Southeast Asia ponders what is going on in China

By Fareed Zakaria

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Visiting Malaysia this week, I was expecting a volley of complaints. 

The country was one stop on President Obama’s planned trip to Asia this month that was canceled because of Washington’s manufactured budget crisis. 

“We were disappointed, but we understood the situation,” Prime Minister Najib Razak told me.
Others were less diplomatic, pointing to the cancellation as evidence of America’s dysfunctional political system and general decline. 

But many in Malaysia — and across Southeast Asia — told me that they were puzzling mostly about what’s happening not in Washington but rather in Beijing.
This is partly the product of power. 

As China has grown in importance, its neighbors have become increasingly attentive to the Middle Kingdom. In the past, the only politics they followed outside their country was in Washington. 

Today they feel they must also understand Beijing.
And there’s much to understand. 

China is in the midst of great political change. 

Last month, the country watched on national television as President Xi Jinping sat in on a meeting in Heibei at which senior Communist Party officials publicly engaged in “criticism and self-criticism.” 

It is part of the party’s “mass-line” campaign, designed to address concerns that the party is out of touch, elitist and corrupt.
The campaign also includes a strong anti-corruption drive, most visibly involving the humiliation of Bo Xilai, the former party boss of Chongqing. 

Many in China have worried that anti-corruption is a mechanism to eliminate political opponents. 

“There is so much corruption in China that whom you choose to prosecute is really a political decision,” a Beijing businessman said to me, asking to remain anonymous.
More surprisingly to many, the new leadership has begun a sweeping crackdown on dissent. 

Chinese media and human rights groups say that hundreds of journalists, bloggers and intellectuals have been detained since August, charged with the crime of “spreading rumors.” 

Recently this group has included prominent businessmen, including Wang Gongquan, one of China’s best-known billionaires, who has advocated political reform and was formally arrested on Sunday.
Last month, Chinese television aired a tape of Charles Xue, a businessmen and blogger, who confessed to his crimes and welcomed China’s new restrictions on Internet freedom. 

This month, Peking University fired Chinese economist Xia Yeliang, who had helped draft “Charter 08,” a pro-democracy petition that helped to win its principal author, Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize .
China scholars have noted in recent years that the Communist Party is deeply concerned about its legitimacy and grass-roots appeal. 

That led many to believe it would address these issues by opening up its political system, with political reforms that would accompany economic reforms. 

Instead, it appears that the party is choosing older, Mao-era methods of crackdowns, public confessions and purification campaigns.
Over the past 30 years, the Chinese Communist Party has extraordinary accomplishments to its credit.

In the past decade alone, the average person’s income has close to quintupled, and the country now has the world’s second-largest economy.

But perhaps because of this success, many of the challenges China faces are ones in which economics cannot be separated from politics. 

Addressing concerns about pollution, for example, means slowing industrial growth. 

Moving toward a more sustainable development model means taking money from state-owned — and politically connected — companies.
The people I talked to in Southeast Asia were not approaching these issues from the perspective of human rights activists. 

They were really just trying to understand what was going on in China. 

Above all, they wondered what the internal changes mean for Beijing’s foreign policy. 

“China is being very friendly with us these days, more so than it was a few years ago, but it still pushes its own interests very strongly,” one Asian leader told me. 

Diplomats have worried that China has been circulating new maps of the region in which a previously dotted line demarcating Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea now appears as a solid line. 

Last month, China’s foreign minister denied any such change in its claims when publicly asked about it at a Brookings Institution forum by former defense secretary William Cohen. 

Yet the concerns highlight the nervousness felt in the region.
The United States washes its dirty linen vigorously and in public. 

When Washington messes up, it does so in prime time, with politicians, journalists and commentators describing every gory detail with delight. 

China has an opaque political system, which makes it far more mysterious. 

But China, too, has its share of crises, controversies and change. 

And because of the country’s newfound clout, the world is watching and wondering what to make of the black box that is Beijing.

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China strides, US shrinks in Asia

By Francesco Sisci

BEIJING -- Who remembers Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, the Southern states that fought the Northern states lead by president Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War? 

