Asia trip seems sort of useless

Perhaps the best way to view President Obama’s lengthy trip to Asia is to see it as something of a get-acquainted exercise in a part of the world where the United States still has perceived interests and a substantial military presence of dubious value to the U.S.

If it turns out to be a prelude to acknowledgment of stubborn realities that leads to changes in policies, that might be encouraging. If not, it will look more like an opportunity for the president to give speeches and not much else.

Although it didn’t make much news, it is likely that numerous Asian leaders expressed concern if not alarm over the loose monetary and fiscal policies the Obama administration has put in place. The administration’s free-spending ways have been largely financed by China, which has some $2.27 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, about two-thirds in dollar-denominated assets. China is concerned that the administration’s spending will lead to inflation, which would depreciate the value of its assets and impede its recovery from the global recession.

In Japan, President Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, whose Japan Democratic Party supplanted the long-running rule of the Liberal Democratic Party and seeks changes in Japan’s relationship with the United States, seemed cordial and friendly on a personal level. But no progress was made on Japan’s desire for the U.S. to reduce its military footprint on the southern island of Okinawa.

It is puzzling that the U.S. remains so stubborn about keeping so many U.S. troops and installations in Japan. They were put in place after World War II, when many Asian countries were concerned about Japan re-emerging as an ambitious regional power and later seemed important during the Cold War.

However, the Cold War is over, Japan has emerged as the world’s second-largest economy, and the justification for the U.S. subsidizing Japan’s defense posture has disappeared, if it had much validity before. Given our economic crisis, not to mention Japan’s preferences, a strong case can be made for winding down the U.S. military presence. But President Obama gave no hint that such a move is even being contemplated.

In Singapore, the president was forced to acknowledge that there is no realistic hope of a binding treaty on climate change being instituted in a December meeting in Copenhagen. Given the likely depressing effects on the U.S. economy of a binding effort to reduce greenhouse gases during a stubborn recession, this may be disappointing to the administration but is good news for most Americans.

It was nice that the president vowed in South Korea to move toward ratifying a bilateral trade agreement with Seoul that was concluded two years ago that many analysts believe could lead to tens of thousands of U.S. jobs. Whether he will be able to move organized labor at home to tone down its shortsighted opposition is another question.

There was also no hint of drawing down U.S. troops unnecessarily stationed in South Korea, even as a bargaining chip to induce the impoverished “hermit kingdom” of North Korea to stifle its nuclear weapon ambitions.

Perhaps the trip did, as presidential adviser David Axelrod tried to spin it, lay groundwork for reasserting U.S. leadership in the region. It will take a while to see, however, if there are such lasting effects, and what shape they might take.