Obama's second term: The case for pivoting to Asia

After more than a decade spending American blood and treasure in the Mideast and South Asia, the U.S. is upping its bet on the Pacific

President Obama with Thailand Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra: The president's choice of Southeast Asia as his first post-election trip was no accident.
(Image credit: Jack Kurtz/Getty Images)

"Sorry, Europe," says the AP's Eric Talmadge. "Fueled by China's amazing growth and the promise of its huge and expanding consumer market, the Asia-Pacific region is now, as experts like to say, the global economy's center of gravity." That's why, a year ago, President Obama and other top U.S. officials announced a U.S. "pivot" or "rebalancing" of American foreign policy toward the Asia-Pacific region. And by making his first post-election presidential trip to Southeast Asia, including two nations no U.S. president has visited before — Myanmar (Burma) and Cambodia — Obama is doubling down on this eastward shift. He's also providing "a timely opportunity to assess the implications of this policy going into the president's second term," say Michele A. Flournoy and Ziad Haider at Foreign Policy.

The issue: Shifting U.S. foreign policy toward Asia

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