Economic Failures & the Asia Tour

Obama "gets served" in Asia.

In the wake of blows taken by the Democratic Party in the recent midterm elections, the media has labeled the President’s recent Asia tour a similarly crushing stroke on a global scale. Where domestically the President “got served” by the Tea Party and Republicans – abroad China, South Korea and Germany delivered a similar treatment – overall displaying the growing weakness of the Obama administration. This limited presentation of the Asia tour seems accurate only if one believes that economics was the only focus of the tour and that the G20 was somehow going to miraculously resolve the lingering woes of our global economic crises.

Overlooking the President’s activities in India and Indonesia as irrelevant in search for a single striking narrative is illustrative of the larger flaws in the way information is presented to the US populace. However one may feel about the subjects of democracy promotion, international relations or religious freedom, acting as if these subjects simply weren’t relevant to the tour speaks of either dramatic shortsightedness or a conscious agenda. Even in the area of economics it seems that a conscious decision has been made to ignore the activities of the administration in India. The development and deepening of the bilateral relationship between India and the United States cannot be ignored if one is interested in economic policy.

In the area of democracy and international relations, the clashes between the China and the US over the elections in Burma and issues of human rights in the nation necessitate some attention. The promotion of Indonesia as a thriving Muslim democracy (regardless of realities of religious freedom in Indonesia) deserves the same level of consideration. The above issues alone would have justified the Asia tour, regardless of the successes of developing economic ties with India. Yet the evening news supported only the conclusion that the whole of the tour was a waste of time and resources, and a dismal failure of foreign policy. The only thing I really perceived as a marked failure in the tour was the effort to solve the world’s economic woes through the G20 summit, which I can’t imagine anyone genuinely expected.

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Sep 25, 2009

Barak

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A Tale of Two Pittsburghs

It was the best of times…

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It was the worst of times…

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Are the leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies (and as their website tells us, representing 85% of global GDP), really afraid of these guys?

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Founded in 2004, Democracy and Society is a biannual print journal published by the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University. The D&S Blog provides web-only content, including special reports and investigative series, on issues relating to democracy and development.

Economic Failures & the Asia Tour

A Tale of Two Pittsburghs

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