By Mercy A. Kuo and Angie O. Tang
Insights from Professor Carla Freeman.
The Rebalance authors Mercy Kuo and Angie Tang regularly engage subject-matter experts, policy practitioners and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into the U.S. rebalance to Asia. This conversation with Professor Carla Freeman– Director of the Foreign Policy Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and Director of the China Program at Johns Hopkins University – is the sixteenth in “The Rebalance Insight Series.”
Has the U.S. rebalance to Asia achieved its goals or is it still a work in progress?
Entangling security challenges outside the Asia Pacific continue to add layers of difficulty to the Obama administration’s plans to re-weight its commitment in its foreign and security policy toward economic, military and diplomatic engagement with the region. The shifts of naval assets to the region, deeper defense cooperation with allies, U.S. participation in the East Asia Summit, and diplomacy to support democracy in Myanmar are all among many new moves that can be attributed to the rebalance. But some of the rebalance’s signature programs, namely the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), continue to stumble toward implementation, while China’s recent regional initiatives, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), complicate the rebalance’s objective of shaping the region’s institutions and architecture. With the rebalance now framed as a set of sustained strategic goals to intensify and strengthen commercial interactions with the Asia-Pacific and to respond to security challenges in the region, the rebalance is going to be a work in progress for the long-term or until a new administration sets different policy priorities.
Read the full story at The Diplomat