Despite Obama’s Moves, Asian Nations Skeptical of U.S. Commitment
By DAVID E. SANGER

SINGAPORE — When President Obama announced Monday that he was ending a half-century-long arms embargo against Vietnam, it was another milestone in his long-running ambition to recast America’s role in Asia — a “pivot” as he once called it, designed to realign America’s foreign policy so it can reap the benefits of Asia’s economic and strategic future.

Yet as Mr. Obama’s time in office comes to an end, Asian nations are deeply skeptical about how much they can rely on Washington’s commitment and staying power in the region. They sense that for the first time in memory, Americans are questioning whether their economic and defense interests in Asia are really that vital.

Mr. Obama is the first president to have grown up in the region — he lived in Indonesia as an elementary school student — and he has never doubted that America is underinvested in Asia and overinvested in the Middle East.

In visit after visit, he has capitalized on the palpable nervousness about Beijing’s intentions while also cautioning that China’s growing influence and power are unstoppable forces of history. In Mr. Obama’s view, that means both the United States and the rest of the region will have to both accommodate and channel China’s ambitions rather than make a futile attempt to contain them, while reassuring the Chinese of America’s peaceful intentions.

At the core, the policy has been building on the two-decade-old opening to Vietnam; the establishment of a new relationship with Myanmar as it lurches toward democracy; closer relations with the two largest treaty allies in the region, Japan and South Korea; and renewed military ties with the Philippines. The administration has also pushed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would set new terms for trade and business investment among the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations.

Perhaps most important, Mr. Obama has received unexpected help from the Chinese themselves, who have so overplayed their hand in the South China Sea that smaller neighbors suddenly took a new interest in deepening their relations with Washington.

Countering those developments, though, is the American political mood, which has darkened toward longstanding alliances and international trade itself. For Asian allies, this means the United States might pivot away.

“Every country in Asia views the problem differently, and through their own lenses, but they all see a twofold risk of things getting out of balance quickly,” Kurt M. Campbell, one of the architects of Mr. Obama’s strategy in his first term, said on Monday. “One is that China seriously overplays its nationalism” and that conflict breaks out in the South China Sea.

But Mr. Campbell, who is about to publish an account of Mr. Obama’s efforts titled “The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia,” also noted that Asian nations were equally worried that America is no longer willing to be a steadying power.

“Asian countries are prone to anxiety about the behavior of major powers, for good reasons — they have seen a lot go wrong over the past thousand years,” said Daniel R. Russel, the assistant secretary of state for Asia. “And now there is angst about what comes next and the sustainability of the rebalance.”

Not surprisingly, uncertainty begets hedging, in big ways and small.

The Vietnamese gave Mr. Obama a huge welcome on Monday, lining the streets in ways reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s first presidential trip there 16 years ago. But missing from the news conferences was the hard-core group in the leadership that remains deeply suspicious that Washington’s real long-term goal is regime change.

So while almost certainly they will buy American arms — especially the high-tech gear they need to keep an eye on what the Chinese are doing at the edge of Vietnam’s territorial waters — they have no intention of building the kind of alliance the United States has with Japan and South Korea. “Now that the U.S. fully lifted the weapons ban, I think U.S. Navy vessels will come to Cam Ranh Bay later this year,” said Alexander L. Vuving, a specialist on Vietnam at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.

Last week, as the streets of Hanoi were being cleaned up for the president’s visit, the Chinese were meeting with Vietnam’s defense minister, pledging to strengthen their military ties.

In the Philippines, the firebrand who has just been elected president, Rodrigo Duterte, once promised to ride a Jet Ski to plant a flag on one of the artificial islands the Chinese have constructed. More recently, he is backing away from the current government’s effort to press its sovereignty arguments, saying he wants to negotiate directly with the Chinese, perhaps swapping a little sovereignty for some economic concessions. That is just the kind of invitation the Chinese wanted to hear.

Mr. Obama’s vision is certainly nuanced. As Mr. Campbell writes in his book, the trick in the pivot is to build a deep relationship with the Chinese to convince not only “China but also China’s neighbors that our China policy is not intended to produce needless and unproductive friction.”

Containment “has little or no relevance to the complexities of an interdependent Asia in which most states have deep economic ties with China.”

The Chinese are unconvinced. One of the key military elements of the strategy is for American troops to “rotate” through strategically important Asian ports — not to be based there, but to be able to land, refuel, train and build partnerships.

It started with Darwin, Australia. Now Mr. Obama is trying to do the same in the Philippines, which the United States left more than two decades ago, and at the deepwater port of Cam Ranh Bay, if the unspoken deal with Vietnam works out. That would give Washington more reason to regularly traverse waters the Chinese claim as their exclusive zone. But it is unclear that presence is large enough to deter further Chinese expansion.

