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In Malaysia visit, Obama revisits the ‘Asia pivot’

As the excitement swells ahead of US President Barack Obama’s visit to Malaysia this weekend – if not on the closed-off streets of Kuala Lumpur then at least in the media – there’s also a burgeoning anxiety here inside the Washington beltway that the hope’n’change promised by the so-called “Asia pivot” may need some tempering during this historic tour.

In the broken political process that has marked his second term so far, where a slew of administration initiatives are doomed thanks to Republican intransigence on Capitol Hill, Obama needs a few wins abroad in what has been a decidedly mixed foreign policy record.

With improvements in Syria, Iran, Ukraine, North Korea and the Middle East "peace process" hard to find, landing the presidential motorcade with the "Beast" gliding through four Asian cities seems easy by comparison.

More pertinently, showing up with Obama’s glitter to help seal the sprawling trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) between 12 or so countries would substantiate his Asia vision.

Not only does the tour reassure allies like Japan, South Korea and Asean at a fraught time of maritime friction with a rising China, the signed TPP would leave that all-important policy legacy American presidents usually hope to forge by the end of second terms.

Over 40 years later, after a few dips in bilateral ties, Malaysia’s helming of Asean next year and America’s strategic plans cleave together again - that is why Malaysia is expected to sign the TPP agreement, never mind a few thorny details that typically arise when such deals are viewed bilaterally between a giant economy like the US and a faltering one like Malaysia.

All the talk of America’s "rebalancing" to Asia has also informed this week’s commentary, as glib pundits belie the White House’s tricky balancing of its priorities of China, security and trade with four Asian allies still wrought by national tragedies such as a missing jetliner, a sunken ferry, a nuclear scandal and a devastating typhoon.

Several groups protest on April 18 in front of the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur against Obama's visit. – The Malaysian Insider pic, April 25, 2014.
Several groups protest on April 18 in front of the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur against Obama's visit. – The Malaysian Insider pic, April 25, 2014.

In Malaysia’s case, amid a deteriorating domestic climate of religious intolerance, bitter political division and human rights violations, would Obama jeopardise relations and a geopolitical trade deal with what has been the most cooperative Malaysian government in ages, all for the ideals of democracy and freedom usually prefacing American policy abroad?

“President Obama needs to take up concerns that basic rights are under threat, and that civil society is squeezed between restrictive laws and abusive government implementation,” reminded Human Rights Watch’s Asia advocacy director John Sifton just yesterday, pointing out that “Malaysia’s claims of being a tolerant and rights-respecting democracy don’t stand up to scrutiny”.

Despite US officials’ insistence that Susan Rice, the president’s top national security advisor and former UN ambassador, will be meeting with the opposition leader, Sifton urged his president to “speak out on Anwar Ibrahim’s case and meet with him while in Kuala Lumpur.

"Neglecting to do so sends a message to the Malaysian government that misuse of courts for political gain is acceptable to the US,” he said.

The complaints from the Malaysian opposition and some in civil society over the president’s bland itinerary may be overlooking the crucial point - that the US views Malaysia as a reliable and important ally in an increasingly uncertain region, ahead of Malaysia’s chairing of Asean next year, at a time when the regional grouping has never been more crucial to the post-1945 order rolled out during the Cold War.

The close cooperation between the US and Malaysia over the search for MH370 is just the latest example of tighter strategic ties, which were partly explained by visiting Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein earlier this year at a Washington embassy dinner.

He regaled Malaysians that chilly evening of the warm welcome he had enjoyed at the US Navy's Seventh Fleet in Hawaii, at the CIA's Langley headquarters, and at the Pentagon. While China remained Malaysia's top trading partner and "close friend", the US relationship was "central" to Malaysia and Asean.

Much has been made of this visit being the first by an American president since Lyndon Johnson’s in 1966, at the height of the Vietnam War (and the Cold War). But as President Johnson noted when he landed at Subang, in a Malaysia formed only three years earlier, we were like the US nation of “diverse peoples, different religions, and different cultures. Here, as in America, you are working to reduce racial tensions so that all men may live in peace with one another.”

By “valiantly” crushing a communist insurgency, President Johnson said Malaysia’s achievement had “the greatest significance for our struggle in Vietnam today. You have shown that military action can stop Communist aggression and that while the aggression is being stopped, and even more strongly when it is stopped - the peace, as well as the war, can be won.”

Obama arrives at Osan Airbase in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, today. – AFP pic, April 25, 2014.
Obama arrives at Osan Airbase in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, today. – AFP pic, April 25, 2014.

Over 40 years later, after a few dips in bilateral ties, Malaysia’s helming of Asean next year and America’s strategic plans cleave together again - that is why Malaysia is expected to sign the TPP agreement, never mind a few thorny details that typically arise when such deals are viewed bilaterally between a giant economy like the US and a faltering one like Malaysia.

Whether such a trade deal might be sunk by vociferous oppositions besting two leaders with insufficient political capital remains a distinct possibility.

In official Washington, the TPP is seen as essential for an otherwise military-driven strategic (re)focussing of the US’s “pivot” to Asia, after the past decade’s Middle East trauma.

At the US Senate’s committee on foreign relations hearings a few months back, former Obama administration official Matthew Goodman made plain that “the TPP is the sine qua non of success not only for the administration’s regional economic policy but arguably for the entire Asia rebalancing strategy...”

“Without TPP, the ‘rebalance’ would contain little of substance that is new and would be perceived in the region as driven primarily by military considerations,” Goodman told the senators.

Goodman, who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS, one of Washington’s few think tanks that seriously grapple with Southeast Asia and its ties with China), was backed up by his colleague Ernest Bowers, CSIS's chair for Southeast Asia Studies.

In an article for Singapore’s Straits Times this week, Bowers noted that Asean members were worried about “an America in decline” despite its prowess when compared with China.

“Asia wants to be convinced that the United States has the will and capacity to sustain its role as the ultimate security arbiter in the Indo-Pacific... the White House's failure to aggressively petition Congress for trade promotion authority, which is crucial for completion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, even though economic engagement in Asia is crucial to America's long-term interests, erodes confidence in Washington's ability to remain the key offshore balancer in the region.”

But among the small network of Southeast Asianists and even tinier circle of Washingtonians engaged in Malaysia policy issues, the "Asia pivot" and its underpinning TPP agreement may be two discrete pursuits, where the troubled democracies of Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and even Myanmar need American support ahead of unfettered trade.

As the stalwart Malaysianist and former American ambassador, John Malott, put it, this is the time for his president to get the US “on the right side of history” with Malaysia, and engage with the majority of Malaysians no longer enamoured with business-as-usual. – April 25, 2014.