Barack obama ended a four-country tour of Asia on April 28th with a banquet in Manila. His trip was intended as the latest affirmation of America's vaunted "pivot" to Asia. The pivot-now more often referred to as a "rebalancing"-is perhaps the most memorable foreign-policy idea to emerge from Mr Obama's two-term presidency. But in outline, it seems that his hosts-in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines-took rather more from the visiting American president than they offered up to him. To varying degrees, all four Asian governments were looking for beefed-up military and diplomatic commitments from Mr Obama-in view of the rise of China and, in the case of South Korea and Japan, the threat from North Korea, too. Japan and the Philippines feel most threatened by China. They are both in direct confrontation with an increasingly assertive China over disputed islands and shoals in, respectively, the East China Sea and the South China Sea.
展开▼