The biggest challenge, however, is on the home front. Donald J. Trump’s threat to withdraw American forces from South Korea and Japan unless they pay far more of the cost — and they already pay much of it — may just be a negotiating position. But it suggests that the United States has no independent national interests in the Pacific. That would be a rejection of a post-World War II order that goes back to the Truman administration.

The real glue may well be the Trans-Pacific Partnership — the big, unwieldy trade deal that involves a dozen nations, but not the Chinese. Mr. Russel notes that for President Obama, the agreement “fulfills the strategic promise of the rebalance, as a system that integrates the U.S. with the Asian-Pacific region.”

Good geopolitics, though, often makes for bad domestic politics. Even some of Hillary Clinton’s top foreign policy aides were astounded by her decision to declare herself against a deal she often praised. After all, in November 2012, just before she left the State Department, she did not sound like she had a lot of doubts: “Our growing trade across the region, including our work together to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership, binds our countries together, increases stability and promotes security,” she said then.

The question is whether the opposite is also true: Having put America’s Pacific strategy on the line, if the deal fails does that mean the binding glue will loosen, and stability and security will be imperiled? And if so will the leaders of Asia see that as another reason to welcome Mr. Obama’s successor one week, and visit Beijing and Moscow the next?

歐巴馬亞洲行 難救美國影響力

美國總統歐巴馬廿三日宣布將解除對越南實施半世紀的武器禁運，這是他努力重塑美國在亞洲角色的又一個里程碑。然而，紐約時報指出，隨著歐巴馬任期接近尾聲，一些亞洲國家懷疑他們是否可以放心依靠華盛頓對該地區的承諾和持久影響力。

報導中說，亞洲國家首度感覺到，美國似乎正在思考，美方在亞洲的經濟和國防利益是否真的那麼重要。

亞洲國家明顯對中國大陸的擴張意圖感到不安，歐巴馬在多次的亞洲行中利用這種不安，同時也告誡亞洲各國，大陸日益增長的影響力和權力是不可阻擋的歷史性力量。歐巴馬認為，無論是美國還是區域其他國家，都必須對大陸的野心採取適應疏導的態度，而非採取無效的防堵。另一方面，歐巴馬又安撫大陸，表示美國的意圖是和平的。

從核心而言，這個政策的基礎分別是對越南廿年的開放，鼓勵緬甸走向民主並與該國建立新關係；與日本和南韓建立起更密切的關係；繼續發展與菲律賓的軍事合作。同時美國也在推動「跨太平洋夥伴協定（TPP）」，涵蓋美國和其他十一個環太平洋國家。

近來大陸過於強勢的展示在南海的影響力，也讓一些較小的鄰國突然展現和美國加強合作的意願。

但是，美國本身的政治氣氛，卻讓亞洲的長期盟友和國際貿易本身蒙上陰影。共和黨總統候選人川普多次把矛頭對準南韓和日本，威脅他們若不多出點錢就要把美軍撤走，美國國內對TPP等自由貿易協定更是質疑，連民主黨總統參選人希拉蕊柯林頓都反對。在亞洲盟國看來，美國可能會轉向，從亞洲抽腿。

曾擘劃歐巴馬政府亞洲政策的美國國務院亞太前助卿坎伯說，亞洲各國都在擔心兩件事，第一是大陸過度傾向民族主義導致南海爆發衝突，第二是美國是否願意繼續在亞洲充當維持穩定的力量。

這樣的憂心讓許多亞洲國家在美中兩面押寶以避險。越南這次熱烈歡迎歐巴馬到訪，但越南共黨核心人物仍然懷疑美國真正的長期目標是讓越南改朝換代。因此，雖然越南人肯定會購買美國的武器，但他們並沒有打算像日本和南韓那樣與美國建立盟友關係。上周越南準備迎接歐巴馬時，大陸官員也正在與越南國防部長會晤，承諾加強雙方軍事聯繫。

在菲律賓，剛當選總統的杜特蒂表示想直接與大陸談判南海問題，可能會在主權上做些讓步換取經濟利益。

真正能連接美國和亞太地區的很可能是TPP，但以目前美國國內政治氛圍，TPP可能無法在國會過關。一但如此，亞洲領導人恐怕更有理由兩面押寶，在接待完歐巴馬的繼任者後立即前往北京和莫斯科訪問。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/world/asia/vietnam-arms-embargo-obama.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/asia-pacific/20160524/c24asia/zh-hant/

2016-05-25．聯合報．A13．國際．國際中心