Barack Obama, really and symbolically black, looks like the true vindication and completion of that war, which broke and then united the United States and turned an assembly of fairly autonomous states into a nation.
The civil war was fought symbolically as well as for the freedom of the black slaves -- and thus for the freedom of every man in the US and in the world -- adding a new dimension to the American identity that greatly helped the country to become great globally. 

Lincoln brought the country to war and marked this new identity, attained through victory in a very bitter conflict. 

Had Lincoln been defeated, he would have become a footnote in history.
In a way, seen from afar, Obama, who Spielberg's homonymous movie suggests is Lincoln's anointed successor, is facing a similar challenge. 

He must create a new American identity by fighting his internal enemies, in this case the Republicans, almost as Lincoln fought the Confederates. 

As freeing the slaves was the purpose 150 years ago, now the goal is to establish a mindset of greater solidarity in order to care for the less fortunate. 

This can be a new dimension of the American identity. 

Here the battle over health care is both real and symbolic.
In a nutshell, Obama believes that providing a basic health care for everyone, even those who have nothing, is a basic human right and overrides all other concerns. 

The Republicans argue, simply put, "We can't afford it", and thus it should be put to rest either for now or forever. 

Some of them, the Tea Party people go even further by fighting massive interventions in social affairs, and thus they challenge the principles moving Obama and his supporters.
This is in a way similar to the debate over freedom for the slaves. 

The Northerners wanted freedom for the slaves, overriding all concerns about what that freedom could mean for Southern society; Southerners wanted conversely to keep their society, which would be disrupted by freeing the slaves.
Here, there are many other considerations. 

In both cases, there is an effort to make the presidency stronger before the other powers of the state. 

There is idealism in the face of a conservative realism -- and there are certainly many other elements, but to make it simple, allow me to focus on just these.
What is starkly different about these two historical moments is the international context. 

There was no globalization 150 years ago, and America was indeed pretty isolated. 

Therefore it could fight an internal war without affecting or being too affected by the international situation. Europe was the absolute center of the world: England was expanding its reach from its Indian powerhouse, France was dreaming of a Napoleonic return, Russia and Austria were tottering and harking back to a world that was no more, Prussia was on the rise, and Italy had just been born. 

China was collapsing in the midst of an earth-shattering primitive civil war, pitching pseudo-Christian Taiping rebels against Manchu imperial forces. 

Nobody cared or was too interested in meddling much with an arcane civil war in America.
Now, things are totally different, and it is not only America's future but also the future of the international order at stake.
Last week, Obama, locked in his fight with the Republican Party, canceled a much-anticipated trip to Asia. This is the region to which he had announced he would "pivoted" his foreign policy, trying to contain the regional growth of China. 

At the same time, Obama's competitor, Chinese President Xi Jinping, took center stage. 

He triumphed in Malaysia and Indonesia by promising China's neighbors expanded trade and investment.
In move typical of the game the Chinese call weiqi and the Japanese go, with America supporting Vietnam and the Philippines to surround China, Xi decided to support Indonesia and Malaysia to surround Vietnam and the Philippines. 

Moreover, if the US, constrained by growing budget difficulties and by an impending financial crisis that could lead to a default on the US debt, is apparently willing to leave Asia now, will it leave again in a few months or years? 

Conversely, despite all its internal problems, China has a tradition of not going back on its international commitments, and despite possible domestic economic difficulties, it will not go back on its word to increase regional commerce.
Moreover, China is not simply moving eastward, to the sea. 

Beijing has grand plans and deep pockets to create a huge continental railway network that would link Asia to the European economic powerhouses, bypassing all sea routes. 

There are talks with Kazakhstan to build a new line that would boost transport and communication in the country and restart a new version of the old Silk Road. 

Talks are occurring with Thailand to build a line going through Laos or Myanmar, and there are projects to extend the Tibetan railway through India. 

Meanwhile, another railway could stretch from India to Vietnam via Myanmar and Thailand. 

In other words, a cobweb of railways pivoting around China could be built in the coming decades, transforming the economic and political dynamic of the region.
This could objectively decrease China's focus on the eastern and southern seas, which is currently causing tension with Japan and the Philippines. 

