U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Asia

On February 15-22, 2009, new U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited countries in the Far East and in Southeast Asia. Commenting on the event, Peter Topychkanov, an expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said that “Secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s Asian tour was the first example of the White House’s new foreign policy, characterized by a complex approach to international issues. Among the bilateral relations issues on the agenda for the talks Clinton held with the leaders of Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China, problems related to the global economic crisis took first place. There were also discussions of nuclear nonproliferation, climate change, and the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. North Korea’s policy, which is becoming increasingly confrontational, received particular attention at the meetings in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing.
First, it is clear that U.S. policy toward North Korea has not undergone any significant change. Hillary Clinton criticized the previous administration’s policy toward North Korea and has shown a desire to resume the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear program, but at the same time, she has also noted that Pyongyang does not want to take a seat at the negotiating table. Furthermore, during the visit of the U.S. secretary of state, who called upon the ‘outpost of tyranny,’ Pyongyang, to renounce its provocative policy, South Korean defense minister Lee Sang-Hee threatened strikes against missile launchers on North Korean territory. Tension remains high on the Korean Peninsula. The State Department has shown that it wants to resolve the North Korean nuclear program issue, but it has not proposed any new solutions for now. It is unlikely that we will see any breakthroughs on the North Korean front until the situation with the North Korean leadership becomes clear. The uncertainty surrounding Kim Jong Il’s health makes it difficult to formulate a consistent policy towards Pyongyang.
Second, the United States is in the process of building a strategic partnership with Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country. This partnership could aim at changing the Muslim world’s attitudes towards the USA. But the divisions among the Muslim countries mean that rapprochement between Washington and Jakarta is unlikely to bring about rapid improvement in the USA’s image in Muslims’ eyes, particularly since the main bone of contention – the U.S. military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan – remains in place. The situation in these two countries gives little hope for stabilization in the near future. Neither expansion nor reduction of the foreign military contingents in these countries will resolve the whole complex of problems that have built up there. As long as these problems remain acute, anti-Western and anti-American moods will persist among Muslims. Complex solutions are needed to deal with the military, social, economic and political problems in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan. In other words, what is needed is an integral strategy, and it seems that the White House has only now started working on this. It is not by chance that Hillary Clinton said in one of her interviews during her Asian tour that the aim of her talks with the leaders of the four countries she visited was to listen rather than to speak. This means that we should not expect any sensations to come out of this visit. Its main result should be the development of a new U.S. policy in Asia.”