Obama’s ‘Rebalancing’ to Asia Falters in Sleepy Laos
A regional summit in Laos was Obama’s last chance to woo a region increasingly beholden to rival superpower China before he departs the Oval Office
“The rebalancing is a complete failure on multiple levels,” says Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asia expert at National Taiwan University.
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A regional summit in Laos was Obama’s last chance to woo a region increasingly beholden to rival superpower China before he departs the Oval Office
It may have been Barack Obama’s first trip to sleepy Laos — and indeed, the first by any sitting U.S. President — but American foreign policy still haunts this landlocked Southeast Asian nation.
U.S. forces covertly dropped 2 million tons of ordnance here during the Vietnam War, making this communist backwater of barely 7 million people the world’s most heavily bombed country. Today, unexploded cluster bombs and mines intended to disrupt North Vietnamese supply routes continue to kill and maim — especially in rural areas, where curious children stumble across tennis ball-sized munitions.
At this week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, Obama attempted to exorcise some of these ghosts. “Given our history here, I believe that the United States has a moral obligation to help Laos heal,” Obama told an audience in the Laotian capital Vientiane, committing an additional $90 million over the three years toward removing unexploded ordnance.
Read More: How Deadly Weapons Continue to Rule Daily Life in Laos
But as Obama tried to heal old wounds, new ones opened — illustrating both the lingering and fresh challenges of his faltering “rebalancing” to Asia. On Tuesday, new Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte expressed “regret” that he called Obama a “son of a whore,” after the U.S. Commander in Chief stated his intention to raise the 2,000 extrajudicial killings of Duterte’s “drug war” during talks. Although Obama downplayed the spat, his team canceled the scheduled meeting.
It was high drama unfamiliar to Vientiane, a low-rise city of French-built boulevards studded with Buddhist temples, where Soviet hammer and sickle flags flutter outside iPhone repair shops. ASEAN’s most isolated state is also one of its most authoritarian, though Laos was thrown into the international spotlight when it was made bloc chair for 2016. This also made it the venue for Obama’s last attempt to woo a region increasingly beholden to rival superpower China before he departs the Oval Office.
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Faced with a mounting budget deficit, and with the fracking revolution making disentanglement from a roiling Middle East a real possibility, the White House announced a political, military and economic “rebalancing” to Asia in 2012. But four years later, the reality is simmering conflict in the South China Sea, entrenched authoritarianism across Southeast Asia and stillborn efforts to boost business ties. Moreover, critics say that Washington’s preoccupation with countering Beijing’s influence has undermined support for core American values, such as democracy, electoral rigor and human rights.
“The rebalancing is a complete failure on multiple levels,” says Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asia expert at National Taiwan University. “Obama has left a worsening authoritarian legacy. But they couldn’t care less because it’s all about China.”
Certainly, Southeast Asia has regressed politically over the course of the “rebalance,” with the notable exception of Burma (officially called Myanmar), which has moved toward qualified democracy. A military junta has run Thailand since a May 2014 coup d’état. Malaysia’s opposition leader is once again behind bars, while Prime Minister Najib Razak stands accused of embezzling $700 million of state funds. (He denies any wrongdoing). Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brunei and Laos remain autocratic, with the 2012 disappearance of award-winning Lao activist Sombath Somphone still unexplained in the latter.
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Yet the White House has pushed increased engagement with all these states. In May, Obama lifted a 50-year-old arms embargo with Vietnam. He did this even though key civil-society leaders were detained on their way meet him in Hanoi. Obama raised the issue, though still inked the deal. “This was a necessary step politically as the conservatives in Vietnam basically made it nonnegotiable,” says Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor at Australia’s University of New South Wales.
Of course, that deal was never really about Vietnam. Washington needed enhanced relations with Hanoi to counter China’s expansive territorial claims and militarization of rocks and reefs in the South China Sea. And for Obama, that fact looms larger than detained activists. “We should not mistake our foreign policy as an instrument to bring about improvements in human rights,” says Stapleton Roy, a former U.S. ambassador to China and Indonesia. “We can only play a marginal role from outside.”
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The military component of Obama’s “rebalance” always came first. Owing to drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House has managed to reduce overall military spending while still remaining committed in the Asia-Pacific. The goal to have 60% of U.S. naval forces in that theater has almost been reached. Enhanced troop and ship rotations have been agreed with Philippine naval bases, while Singapore and East Malaysia are also hosting U.S. vessels. Even the navy of Cambodia, a staunch ally of Beijing, was recently entertained on a U.S. aircraft carrier.
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