So far, the only difficulty in this grand plan is that too much power was given to the often inefficient and corrupt railway companies. 

If Beijing decides to take on a more central and strategic role, things could move faster and more efficiently.
Certainly, China's momentum is not without risks.
India has plunged into a deep economic crisis that has in a few months sunk its gross domestic product by about 25% through a devaluation of its currency. 

This is buoying the fortunes of the nationalist party (BJP) and its leader Narendra Modi, known for his anti-Chinese stances. 

The crisis could bring Modi to power or simply make his anti-Chinese positions more popular. 

India could then decide to tighten its security and military collaboration with Japan and Vietnam, with the backing of Russia, which is concerned about Chinese inland expansion in Central Asia and Chinese economic and demographic pressure on Siberia.
These are future scenarios to which China can respond in many articulated ways. 

The issue is that in all of these scenarios America will be absent unless it makes itself present, as it has no geographical proximity to the region. 

Here, the US's partial withdrawal from Afghanistan is already an important sign of a greater withdrawal from an important outpost, which could be crucial for the idea of an Asia pivoting around China.
Here the question goes back to Obama. 

In contrast to Lincoln, Obama has to fight on internal and external fronts, both equally important for the political and economic survival of his nation. 

The US can dismiss its many blunders in the Middle East, as the region is becoming strategically less relevant with the growing exploitation of American shale gas, but it can't do so with Asia.
As the present and future powerhouse of global growth, the region is vital for American long-term interests, and even a momentary American absence, like that of last week, sends a signal to the region to brace for a Plan B: what if America is not in the area? 

This absence, contrary to some Chinese analysts' predictions, may increase regional tensions. 

Some countries might more or less meekly yield to China's rise, but others, with a different history -- like India, Japan, Vietnam, or Russia -- could hasten preparations to oppose Beijing's ambitions. 

They could feel that without America's presence in the region, they are left to their own devices and with their history of decisive hostility to China.
In a way, then, Obama could win or lose everything. 

If he wins the "war" with the Republicans, he will have renewed energy domestically to go back to Asia with a clearer mandate and a new mission. 

If he fails, he will be some kind of lame duck until the end of his presidency, and thus he will be weaker in Asia, pushing everybody there toward a Plan B. 

In fact, even if an Asian country were to hope for a return of America to the region after a defeated Obama's term ends, nobody could bank on it. 

Nobody knows who Obama's successor will be, and what that person will be thinking in three, four years, while Asian affairs will have rapidly evolved.
Therefore, most of the US continuity in Asia hinges on Obama's victory over the Republicans.

If he wins now at home, he could be a true heir of Lincoln renewing American energies; if he loses, he could become a second and perhaps even lesser Jefferson Davis -- then the US will have to find somebody else who could truly re-launch the country.

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As Obama's Asia 'pivot' falters, China steps into the gap

The image of a dysfunctional, distracted Washington adds to perceptions that powerful China has in some ways outflanked the U.S. pivot. For countries not closely allied with the U.S., Obama's no-show will reinforce their policy of bandwagoning with China.

By Stuart Grudgings

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak (front, L) walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping (front, R) during the Malaysia China Economic Summit in Kuala Lumpur October 4, 2013.

KUALA LUMPUR -- When then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared two years ago "We are back to stay" as a power in Asia, the most dramatic symbol of the policy shift was the planned deployment of 2,500 U.S. Marines in northern Australia, primed to respond to any regional conflict.
At this point in time, however, there is not a single U.S. Marine in the tropical northern city of Darwin, according to the Australian defence ministry. 

