“I stand before you today as president of the most powerful nation on Earth, but recognising that, once, the colour of my skin would have denied me the right to vote,” United States President Barack Obama stated during his historic visit to Myanmar. Obama, the first American leader to visit the mineral El Dorado, albeit underdeveloped, Southeast Asian nation. Obama is clearly no Conquistador. He is neither a Hernán Cortéz nor a Fransisco Pizzaro. The Asia “pivot” is a courting ritual rather than a colonisation ruse. Obama spoke candidly. His was not the sort of elucidation that American presidents are supposed to make on the margins of international summits. In a particularly hallucinogenic homage to democracy activists in Myanmar, Obama's theme stressed that “the wrongdoer is more unfortunate than the wronged” as Plato noted millennia ago. “So that should give you some sense that if our country can transcend its differences, then yours can too,” Obama admonished his Burmese hosts. But Burmese President Thein Sein took it in his stride. Seismic shifts in US foreign policy are currently underway. In spite of the declared rhetoric, the Obama administration is decidedly distancing itself from the Middle East and towards the Far East. America is inching closer to East and Southeast Asia and moving away from its traditional European allies. I guess there must be a flaw in the Korean character that caused K-pop to be picked as the world's most enticing music, the hottest global downloads. Gangnam Style, a K-pop single by Korean artist PSY was released as a hit in July 2012 and has been viewed by a record 826 million viewers on YouTube. Indeed Gangnam Style is by far the most watched video on YouTube. Gangnam Style is a lewd articulation of Korean neologism. Gangnam, being a trendy district of the Korean capital Soul. No more bombs, and no more walking or talking. Let there be only dancing and singing. Relax and have fun. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, himself a Korean national, pronounced Gangnam Style a “force for world peace”. Ask anyone who will be big in 2050 and all you hear is Asia. Gangnam Style defies all preconceptions people have of Asian pop artists. With plenty of hype surrounding Gangnam Style only time will tell whether Korea's PSY will take over planet pop. What is clear is that Obama is convinced that his Asia-Pacific gambit will not fizzle without trace any time soon. And, Asians reciprocated. “I am happy to receive President Obama in my country and in my house,” was Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi's, welcoming remark. The “Pacific President”, as Obama is sometimes dubbed, paid a courtesy call to Myanmar's most famous politician at her Yangon, formerly Rangoon, residence. Obama held his Asian audience spellbound. This was his first foreign tour since his re-election earlier in the month. The tour demonstrates Obama's determination to intensify his diplomatic focus on Asia. “Something is happening to this country that cannot be reversed,” he praised his Burmese hosts. Obama doggedly avoided Naypyidaw, the former military government's showcase capital. His speech at Yangon's University, the scene of violent clashes between students and the Burmese armed forces in the not-so-distant past, reflected his concern for the deplorable human rights record in Myanmar. Obama was especially critical of the upsurge in communal violence between Muslims and Buddhists in the western coastal Burmese Rakhine state and the massacre of Muslim Rohingya and displacement of more than 100,000 people in the area. The US president also criticised the continued armed conflict in the northern Burmese Kachin state. Yet, he conceded that the resource-rich country was moving in the right direction — towards Western-style democracy and the respect for human rights. In Myanmar, Obama warned against what he termed the “incitement to violence” against the Muslim Rohingya. The bigger question is whether Obama has the stature to accomplish the “pivot” to Asia in his second term in office. To find a Burmese opposition figure with the clout and comparable gravitas of Aung San Suu Kyi is a tough call. Her National League for Democracy is experiencing painful teething problems. The party split into rival factions, but Burma might be the ideal nation in transition for Obama to visit even as surely as the surreal city of Seoul the perfect setting for PSY. Asian nations are turning up their thermostats as the American superpower beckons. The primary locus of American policy towards Asia is trade and commerce. Still many columnists find it hard to believe that Obama would venture “westwards” from an American Pacific perspective on his first official trip abroad during his second term in office to Southeast Asia. Why did they think that? Presumably they forgot that President Obama himself spent crucial years of his childhood in Indonesia. So why has the Far East replaced the Middle East as the focus of American attention overseas? Why is Washington suddenly fascinated with Asia? And, does America fear a resurgent Asia? I wish the answer were a resounding yes but, for several reasons, it is no. Asia is too fragmented a continent to pose a direct threat to America. So what does all this mean for American policy in Asia? This metamorphosis in American foreign policy concerns suggests two lessons. The economy counts. And, politically troubled backwaters don't. Politicians in America make noises about Asia's economic prospects and rising fortunes. In Asia, however, they tend to be more circumspect. Not so, however, in the case of Thailand's stunning Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawata — easily the world's most gorgeous leader. Asia is on a moving carpet and it is travelling the right way, fast. Consider America's predicament. Europe, it appears, is in irretrievable decline. Asia, in sharp contrast is on the rise. The Chinese Dragon must not be left to lurk in the shadows and devour the rest of Asia. There exists a middle ground on which the East and West will meet. The irony is that America is increasingly failing to see itself as the “West”, but rather as part of the wider “Pacific Rim” nations. Obama's final destination in Asia was to stop in Cambodia to attend the East Asia summit in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. The US leader met with Cambodia's astute Prime Minister Hun Sen, the formidable Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Tan Dung. Behind the scenes, China loomed large. Most Asian nations fear China's rising star, both as an economic and a military power. China claims almost the entire South China Sea. Regional maritime security was high on Obama's list of priorities in Phnom Penh. Beijing has so far not flexed its muscles and has diligently avoided direct confrontation with its neighbours. However, China is one of the world's largest consumers of energy and importers of hydrocarbons in particular. The South China Sea has boundless oil and natural gas reserves and extensive fish stocks. What is highly symbolic of Obama's Asian tour was that it spotlighted relatively small nations. Japan and South Korea are likely to be the key US allies in Asia for the time being. These two economic dynamos are dependent on Middle Eastern oil and are likely to continue to be so for years to come. Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, on the other hand, are oil producers in their own right. China and the US are the world's largest mutual trading partners. While trade entrepots such as Hong Kong and Singapore are crucial to Washington's strategic thinking, the focus of Obama's tour was clearly the developing nations of Southeast Asia and not the economic powerhouses. China is still officially classified as a developing country, even though it is America's largest foreign creditor, which gives it both leverage and obvious economic clout over America. Even as the Middle East is “gonna get medieval” as some American pundits are pontificating, the Asia-Pacific region as exemplified in Gangnam Style insinuates itself unto the world stage. Don't be fooled by the playfulness of PSY, surreptitiously Gangnam Style addresses serious themes about Asia's sense of idiosyncrasy.
