President Obama is off to Asia for a ten-day drip designed to promote U.S. commercial and security interests. After the “shellacking” his party took at the polls, who can blame him for wanting to get out of town? Actually, this trip was planned way before the election, so we can’t really read too much into it except maybe to say that the top Democrat is off to visit the world’s largest democracy. Besides visiting India he will also visit Indonesia and then South Korea, for the G20 conference, and then on to Japan for the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference. In the following video Strobe Talbott and Martin Indyk discuss the commercial aspect of the trip (and isn’t it interesting that after the midterm election the White House has recast the trip as an effort to boost exports and open markets?) and one major bit of leverage the U.S. has to bargain with – U.S. support for an Indian seat on the the U.N. Security Council. There are good reasons for withholding that support (our precarious relationship with India’s archenemy Pakistan, for one) so it will be interesting to see how far Obama is willing to go to secure those new markets…and new jobs.