Two hundred Marines just finished their six-month tour and will not be replaced until next year, when 1,150 Marines are due to arrive.
The original goal of stationing 2,500 Marines there by 2017 remains in place, but the lack of a U.S. presence there two years after the policy was announced underlines questions about Washington's commitment to the strategic "pivot" to Asia.
President Barack Obama's cancellation of a trip this week to four Asian nations and two regional summits due to the U.S. government shutdown has raised further doubts over a policy aimed at re-invigorating U.S. military and economic influence in the fast-growing region, while balancing a rising China.
While U.S. and Asian diplomats downplayed the impact of Obama's no-show, the image of a dysfunctional, distracted Washington adds to perceptions that China has in some ways outflanked the U.S. pivot.
"It's symptomatic of the concern in Asia over the sustainability of the American commitment," said Carl Baker, director of the Pacific Forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Hawaii.
As embarrassed U.S. officials announced the cancellations last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping was in Indonesia announcing a raft of deals worth about $30 billion and then in Malaysia to announce a "comprehensive strategic partnership", including an upgrade in military ties.
He was en route to this week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bali and the East Asia Summit in Brunei, where Obama will no longer be able to press his signature trade pact or use personal diplomacy to support allies concerned at China's assertive maritime expansion.
Since 2011, China has consolidated its position as the largest trade partner with most Asian countries and its direct investments in the region are surging, albeit from a much lower base than Europe, Japan and the United States. 

Smaller countries such as Laos and Cambodia have been drawn so strongly into China's economic orbit that they have been called "client states" of Beijing, supporting its stance in regional disputes.
Leveraging its commercial ties, China is also expanding its diplomatic, political and military influence more broadly in the region, though its efforts are handicapped by lingering maritime tensions with Japan, the Philippines and several other nations.
"For countries not closely allied with the U.S., Obama's no-show will reinforce their policy of bandwagoning with China," wrote Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.

"BLUE-WATER" EXPANSION
China, for instance, has been the biggest trade partner of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) since 2009, and its direct investments are surging, bringing with them increased economic and diplomatic influence.
Chinese companies invested $4.42 billion in Southeast Asia in 2012, up 52 percent on the previous year, according to Chinese state media citing the China-ASEAN Business Council. 

Investments into neighbouring Vietnam rocketed 147 percent.
China is demonstrating that it can deploy forces far beyond its coastal waters on patrols where they conduct complex battle exercises, according to Japanese and Western naval experts. 

Chinese shipyards are turning out new nuclear and conventional submarines, destroyers, missile-armed patrol boats and surface ships at a higher rate than any other country.
Operating from increasingly modern ports, including a new naval base in the south of Hainan island, its warships are patrolling more regularly, in bigger numbers and further from the mainland in what is the most sweeping shift in Asia's maritime power balance since the demise of the Soviet navy.
China's military diplomacy with Southeast Asia is rapidly evolving as it takes steps to promote what Beijing describes as its "peaceful rise".
The Chinese navy's hospital ship Peace Ark recently treated hundreds of patients on a swing last month through Myanmar, Cambodia and Indonesia -- its first such mission across Southeast Asia. 

Its naval vessels returning from regular international anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden have made calls in Southeast Asian ports, including Singapore and Vietnam.
Still, analysts and diplomats say Beijing has a long way to go to catch up with not just the long-dominant United States, but other regional military powers such as Australia, Japan and Russia.
"China has come late to the party," said Richard Bitzinger, a military analyst at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

NOT A PATCHY PIVOT
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore, one of Washington's most key allies in the region, said it was disappointing Obama would not be visiting Asia.
"Obviously we prefer a U.S. government which is working to one which is not. And we prefer a U.S. President who is able to travel to fulfil his international duties to one who is preoccupied with his domestic preoccupations," Lee said after arriving in Bali.
"It is a very great disappointment to us President Obama is unable to visit."
U.S. officials dismissed the notion that Obama's no-show would imply any weakening of the U.S. commitment to the region.

