[新聞] Obama's foreign policy goals struggling on several fronts
Obama's foreign policy goals struggling on several fronts
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-obama-foreign-policy-20140426-
story.html#
EOUL — Halfway through a long-delayed visit to four allies in Asia, Preside
nt Obama is struggling to sell a foreign policy strategy that seems under si
ege on multiple fronts..
When he landed in Seoul on Friday, Obama had not locked down a key portion o
f a long-promised Pacific Rim free-trade deal, had made scant progress in fo
rcing Russia to retreat on Ukraine, and had just seen his administration's M
ideast peace efforts put on life support.
The setbacks involved unrelated disputes thousands of miles apart, but toget
her they dealt a harsh blow to the president's second-term foreign policy ag
enda, including its much-touted rebalancing of U.S. strategic interests to t
he Asia-Pacific region.The failure of the trade deal in particular has "take
n some of the oompf out of the rebalance," said Michael O'Hanlon, director o
f research for the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.
The disappointments also left Obama musing philosophically about the limitat
ions on presidential power, and about problems over which he has little or n
o control.
"I think that there are no guarantees in life generally, and certainly no gu
arantees in foreign policy," he said at a news conference in Seoul with Sout
h Korean President Park Geun-hye.
Those looking for "definitive answers" are unlikely to find them, he said. I
nstead, "you've got some tools in the toolbox; you try to figure out which o
nes have the best chance of working. Sometimes it's going to take time to se
e whether or not a particular approach worked or not. You may not know until
after the fact."
The facts made for a bruising week. Obama spent two days with Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo but failed to reach a breakthrough on the prop
osed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, the economic underpinning of the a
dministration's rebalancing.
Despite a last-minute push through the night Thursday, U.S. and Japanese neg
otiators could not break the logjam on tariffs and market access to the regi
on that is the heart of global trade. Instead, the nations acknowledged that
they had fallen short of their goal.
Although the joint statement said they had "identified a path forward on imp
ortant bilateral TPP issues," it gave no specifics and noted that "there is
still much work to be done to conclude TPP." The Obama administration had ho
ped to wrap up the agreement at the end of last year.
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"There was clearly progress, but ultimately this was a missed opportunity fo
r both Washington and Tokyo," said Matthew Goodman, former director for inte
rnational economics in the administration and now an analyst at the Center f
or Strategic and International Studies.
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