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No Link – Pivot Failure Inev
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No Link – Pivot Failure InevLack of emphasis in the State of the Union takes outTiezzi 14 - Associate Editor at The Diplomat, her main focus is on China, and she writes on China’s foreign relations, domestic politics, and economy. Shannon previously served as a research associate at the U.S.-China Policy Foundation, where she hosted the weekly television show China Forum. She received her A.M. from Harvard University (Shannon, 1-30, “Has Obama Abandoned the Pivot to Asia?,” http://thediplomat.com/2014/01/has-obama-abandoned-the-pivot-to-asia/) Yesterday, U.S. President Barack Obama gave the traditional State of the Union address, wherein he laid out his vision for U.S. policy in the next year (a transcript can be found here). Such speeches are intended for a domestic audience (although they are also scrutinized all over the world) and typically focus more on domestic issues. Still, as Dan Lamothe at Foreign Policy wrote, this year Obama’s State of the Union speech “was notable for how little time he devoted to foreign policy — and how little he said that amounted to anything new.”¶ What Obama Did Say¶ It was obvious that, as pundits had predicted, Obama’s main focus was on his success rebuilding the US economy, and his plan to continue doing so. He spent the bulk of his speech laying out his “proposals to speed up growth, strengthen the middle class and build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class.”¶ Accordingly, Obama’s few mentions of China were economic in nature. As usual, China mostly featured in Obama’s speech (along with Europe) as a competitor that should push the U.S. to make necessary reforms. “China and Europe aren’t standing on the sidelines, and neither should we,” Obama said at one point, arguing for additional money to fund research and innovation. The use of China as a measure of comparison didn’t go unnoticed by Chinese media. South China Morning Post made the lede of their article Obama’s “bold” declaration that “for the first time in over a decade, business leaders around the world have declared that China is no longer the world’s number one place to invest; America is.”¶ When Obama did talk about foreign policy, his focus was on the broader Middle East. With regards to Afghanistan, he spoke proudly of the fact that “we will complete our mission there by the end of this year, and America’s longest war will finally be over.” There was little discussion of the uncertainties regarding the future of U.S. troops in the country, a topic my colleague Ankit has covered numerous times. Obama promised to continuing working to combat terrorism “in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, [and] Mali” and made a vague promise to ”support the opposition” in Syria. Finally, he praised the role of “American diplomacy” in reaching agreements over Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile and Iran’s nuclear program, in addition to U.S. efforts to mediate Israel-Palestine talks. Europe and the Asia-Pacific were granted a mere paragraph apiece.¶ What Obama Didn’t Say¶ As with many speeches, what Obama didn’t talk about is just as important as what he actually said. By avoiding or ignoring issues, Obama sent a message about his administration’s priorities for the upcoming year. For those who support increased U.S. engagement in the Asia-Pacific, the message wasn’t pretty.¶ With all Obama’s focus on the U.S. economy, it was a perfect time for him to make a high-profile push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), especially given foot-dragging in Congress over granting the necessary trade promotion authority to move the pact along. Yet the TPP was notably absent from Obama’s address, other than a quick, throw-away mention of “new trade partnerships with Europe and the Asia-Pacific” being able to create new jobs. As TPP negotiations reach the final, critical stage, public support from Obama in his most widely covered speech of the year would have been extremely valuable. That he couldn’t make room for even a sentence in his speech speaks volumes.¶ In broader terms, Obama missed a clear opportunity to restate one of his signature foreign policy initiatives, the U.S. “rebalance” (previously dubbed the “pivot”) to Asia. The Trans-Pacific Partnership was seen as an important economic aspect of the rebalance; its absence from the State of Union reflected the speech’s neglect of the whole region. There was no mention of the rebalance, just a general promise to “continue to focus on the Asia-Pacific, where we support our allies, shape a future of greater security and prosperity and extend a hand to those devastated by disaster.” Obama flubbed the chance to clearly articulate his vision for the United States’ role — economic, diplomatic, and military — in the region, an issue that still causes a great deal of head-scratching across the globe.¶ By neglecting to mention any of the on-going issues in the Asia-Pacific, from the dangerous tensions between China and Japan to larger concerns over maritime disputes and the potential for an arms race, Obama sent a signal. Whether purposeful or not, his neglect of these issues in the State of Union brings the rebalance to Asia into question. There have already been mounting questions over whether or not the U.S. will remain committed to the region despite budget cuts. Obama’s speech, with its foreign policy vision monopolized by the Middle East, Iran, and Afghanistan, only lends credence to those who believe the U.S. will devote its resources elsewhere.¶ The Brookings Institution, an influential DC thinktank, recently released its annual set of policy recommendations for the president. The recommendations for Asia policy, penned by Jonathan Pollack and Jeffrey Bader, suggested four steps: ensuring that budget cuts don’t affect the U.S. rebalance to Asia, completing the TPP negotiations, encouraging China’s economic reforms, and nudging U.S. allies (especially Japan and South Korea) to take steps to promote regional security. Pollack and Bader concluded that “strengthening the administration’s commitment to the Asia-Pacific region is a welcome and necessary development.”¶ Apparently Obama missed the memo. Not one of these policy initiatives — which mesh with similar recommendations from many U.S. Asia watchers — was affirmed (or even mentioned directly) during the speech. Through what he said, and what he neglected to say, Obama’s State of the Union gave more ammunition to those who say the rebalance is dead. budget cuts make the pivot impossibleBoot 1-29 – MA in diplomatic history @ Yale (Max, “Obama’s Disappearing Pacific Pivot,” http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/01/29/obamas-disappearing-pacific-pivot-state-of-the-union/) Talk about a disappearing agenda.