Obama's Failed Asia Trip Shows Increasing US, Global Isolation

Nov. 15, 2010 - PRLog -- 15 November 2010. By David Caploe PhD, Chief Political Economist, EconomyWatch.com

To be fair, there were at least two positive outcomes from President Obama's trip:

1) He publicly endorsed India for a Permanent Seat on the UN Security Council --

and China DIDN'T object ;-) !!!

As many of our Indian readers especially noted, the entire initiative remains a bit ethereal --

and the UN is hardly all that important anymore anyway,

even though a Permanent Security Council seat DOES have great symbolic significance, especially for an emerging nation --

but the fact China didn't immediately object surprised a lot of people, myself included.

largely because it's been more than a bit snippy with a lot of its neighbors of late.

This and other aspects of the situation could change at any point in the future, to be sure,

but the fact Obama made the move to indicate US support for India's global aspirations,

and China seemed okay with it, at least at first, is a definite plus.

2) Neither the G-20 meeting in Seoul, Korea nor the APEC summit in Yokohama, Japan broke down in acrimonious recriminations,

which, given what we're about to say, is definitely an achievement of sorts,

at least at the level of face-saving for all concerned.

But to count as an achievement the fact both meetings ended without fireworks

is an indication of how low expectations were in the first place.

Now, like the UN, almost all of these international meetings tend to be more ceremonial than substantive,

so it's hardly a huge success, but it IS something,

especially given the failure of the US and South Korea to reach the free trade agreement Obama had hoped to sign in Seoul,

which most observers considered the "biggest" concrete failure of the trip.

That said, from our point of view, the most important "take-away" from the Asia initiative

was how clear it is the issues that matter to the US --

and the discourse in which those concerns are expressed --

differ so radically in substance from just about everyone in the world.

This doesn't necessarily mean the rest of the world is "right" --

especially when some of their logic is looked at critically --

but it does mean the gap between what's considered important in the US --

and what's considered important in the rest of the world --

is large, and getting bigger, it seems, all the time.

Aside from the Indian Security Council and South Korea free trade issues,

Obama's main theme was the need to "manage" and "balance" trade flows,

with an implicit, and often explicit, rehashing of the stale critique of China's currency policy.

The reason for his focus on that is simple ...

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