Obama Takes Asia by Sea
By ROBERT D. KAPLAN
NYT
Stockbridge, Mass.
PRESIDENT OBAMA has insisted that his 10-day Asian journey is all about jobs: “The primary purpose is to ... open up markets so that we can sell in Asia, in some of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and we can create jobs here in the United States of America.” But this recasting of the agenda, a late reaction to the midterm election, obscured the vital geopolitical importance of the trip.
In fact, the president has been confronting a new strategic map that lies beyond our messy and diversionary land wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In geographical terms, two of the countries on the itinerary, India and Indonesia, are in the same increasingly pivotal region: the southern coastal areas, or “rimland” of Eurasia, which is emerging as the world’s hydrocarbon interstate, uniting energy-rich Arabia and Iran with the growing economies of the Pacific.
Gone today are the artificial divisions of cold-war-era studies: now the “Middle East,” “South Asia,” “Southeast Asia” and “East Asia” are part of a single organic continuum. In geopolitical terms, the president’s visits in all four countries are about one challenge: the rise of China on land and sea.
India is increasingly feeling hemmed in by China’s military might. It lies within the arc of operations of Chinese fighter jets based in Tibet. China is building or developing large ports in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma, and providing all these Indian Ocean countries with significant military and economic aid.
(More here.)
NYT
Stockbridge, Mass.
PRESIDENT OBAMA has insisted that his 10-day Asian journey is all about jobs: “The primary purpose is to ... open up markets so that we can sell in Asia, in some of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and we can create jobs here in the United States of America.” But this recasting of the agenda, a late reaction to the midterm election, obscured the vital geopolitical importance of the trip.
In fact, the president has been confronting a new strategic map that lies beyond our messy and diversionary land wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In geographical terms, two of the countries on the itinerary, India and Indonesia, are in the same increasingly pivotal region: the southern coastal areas, or “rimland” of Eurasia, which is emerging as the world’s hydrocarbon interstate, uniting energy-rich Arabia and Iran with the growing economies of the Pacific.
Gone today are the artificial divisions of cold-war-era studies: now the “Middle East,” “South Asia,” “Southeast Asia” and “East Asia” are part of a single organic continuum. In geopolitical terms, the president’s visits in all four countries are about one challenge: the rise of China on land and sea.
India is increasingly feeling hemmed in by China’s military might. It lies within the arc of operations of Chinese fighter jets based in Tibet. China is building or developing large ports in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma, and providing all these Indian Ocean countries with significant military and economic aid.
(More here.)
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