Illustration by M. Morgenstern

ASIANS complain that when George Bush chose Iraq and terrorism as his main arenas in foreign affairs, it was at their expense. Barack Obama intends his first Asian trip as president, which begins in Tokyo on November 13th, as proof of change. As well as Japan, the tour takes in Singapore, China and South Korea. Engagement in the region, he says, is critical to America's future. Advisers even suggest that what he achieves there will help define Mr Obama's presidency. Of course, they say that about a lot of things on his plate. But to judge by ordinary folk, the region wishes him well. Many Indonesians think of Mr Obama as one of their own. In Japan students of English have emptied the bookshops of his collected speeches.

Some activity suggests there is indeed a new engagement. In July, the American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, signed ASEAN's Treaty of Amity and Co-operation. The ten-member Association of South-East Asian Nations had been largely ignored by Mr Bush. This weekend Mr Obama will meet ASEAN's leaders as a group, which is a first. His administration reached out to the thuggish junta in Myanmar, reversing a policy of isolation, and on November 10th said Mr Obama's special envoy to North Korea would go to Pyongyang for talks with the obstreperous nuclear state (after close consultation with South Korea and Japan first). The president has taken pains to define China as a “strategic partner”, one without whom America has little hope of tackling everything from the global economic crisis to climate change and nuclear proliferation. And Mr Obama's energetic support this year for the G20, with its Asia-heavy membership, can be read as a tacit acknowledgment that in economic and political terms the world's centre of gravity has shifted away from the G8 group of wealthy nations.

And yet. American policy in Asia—or, just as often, the lack of it—retains the power to unsettle its friends in the region. Take Japan, the cornerstone of America's Asian alliances. There, some people ask whether the hand extended to America's adversaries might reasonably be extended to its allies too. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which recently swept away the old political guard, wants to put Japan's security alliance with America on a more “equal” footing, one in which America does not call all the shots. Many Americans, too, see disadvantages in a skewed relationship. Among other things, it discourages Japan from taking up more international responsibilities.

Soon after coming to office, Japan's prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, suggested revisiting an unpopular plan, agreed under the previous government, to move an American air base on Okinawa, a tiny southern island with an overwhelming American military presence. The Obama administration could have shown patience towards a government still finding its feet. But it was confrontational from the start. Changing the agreement, said the defence secretary, Robert Gates, was out of the question. Japan, a State Department official told the Washington Post, was a bigger problem than China—an extraordinary judgment. It is true that Japan could have handled the problem better (see article). But America has done itself few favours and the best Mr Obama can do now is remind both sides of the strategic ends of their alliance and call for a rethink about the means. Next year's 50th anniversary of the pact would provide an occasion for that.

Elsewhere in Asia, a new engagement, however welcome, is not thought to be enough. Many of China's neighbours, eyeing its rise, want the reassurance of a more robust American presence. In a recent speech in Washington, DC, Singapore's patriarch, Lee Kuan Yew, surprised his audience by raising concerns about China's naval build-up, something South-East Asia's leaders rarely talk about in public. “If you do not hold your ground in the Pacific”, he told the Americans, “you cannot be a world leader.” In private, Mr Lee was blunter: “You guys are giving China a free run in Asia,” the Financial Times reports him saying. As well as engaging China, America must also balance it.

Celebrate and monitor

Mr Lee had America's economic influence in mind as well as its military presence. Take free-trade agreements (FTAs). China has signed FTAs with most of its neighbours, including with ASEAN as a whole, often on terms more favourable to China than to its partners. Talk is growing about the possibility of a super-FTA between China, Japan and South Korea. Asians are also negotiating FTAs with the European Union. In contrast, the ratification of a landmark agreement between South Korea and America is mired in Congress. The administration has taken retaliatory measures against imports of Chinese tyres. It has even drawn back from perhaps the only regional project seeking genuinely open trade, the Transpacific Partnership, led by a handful of liberal states. Meanwhile, South-East Asia's battered exporters long for America to take a tougher stance with China over its undervalued currency that is, in practice, pegged to the declining dollar while other regional currencies rise. Mr Obama has been squishy on the issue, not wishing to poison Chinese-American relations.

So Mr Obama will be monitored, as well as celebrated. On trade, an American commitment to seek an FTA with ASEAN would send the right signal. So would re-engaging with the Trans pacific Partnership. On Myanmar, whose abuses are poisoning ASEAN's own future, the president needs to be clear to the region's leaders, including Myanmar's prime minister (whom he will meet), that he will bring the pariah state in from the cold only with the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and the launch of a democratic process involving the opposition and minorities. And Mr Obama needs to signal that America will balance a rising China in such a way that China's neighbours never have to take sides.





Economist.com/blogs/banyan