEAN summit. When asked how countries can cooperate in order to keep the region stable and prosperous, Lampton noted that regional trade is a good way, citing China as a very good example who "has pushed multilateral trade agreements on the ASEAN plus 3." "I think we should continue on the realm of building an open free-trade regional trading system because when we all become interlinked economically, I think that reduces the incentives for at least at high levels of conflict," he said. Indeed, China, which has been successful in elevating the regional free trade and economic integration, is now the largest trading partner of the ASEAN bloc, with two-way trade totaling 293 billion dollars in 2010. In terms of security and strategic concerns, Lampton pointed out the importance of bringing China into a "more cooperative security architecture in Asia", where China plays as a " participant" of it, instead of being treated as a "target." "So I think we need to move ahead with free-trade on the one hand, and we need to begin to develop a more cooperative strategic and security architecture, and not one that seems to have China as the object of it," he said. Lampton also believed that in the long run, the most successful organizations will be the two kinds of organizations that "promote economic integration and security cooperation." He said that any organization who can accomplish those tasks will become a major force, cautioning that "it is too early to say the East Asia summit will necessarily be that organization."