by Liu Chang
VIENTIANE, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- As U.S. President Barack Obama attends his last East Asia Summit here Thursday, it is high time that Washington conducted some serious soul-searching over the outgoing administration's signature pivot to Asia policy.
Unlike many of his predecessors who were inclined to take adventures in the Middle East, Obama dubbed himself the United States' first Pacific president, and has chosen to entrench and expand the U.S. presence in Asia.
Yet the past few years have repeatedly proved that his overarching strategy, later labeled the U.S. rebalance to the Asia-Pacific, is just a narrow-minded scheme orchestrated to maintain his country's hegemony and corrosive to the region's peace and stability.
It is an open secret that China -- a large country with steadily increasing national strength and international influence -- is the bull's-eye. The Obama administration has never said that, but it is trying to deploy an advanced missile defense system in South Korea that far exceeds Seoul's security needs, and its hand is behind the South China Sea arbitration farce staged by the former Philippine government.
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