Why Obama Is Betting on Asia

President Obama’s trip is a signal of renewed commitment to Asia, but it has produced few definitive signs that the U.S. is making progress in its bid for leadership. After a decade in which American commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the European financial crisis impaired the U.S.’s ability to engage with Asia, that underlying dynamic is, it seems, finally changing. Half of the world’s economic production is in Asia; it is the top destination for American exports, and, by the end of this decade, the U.S. will have shifted its share of naval resources in the Pacific to sixty per cent of its global assets. It will be up to President Obama, and the President who succeeds him, to decide just how far the United States is prepared to go to extend its influence in Asia.