The President spent the week of May
27 in Asia, and got quite a bit done. He
first went to Southeast Asia to promote trade with the US, and in the process
announced that he would lift the arms embargo against Vietnam. By Thursday he had gone to Japan for the G-7
summit in Ise, Mie Prefecture and on Friday made a side-trip to Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Park, becoming the first American President to visit Hiroshima. Lifting the arms embargo is a big, but the visit to
Hiroshima is easily the bigger story. Or
the more dramatic one, at least. There
is a lot to say about both legs of the trip, but they connect through the
President’s policies. Obama has always
accepted the wisdom that the 21st century will be “the Asian
Century;” due to the continuing improvements in the standards of living around
East and Southern Asia, and the increasing economic importance of the continent
to the rest of us. This trip, which I
believe will be his last to Asia as POTUS, makes for the perfect finale.
Vietnam
has been seeking permission to buy American arms for several years, but
American law forbids arms sales to countries with poor human rights
records. In the past, when Vietnam
lobbied to have the embargo lifted, someone would publicly dismiss the matter on those grounds. Members of my parents’ generation will likely
have bad memories of the last time we armed Vietnam. Specifically, the southern half of it,
because the Republic of Vietnam did not have the infrastructure to manufacture
their own
weapons. Times have changed. The Republic of Vietnam no longer exists. It is part of the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam now, and a major economic region.
Vietnam can manufacture their own weapons, but Vietnam cannot
manufacture enough to match the might of its nearest rival: China. However, Vietnam’s economy is thriving. They may not have the experience building
advanced weapon systems, but they seem to have the coin they need to buy
them. For the US and Vietnam, such a
deal could be win-win. The Vietnamese
get better gear to defend their claims, experience using it, and possibly build
on that to start building their own UAVs (the American product Hanoi wants the
most) or missiles or stealth planes. The
United States gets a closer trading and martial relationship with Vietnam, and
hopefully a profit. We both get some
more leverage against China. Maybe. But that is a huge risk. China will not take kindly to its principal rival giving a third state
a better way to kill loyal Chinese soldiers.
On the other hand, China is building and selling weapons systems meant
to fight Americans. I think the
President understands these
risks, because he has always handled China very carefully. He has also pushed American exports very hard
in his diplomacy all over the world, and Vietnam is a major arms market.
There
is more at stake than profits from sales and giving others the means to handle
China. Obama gives tangible signs of US
engagement in the region by selling things and giving speeches on major
occasions: such as the first visit by a President of the United States to
Hiroshima. In a funny way, President
Obama’s speech at Hiroshima was entirely predictable, but also perfect. It is wrong that no other President visited
Hiroshima and addressed that history, considering that a number of American
Presidents have visited Japan. Then
again, if we play that game we can ask why Obama himself waited this long. Regardless, in his speech, President Obama
did not apologize for the use of the atomic bombs, did not re-litigate
President Harry Truman’s decision to use them, or any other American or Allied
decisions in the war. Instead, he spoke
broadly about the suffering World War II caused everyone, and the continued
afflictions of war, the need to come to terms with our history, the closeness
of the American-Japanese alliance, and the seemingly unattainable dream of a
nuclear weapons-free world. By now I
suppose it goes without saying that I liked the speech. President Obama’s gesture was long overdue,
because as allies, the US and Japan need leaders who will show sympathy and
concern for one another as a show of solidarity. Japanese people never talk about World War II
with outsiders, but the scars are still very vivid. Americans talk about World War II
incessantly. Some are nastier than the
others--both people
and scars. When I meet European people
in Japan, sooner or later they tell me how surprised they are at how new everything is.
Americans often make the same observation. That newness?
That is partly an outcome of the war, partly an outcome of the post-war
boom.
If
the trip in May is ultimately the capstone to President Obama’s policy, it will
have been an appropriate finale to eight years of thoughtful Asia policy. But anything could happen between now and
next January. Good diplomacy takes many
forms. You need to produce concrete
deliverables that people can really feel, but you also need appreciate the
intangibles as well.
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