Just last week, Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry were in South Korea and Japan to reaffirm the U.S. military commitment to the two key allies, and Kerry will fill in for Obama at the two Asian summits.
"The bottom line is that the United States of America is not going to change one iota the fundamental direction of the policy under this president," Kerry said on Saturday.
"I think everybody in the region understands. Everybody sees this (the cancellation of the visit) as a moment in politics -- an unfortunate moment -- but they see it for what it is."
The United States has ramped up military funding and assistance to its close ally the Philippines, expanded military exercises with other nations and increased regional port visits.
From only 50 ship visits in 2010, nearly 90 ships have visited the Philippines since January this year alone.
Washington has stationed surveillance planes there and promised up to $30 million in support for building and operating coastal radar stations, all aimed at improving its ally's ability to counter China's naval encroachment in the disputed South China Sea that has alarmed several Asian nations.
But talks to establish a framework agreement on a regular rotational U.S. military presence in the Philippines have yet to bear fruit, and are unlikely to have been helped by Obama's cancellation of his planned visit to Manila.
For the Darwin deployment, a U.S. Senate Committee said in April that it would cost $1.6 billion to build lodgings for the Marines, but the Australian government last month called for only a first-stage A$12 million ($11.3 million) tender to construct new quarters at existing Australian barracks for around 350 marines.
The economic leg of the pivot, negotiations for the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership, has grown to 12 nations. 

But the complex three-year-old talks, which seek unprecedented access to domestic markets, are facing resistance in many countries and are unlikely to completed soon.
A final deal would have to be approved by the U.S. Congress, raising the prospect of domestic politics again obstructing Asia ties.
"Even if the administration could push through some agreement on the TPP, it's very unlikely there is going to be legislative success getting that through based on the acrimony that exists," said the CSIS's Baker.
"...On the commercial side (of the pivot), there seems to be more rhetoric than action."

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Obama Absence Gives China Opening

Barack Obama's decision to skip the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings and the East Asian Summit next week is a blow to America's image in Asia

By JAMES HOOKWAY, NATASHA BRERETON-FUKUI and PETER NICHOLAS

President Barack Obama's decision to skip a series of Asia and Pacific summits to tackle the partial government shutdown in Washington strips the U.S. of some of its recent diplomatic momentum in the region and could leave the door open for China to expand its influence.
China and the U.S. have competing visions for the future of the Pacific Rim, ranging from trade and security to resolving deep-seated territorial disputes in the resource-rich waters of the South China Sea.
America's rebalancing, or pivot, of its foreign policy away from the Middle East and Afghanistan toward East Asia was in part a way to ensure that the U.S. isn't locked out of new trade pacts in the region.
It also was meant to ensure that smaller Asian nations can profit from what U.S. officials have described as a healthier, more equitable relationship with China.
Mr. Obama's decision to skip the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings in Bali, Indonesia, and the East Asian Summit in Brunei next week "is a blow to America's image in Asia, where symbolism is everything," said Ian Storey, senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
"It projects the image that America is politically dysfunctional and fiscally irresponsible, and not as committed to Asia as the Obama administration would have us believe," he said.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said that while Secretary of State John Kerry "will ably represent the United States at all of the stops on this trip, this completely avoidable shutdown is setting back our ability to create jobs through promotion of U.S. exports and to advance U.S. leadership and interests in the largest emerging region in the world."
China, in contrast, has launched a full-court press in the region ahead of the meetings.
President Xi Jinping met with Indonesia's president Wednesday and addressed the country's parliament while signing a $15 billion currency swap agreement that could lend some support to Indonesia's wilting rupiah.

An Indonesian vegetable vendor passes a giant banner for APEC in Nusa Dua on Indonesia's resort island of Bali earlier this week.

Mr. Xi traveled to Malaysia on Thursday to meet with Prime Minister Najib Razak and sign commercial agreements amid signs that China's economy is beginning to regain some momentum.
Mr. Obama earlier postponed scheduled trips to Malaysia and the Philippines that were to have followed his summit appearances.
The president's advisers were split on whether to proceed with the rest of the Asia trip. 

Though the White House has said they scuttled the trip because of logistical challenges created by the shutdown, there were other considerations in play, according to people familiar with the decision.
A trio of Mr. Obama's former top aides, David Axelrod, David Plouffe and Robert Gibbs, privately advised the White House that the president should proceed with the trip, according to a person familiar with the matter.
They told former colleagues in the West Wing that it was important for the president to carry on with his official duties and not let the trip become a casualty of the government shutdown. 

But current staffers rejected the advice.
Politically, the trip posed two risks for the president. 

