Much dire rhetoric has been unleashed in liberal quarters about the damage done by George W. Bush's foreign policy. The alleged damage, however, is not evident in Asia. When Ken Lieberthal, a respected China specialist and Democratic loyalist, spoke at Harvard early this year, I asked him to name a single year in memory when Washington had as good relations with India, Japan, and China as under Bush. He changed the subject.
The White House stated as Obama left Asia for home last week: "Overall, American leadership was absent from this region for the last several years.'' Nonsense. Bush left office with U.S. relations with Asia's big four--China, India, Japan, and Indonesia--taken together, better than ever in history.
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