¶ Back in the fall of 2011 and the early part of 2012, the Obama administration was busy announcing a “rebalancing” of American foreign policy from the Middle East to the Pacific region. In November 2011, Obama told the Australian parliament that he wanted to ensure that “the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region [the Asia-Pacific] and its future.”¶ In his 2014 State of the Union address the “pivot” to the Pacific had been relegated to one short paragraph near the end of the speech:¶ And we will continue to focus on the Asia-Pacific, where we support our allies, shape a future of greater security and prosperity and extend a hand to those devastated by disaster, as we did in the Philippines, when our Marines and civilians rushed to aid those battered by a typhoon, and were greeted with words like, “We will never forget your kindness” and “God bless America.”¶ The Asia-Pacific region, it must be noted, received less notice than Iran or Afghanistan, to say nothing of the president’s many domestic priorities.¶ The relative unimportance of the “Pacific pivot” in his speech is matched by a lack of action to bulk up U.S. forces in the region, even as the U.S. downsizes in the Middle East–something that military officers and observers have been noticing. But then it’s hard to see how the U.S. can do more in the Pacific, or anywhere else, at a time when the defense budget is falling as fast as it is. Policy changes in the Middle East tank the pivotFeffer 2-10 - Co-director, Foreign Policy In Focus (John, “Has Obama Already Forgotten About Asia?,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/has-obama-already-forgott_b_4763648.html) Finally, after all this talk of world affairs, it was time for the president to address the Asia-Pacific region. Obama, in this most important speech of his second term, devoted a single sentence to Asia. That was all. After all the buzz about "Pacific pivots" and "strategic realignments," the president mentioned the region almost as an afterthought at the end of his discussion of U.S. global partnerships:¶ "We will continue to focus on the Asia-Pacific, where we support our allies, shape a future of greater security and prosperity and extend a hand to those devastated by disaster, as we did in the Philippines, when our Marines and civilians rushed to aid those battered by a typhoon, and were greeted with words like, 'We will never forget your kindness' and 'God bless America.'"¶ There was no mention of South Korea or Japan, Thailand or Australia, the Marines moving to Guam or the challenge of North Korea.¶ President Obama is slated to return to Asia in April, where he plans to visit Japan, the Philippines, and Malaysia. No doubt the president will reiterate at that time that the United States fully intends to shift its focus from the Middle East and Central Asia to the Pacific.¶ But the truth is that the "Pacific pivot" was never really much more than an advertising campaign designed to warn China and reassure Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and others in the region that the United States has not forgotten them. It is a rebranding of relatively modest actions that the United States has long been planning, primarily a move of U.S. Marines from an aging facility in Okinawa to bases in other countries. Even this modest plan has encountered major resistance. The voters in the Okinawan city of Nago recently reelected a mayor on a platform of opposing the nearby construction of a Futenma replacement facility. Nor is the pivot made any easier by the fact that Japan and South Korea continue to spar over a disputed island and a disputed interpretation of 20th century history. And the economic centerpiece of the pivot -- the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- has met with considerable skepticism in the U.S. Congress.¶ At the same time, it's not been easy for the United States to reduce its focus on the Middle East and Central Asia. Negotiations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the retention of some U.S. troops in his country after 2014 have not been going well. Iraq is descending back into a civil war. The conflict in Syria has resisted compromise. And Secretary of State John Kerry has his hands full trying to achieve the impossible -- a new Israeli-Palestinian agreement.¶ The remaining three years of the Obama administration will likely follow the script of this year's State of the Union. The bulk of the president's attention will be on the domestic economy. He will look at foreign policy largely through the lens of improving economic indicators. He will emphasize diplomacy, but most of this energy will continue to go to the Middle East.¶ Iran is in the news. So is Syria and Israel and Iraq. Even though it is the most populous and economically vibrant area of the world, Asia will continue to be an afterthought for the Obama administration, pivot or no pivot. TPP failure takes out the pivotRobinson 2-5 (Gwen, “The silver lining to America's 'fizzling pivot',” http://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Perspectives/The-silver-lining-to-America-s-fizzling-pivot) On the face of it, Harry Reid, the U.S. Senate majority leader, was simply doing what any self-respecting protectionist might do in response to a government initiative seen as a potential threat to local jobs: A day after President Barack Obama called in his State of the Union speech for special authority to fast-track trade bills, he announced he would block any such moves in Congress.¶ In one fell swoop, the Nevada Democrat succeeded in undoing Obama's much-vaunted Asia "pivot" strategy as well as his ambitious trade liberalization agenda. For the embattled U.S. president, gaining so-called trade promotion authority, which would leave Congress with just a simple yes-or-no vote on trade deals and ward off amendments, was crucial to his high-stakes push to promote engagement with the Asia-Pacific region. It was key to the sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact.¶ Months of painstaking discussions over the TPP proposal between U.S. officials and their counterparts in 11 Asian and Latin American countries crashed with Reid's announcement, as did talks on a similar pact with Europe. As the top Democrat in Congress, the Senate majority leader holds sway over what legislation makes it to the floor. There is a small chance the fast-track proposal could be reintroduced at a later stage if Reid softens his hard-line opposition, or that the House might take the initiative on the issue. Both seem unlikely for now. Already, the resulting implosion of ongoing trade negotiations has damaged U.S. credibility with its trading partners, including Europe and Japan; it has savaged Obama's Asia pivot strategy and sent the TPP talks into limbo. Beyond trade, it has complicated Washington's strategic push to rebalance U.S. defense posture away from Europe and the Middle East to Asia. Not only that, it has inadvertently strengthened China's regional charm offensive to woo Asian countries and draw them into a separate regional trade initiative.
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