ANALYSIS Asian leaders expect more than war talk Bush must balance priorities during visit By George E. Condon Jr. COPLEY NEWS SERVICE November 14, 2005 WASHINGTON – When President Bush arrives in Asia tomorrow to begin his eight-day tour of the continent, he will encounter leaders eager for him to change the subject. After four years of agreeing to the United States' insistence that terrorism top the agenda for the president's talks with Asian officials, there is a strong feeling in the region's capitals that it's time to talk about their concerns and needs. And they're ready to push back a little, if only in private. It will be Bush's task in his meetings in Japan, South Korea, China and Mongolia to keep his focus on the war on terrorism while finding time to discuss economics, trade, intellectual property rights, religious freedom, avian flu and nuclear non-proliferation. The trip – the longest foreign journey of Bush's presidency – gives the president the opportunity to restake the U.S. claim to Pacific leadership. But with China more eager to assert its Asian primacy, Bush needs to use the trip to remind the region's leaders that Washington is paying attention and will not allow a leadership vacuum. "The most important thing at this point for the president is to really get the United States back into the game in Asia," said Elizabeth C. Economy, director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She said Bush must "reassert U.S. leadership in the region in the face of what is clearly a rising China." She said the war in Iraq has pulled resources from China and Asia. "Many in the region think the United States has been largely AWOL for the past five years aside from being a sort of one-note band on the issue of the war on terror," Economy said. John J. Tkacik, a former chief of China analysis at the State Department and now a senior research fellow in China studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Iraq has taken a toll on U.S. standing in Asia. "Bush is preoccupied with Iraq; he is preoccupied with Afghanistan, with the war on terror. He is preoccupied with his White House difficulties as well as collapsing poll numbers and alarm among his partisans in the Republican Party who desperately want a new direction," Tkacik said. Particularly damaging, he said, has been the redeployment of U.S. troops from Asia to Iraq. "It is euphemistically called a 'virtual presence' in Asia. We keep the lights on at the headquarters detachment, but nobody's there," he said, adding that to Asians "virtual presence equals actual absence." The alarm bells are ringing in Asian capitals, he said. "The Japanese are down on their knees; there are tears in their eyes; they are begging the United States to come to grips with this new reality in Asia," Tkacik said. "But, frankly, when you've got 2,000 dead soldiers and 12,000 wounded. . . . I can see how the president feels he has other things to take care of," he said, adding that "I don't think the message is getting through yet in Washington." Derek Mitchell, an Asian expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the regional unhappiness boiled over in July when Condoleezza Rice became the first secretary of state in 20 years to fail to attend an annual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Her claim to be too busy for the session did not go over well in Asia, with the Malaysian foreign minister calling it "an uneasy signal" of U.S. detachment from Asia. "There just isn't that much attention to Asia compared to the Middle East and Iraq," Mitchell said. "Everything is seen through the prism of the war on terror." Adam Segal, a senior fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, reported that he was surprised at what he encountered at a recent Asia-Pacific meeting he attended. "I can tell you," he said, "that there is a lot of push-back around the region. They are getting really tired of the one-note coming out of the Bush administration." The White House vigorously challenged the criticism. "I dispute the premise," said National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. "I think most people you talk to would say our relations with Japan, Korea and China have rarely been better." With Beijing the major stop on this trip, Hadley focused on the state of U.S.-China relations. "I think we have got a very solid relationship that allows us to work candidly with one another and work together on a lot of common problems, on proliferation, on counterterrorism, on trade issues, on the six-party talks" that are addressing North Korea's nuclear development program. Bush will take to Beijing with him a long list of American complaints about China, led by the refusal to crack down on rampant piracy of American patents and counterfeiting of American goods. China has repeatedly promised to respect intellectual property rights but has never followed through on any of the promises. New numbers showing an out-of-control U.S. trade deficit with China will force that issue on Bush's agenda when he sits down with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Through September, the deficit with China is projected to hit $200 billion this year – far exceeding last year's record $162 billion deficit. Bush also is expected to push Hu to exert more pressure on North Korea to halt its development of nuclear weapons, a subject that will also be addressed when Bush is in Pusan, South Korea, for the annual summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Among other subjects to be addressed at all stops is the threat of avian flu and steps all countries can take to prevent a pandemic. The trip – which has its first stop in Kyoto, Japan, with a major Bush speech about his Asia policy – will conclude in Mongolia with a stop that has sparked fascination. Bush will become the first U.S. president to visit Mongolia, the sprawling, desolate land that brought the world Genghis Khan and has 130 troops in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition. "Why is he going to Mongolia?" asked Mitchell of CSIS. "It is part of the mantra of Bush's second term of promoting democracy. Mongolia is the only Asian communist country to go democratic – and they have troops in Iraq." Noting the country's strategic importance, he added, "Mongolians desperately want American attention, stuck as they are between Russia and China. So, for Iraq peacekeeping, for democracy and simply to stand by a poor forgotten nation of Northeast Asia, this has symbolic and political value." »Next Story»