He would have been out of the country as the shutdown entered its second week and as lawmakers scrambled to break the impasse.
And pictures coming back to Washington of the president in sun-splashed Bali, at a moment when hundreds of thousands of federal workers are on furlough, might have proved embarrassing.
But Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the cancellation "reinforces the concern in the Asia-Pacific region that the talk about a pivot or rebalancing is mostly talk."
"Other than the secretary of defense, no other senior U.S. official seems to be making a habit of visiting Asia," he said.

"So look, there's concern."
Speaking at a news briefing this week with Mr. Najib, Mr. Xi said China was looking forward to elevating its relationship with Malaysia and to promoting more cooperation across the region.
Chinese television covered Mr. Xi's tour extensively, frequently airing images of his glamorous wife, Peng Liyuan. 

"China and (Southeast Asian) countries are linked by the same mountains and rivers and live alongside each other like members in one big family," Mr. Xi said in written answers to questions from reporters in Indonesia and Malaysia, according to a transcript released by China's news agency, Xinhua.
"China appears prosperous and full of self-confidence. As America struggles to resolve its severe political and economic problems, China will have the floor in Bali and Brunei," Mr. Storey said.

Mr. Obama's planned spin around Asia was hotly anticipated. 

The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Bali in particular was billed as an opportunity to observe how much personal chemistry Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi actually developed in June during their informal summit in California.
Mr. Obama's cancellation is a loss of momentum for a U.S.-China relationship that had been moving in "positive directions", said Linda Jakobson, director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy's East Asia Program in Sydney, Australia.
The U.S. "pivot" to Asia, launched in 2011, already has had some successes. 

It helped open up debate over how to resolve territorial disputes in the South China Sea, which is claimed in whole or in part by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia.
To Beijing's chagrin, Washington has pushed for a multilateral process to resolve the conflict, which China would prefer discuss from a position of strength with individual countries. 

The U.S. also has notably expanded military ties with the two countries most frequently at loggerheads with China over the waters, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Washington's move to eliminate many of its economic sanctions against Myanmar as the former military state continues its transition to democracy has helped open up the country to outside investment and reduce its economic dependence on China, analysts say.
The Obama administration's efforts to push forward the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, which involves the U.S. and 11 other countries including Japan, Australia and Chile, were also expected to be a major point of discussion.
The U.S. now ships more exports to the Asia and Pacific region than it does to the European Union or Canada, and hopes that a new trade pact providing more access to Asian markets can be wrapped up by the end of the year. 

China so far isn't involved in those discussions and is working to expand its own free-trade pact in the region that doesn't include the U.S.
Speaking before the White House canceled Mr. Obama's trip, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said in an interview in Bali that the coming TPP discussions would help assess the progress of the trade talks, and that a deal by the end of this year "is ambitious but doable."
Yoshihide Suga, Japan's chief government spokesman, said that government officials attending pre-summit talks agreed to keep up the momentum for wrapping up the trade deal this year. 

Mr. Suga also expressed Japan's hope that the impasse in Washington will be resolved "as soon as possible so that the domestic problem doesn't impact diplomacy."
Scholars in China, however, described Mr. Obama as a victim of domestic politics and said they weren't reading much significance into the White House decision to skip the summits.
"The absence is just a technical problem" and won't have a lasting impact on U.S. influence in Asia, said He Maochun, an international relations specialist at Tsinghua University. 

"China's influence in the Pacific Rim is increasing, but remains very limited."
Still, the fallout from the government shutdown is reviving doubts about the U.S.'s standing in Asia, said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, who heads Indonesian Vice President Boediono's political affairs team.
"There are jokes going around now," she said. 

"'Why did Mr. Obama cancel his trip? Maybe because he can't pay his fuel and hotel bills.' It's not a funny joke."
Ernest Bower at the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington noted that China increased its influence across Asia while the U.S. was preoccupied with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and adopted a much more assertive posture on its territorial claims during the low point of the global financial crisis.
U.S. allies will "have little choice to pursue some level of hedging behavior as the U.S. signals that its political system does not allow for consistent top level engagement in the region,'' Mr. Bower said.

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