Clinton's Maiden Voyage Aims to Reassure Asian Allies

By JIM LOBE / IPS WRITER

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton's maiden voyage overseas as secretary of state is designed above all to reassure Washington's key East Asian allies and China of the US's enduring interests in the region and commitment to its stability, according to regional experts here.

The week-long trip, which begins Sunday and will take her to Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and China, in that order, is also being billed as a "listening tour" that, in addition to re-establishing Asia a top priority in US foreign policy after eight years in which the Greater Middle East took centre-stage, will permit her to hear firsthand the chief concerns of the region's most powerful players.

From her side, the emphasis will likely be on the eagerness of the new administration of President Barack Obama to cooperate on a range of global issues, beginning in particular with the ongoing financial crisis, but also featuring non-proliferation, regional security, energy, and climate change.

In a preview of her trip at the Asia Society in New York Friday, Clinton stressed Washington's need for "strong partners across the Pacific" to tackle these challenges.

Officials here hope that North Korea, which has ratcheted up tensions with South Korea in recent weeks, will not try to upstage her tour by testing a long-range ballistic missile as intelligence reports have indicated it may be preparing to do. Clinton's remarks Friday appeared designed in part to reassure Pyongyang of Washington's readiness to fully normalize relations if it follows through on its pledge to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

"We are hopeful that some of the behavior we have seen coming from North Korea in the last few weeks is not a precursor of any action that would up the ante, or threaten the stability and peace and security of the neighbors in the region," she noted.

"If North Korea is genuinely prepared to completely and verifiably eliminate their nuclear weapons program, the Obama administration will be willing to normalize bilateral relations, replace the peninsula's longstanding armistice agreements with a permanent peace treaty, and assist in meeting the energy and other economic needs of the North Korean people," she added.

Clinton's trip will take place despite the fact that the administration has only just begun to staff key Asia policy-making positions throughout the government, including the State Department. As a result, one of her main guides to the region will be a Bush holdover, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Christopher Hill, instead of his likely successor, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Kurt Campbell, who has yet to be officially nominated for the post.

But Clinton was reportedly eager to make the trip, in part to claim Asia as a key region of the world where she could quickly establish her own pre-eminence in an administration brimming with foreign policy specialists anxious to stake out their own territory.

Obama has already named special presidential envoys on Arab-Israel relations and on Afghanistan and Pakistan, while Vice President Joe Biden's appearance at the head of a high-powered US delegation to the annual European security conference in Munich last week suggested to many observers here that he intends to be the president's top adviser on trans-Atlantic relations.

"Some people have criticized her going so early when, not only is the full East Asia team not yet in place, but many of the important policy issues have not yet been hashed out within the administration," said Alan Romberg, a veteran Asia hand and former senior State Department official now with the Henry L. Stimson Centre, a foreign policy think tank here.

"I would disagree with that criticism, however, because it's so important that the new administration convey both early on and forcefully how important it considers the region to be to us," he added. "This trip helps make that clear."

In addition to Hill, whose tenure as assistant secretary was dominated virtually exclusively by North Korea and the Six-Party Talks (which include Russia, as well as the two Koreas, Japan, and China), Clinton will be accompanied by Todd Stern, the administration's new special envoy on climate change, a tangible sign, as Clinton herself said Friday, of "the seriousness we feel about dealing with this urgent threat".

China's commitment to joining any post-Kyoto international agreement to curb emissions of greenhouse gases is considered critical to Washington's own participation. Top energy and environment officials in the new administration reportedly believe that cooperation on climate change can be one of the most fruitful ways of deepening the relationship between the two countries, which are also the world's two biggest greenhouse emitters by far. In her remarks Friday, Clinton said the issue will also be high on the agenda at her other three destinations as well.

Of course, uppermost on the minds of her hosts, including in China, will be the ongoing financial crisis which, while it originated in the United States, has hit the region particularly hard.

On that issue, Clinton will likely be prepared both to acknowledge Washington's responsibility for the situation and stress its willingness to cooperate closely in addressing the crisis, especially in fighting protectionist impulses, and to consider major reforms in multilateral economic agencies, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that would provide Asian and other emerging markets with much greater influence than they currently enjoy.

Aside from those general assurances, however, Clinton is unlikely to say much as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who is already well known in Asian capitals, and National Economic Council chairman Lawrence Summers hold the reins on US economic policy.

The highlight of Clinton's trip to Japan, whose politically weak government is reportedly both apprehensive about the new administration and gratified that she chose Tokyo as her first destination, is expected to be her meeting with the families of Japanese citizens who were abducted to North Korea in the 1970s and '80s.

Pyongyang's refusal to provide details about the fate of those who have not been returned has alienated Japan from the Six-Party Process. Moreover, Washington's decision in October to remove North Korea from its terrorism list despite Tokyo's pleas that it not do so until Pyongyang provided an accounting was widely considered a serious betrayal of the alliance.

Given the sensitivity of the issue in Japan, how Clinton, who reportedly insisted on meeting with the families in spite of Hill's reservations, handles the issue both poses a major challenge to her diplomatic skills and has potentially significant implications for the future of the Six-Party process.

"I think it's absolutely essential that Tokyo and Washington present a united message to Pyongyang that this is not a relationship they can cleave...," noted Sheila Smith, a Japan scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Given the recent rise in North-South tensions, Pyongyang is also likely to top the strategic agenda during Clinton's visit to Seoul, although the fate of the 2007 Korean-US Free Trade Agreement, which remains unratified by both countries' legislatures, may also figure high in bilateral talks. Most analysts here believe there is little chance that the new Congress will act on the accord, and there is some concern that Clinton could unduly raise expectations.

Expectations in Jakarta are reportedly particularly high given the fact that Obama's stepfather was Indonesian and he spent part of his childhood there. As the world's most populous Muslim nation whose democratically elected government has cooperated closely with US counter-terrorism efforts and has called for a major upgrade in bilateral ties, Indonesia has long been seen as a natural destination for any top US policymaker on a tour of the region.

That it is also an energy producer that also retains some of the world's biggest—albeit increasingly threatened—rainforests makes it especially compelling for a trip that will make climate change a central theme.

Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.