By Mercy A. Kuo and Angelica O. Tang
Can Democrats offer a post-Obama vision for Rebalance to Asia?
In 2007 U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama, then-U.S. Senator from Illinois, called for a new vision of U.S. leadership:
Today, we are again called to provide visionary leadership. This century’s threats are at least as dangerous as and in some ways more complex that those we have confronted in the past…To recognize the number and complexity of these threats is not to give way to pessimism. Rather, it is a call to action. These threats demand a new vision of leadership in the twenty-first century – a vision that draws from the past but is not bound by outdated thinking.
In recruiting his presidential rival to execute his foreign policy, President Obama entrusted then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to introduce the concept of “pivot to Asia” – a new strategic shift of American geopolitical focus from Europe and the Middle East to Asia. In her 2011 Foreign Policy article “America’s Pacific Century,” Hillary essentially articulated her and the Obama administration’s vision for the Asia Pacific region.
Democrats recognize Asia’s strategic relevance. Under President Bill Clinton’s administration (1993-2001), the concept of “forward-deployment” was a key component of an “engagement and expansion” approach outlined in the U.S. Department of Defense 1995 East Asia Strategy Report. Hillary’s Asia strategy calls for “forward-deployed diplomacy” – an upgrade of its 1995 precursor with an expanded diplomacy dimension – fitted to a post-September 11 world where counterterrorism had become the focal point of U.S. foreign policy.
Read the full story at The Diplomat