"Dubbed "strategic reassurance," the policy aims to convince the Chinese that the United States has no intention of containing their rising power. Details remain to be seen, but as with the Russia "reset," it is bound to make American allies nervous." NEWSWEEK
In keeping with this new, humbler U.S. profile, Obama is going to Asia with very little to offer and everything to ask. His every movement and talking point in China will be shadowed by the knowledge that the United States desperately needs Beijing to keep buying U.S. debt (of course the Chinese also need U.S. growth to resume quickly so they can keep exporting). He will do little to press President Hu Jintao on human rights or climate change, even with the Copenhagen summit looming. With no legislation on carbon emissions likely from Congress—Obama tends to defer to the Hill on everything from health care to financial reform to climate change—in Copenhagen the administration's goals have been reduced to "not letting it fail," as one Western official put it. In Japan and South Korea, Obama will have nothing new to offer on what those two countries consider thehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif preeminent security threat, North Korea.NEWSWEEK
Newsweek has a tone less than flattering of David Brooks' favorite Pants-Crease President? Newsweek going Rogue, on President Obama?
Newsweek home of MSNBC hack Jonathon Alter, who stretches every New Deal trope from his swell book about FDR into an Obama belly Rub?
This worm has done turned, Murial.
President Obama is about to bow to his sensai - the next one up!
America is defending Japan from China and North Korea and let's toss in Russia as well.
The Marines have been stationed on Okinawa since Japan surrendered - through the Cold War, Korea, and our continuing war with Islamist Fascism - which President Obama refuses to acknowledge at home and especially abroad. Japan's Prime Minister Hatoyama wanted a Marine Air Base moved out of Okinawa as well as the planned transfer of 9,000 Marines to Guam -"During the election campaign, especially to the Okinawans, I've stated that we would consider relocation outside of Okinawa and outside of the country," Hatoyama said. "It is a fact that we did campaign on this issue, and the Okinawans do have high expectations."
"It will be a very difficult issue for sure, but as time goes by, I think it will become even more difficult to resolve the issue. Especially the residents in the Futenma district will find it even more difficult to resolve the issue as time goes by." Guam NewsFactor,com
President Obama's Strategy of Reassurance is directed toward America's Rivals - particularly China and Russia -and not its Allies.
President Obama has dithered on his war in Afghanistan and all this point to his policy of retreat from there as well as Iraq.
President Obama's Justice Department decided to put America on trial in New York City with the idiotic show trials of 9-11 Terrorist that will draw and quarter America's War on Terrorism that ended in January 2009.
President Obama's Strategy of Reassurance is a policy that every friendly, timid and fawning puppy plays out on its back.
Here its is
For decades, U.S. strategy toward China has had two complementary elements. The first was to bring China into the "family of nations" through engagement. The second was to make sure China did not become too dominant, through balancing. The Clinton administration pushed for China's accession to the World Trade Organization and normalized trade but also strengthened the U.S. military alliance with Japan. The Bush administration fostered close economic ties and improved strategic cooperation with China. But the United States also forged a strategic partnership with India and enhanced its relations with Japan, Singapore and Vietnam. The strategy has been to give China a greater stake in peace, while maintaining a balance of power in the region favorable to democratic allies and American interests.
"Strategic reassurance" seems to chart a different course. Senior officials liken the policy to the British accommodation of a rising United States at the end of the 19th century, which entailed ceding the Western Hemisphere to American hegemony. Lingering behind this concept is an assumption of America's inevitable decline.
Yet nothing would do more to hasten decline than to follow this path. The British accommodation of America's rise was based on close ideological kinship. British leaders recognized the United States as a strategic ally in a dangerous world -- as proved true throughout the 20th century. No serious person would imagine a similar grand alliance and "special relationship" between an autocratic China and a democratic United States. For the Chinese -- true realists -- the competition with the United States in East Asia is very much a zero-sum game.
For that reason, "strategic reassurance" is likely to fail. The Obama administration cannot back out of the region any time soon; Obama's trip this week, in fact, seems designed to demonstrate American staying power. Nor is China likely to end or slow its efforts to militarily and economically dominate the region. So it will quickly become obvious that no one on either side feels reassured.
President Obama wants the world to know that the Bush Years are over and so are the FDR,Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and WW Bush years.
The Carter Years are here, again! God help America and our friends.
