Published on November 17, 2005

US president arrives in Asia amid concerns about the direction of American foreign policy. US President George W Bush flew into Asia yesterday, no doubt relieved to be away from Washington and the political problems that have besieged his second term. At the top of the trip’s agenda are the nuclear ambitions of North Korea, an issue which is expected to be taken up later this week at the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference in Busan, South Korea.

Other topics include preparations for a possible avian-flu pandemic, the presence of US military forces in the region, and the huge US trade deficits with countries in the region. Bush is also facing pressure from some of his domestic critics to take a harder line with China on human-rights abuses.

The US president can expect a warmer public welcome than he received earlier this month at the Mar del Plata summit of the Americas, which was marred by rioting and protests directed at him personally. Whether he is able to achieve much more than he did in Argentina, where he was given the cold shoulder by several Latin American leaders and his push for a commitment on a trade zone was ignored, is less certain.

The Argentinean episode seems typical of the way the rest of the world is edging away from Washington. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw inadvertently alluded to this trend at yet another gathering of leaders, in another part of the world – the Middle East summit in Bahrain at the weekend – when he said: “It would be a disaster if this region thought democracy was an American idea.” It seems now that everything associated with US foreign policy is reflexively perceived as negative.

Much of this, of course, stems from Washington’s hugely unpopular decision to invade and occupy Iraq. It wasn’t just the cost of the invasion in terms of human lives, or the fact that it was staged for reasons that turned out to be unfounded, but rather Bush’s swaggering disdain for the opinion of much of the international community that upset so many people and countries around the world.

At the same time there is growing discontent with the Washington brand of globalisation that the White House has vigorously pursued and the divisions and inequities it produces.

And then there are the religiously charged “neo-con” imperatives that seem to lurk behind so much of Washington’s foreign policy, whether it is spreading liberalism in the Middle East or campaigning against abortion in China.

There were hints of this again yesterday, when Bush opened his Asian tour with a call for China to allow individuals greater freedom to worship. When he gets to Beijing, Bush will underscore the point with a visit to an officially recognised church. Freedom of religion is a worthy cause, but one wonders whether there aren’t other matters that could be given priority. Bush, for example, made no mention yesterday of China’s human rights record.

Trade and currency issues are the two other matters that Bush is expected to raise with China. The two countries made an eleventh-hour compromise last week over China’s massive exports to the US but the matter will not be resolved with a simple pledge to buy more American goods.

The US trade deficit stands at 6 per cent of GDP and at current trends will reach 7.5 per cent by 2010. To date, America has financed the deficit by selling billions of dollars of treasury bonds to China and Japan and other East Asian countries. Beijing and Tokyo are happy with this equation because it gives Americans the credit they need to buy Japanese and Chinese goods.

But this is not simply an economics issue. By holding so much US debt China and Japan hold the power to create financial chaos in America, should they choose to do so, for whatever reason. There is also one other factor that needs considering. By extending such credit to Washington, Beijing is effectively financing America’s foreign adventures such as the Iraqi invasion.

When he came to power, Bush vowed to spread freedom and democracy. Instead, he comes to Asia representing an America that has lost substantial international influence in the last five years, and that is in hock to the world’s last great communist power. It is an irony Mao and Marx would have enjoyed enormously.

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