To fill his empty chair, Obama dispatched US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Her activities before and in Vladivostok, however, focused more on security and political issues, which is the essence of the US pivot to Asia-Pacific. Her talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov centered on "deep disagreements" on Syria, and her meetings with several Association of Southeast Asia Nations leaders "underscored her interest" in the South China Sea, according to US officials.
She really tried to patch up the "annoying" territorial dispute between the ROK and Japan, which is threatening to torpedo the US' pivot to Asia aimed at China, even though Tokyo's territorial disputes with Seoul and Beijing share the same roots in Japanese imperialism.
Putin only had a "brief conversation" with Clinton, while holding "deep" and formal meetings with most of the AEPC participants. Perhaps Obama's substitute reminded him of four years ago when as a Democrat presidential candidate, Clinton competed with Republican candidate John McCain to be the first to see only "KGB" in Putin's eyes.
Clinton's Vladivostok stopover may well be her last trip to the region as US secretary of state. Despite her enormous capability and higher-than-Obama popularity at home (66 percent versus 44 percent), the Asia-Pacific she will be leaving behind is perhaps more tense and even more dangerous than the "good old days" of the George W. Bush administration. It seems that any place the US pivots to becomes more problematic.
It is not clear if Obama anticipated all of this as he apparently "outsourced" not just his APEC seat, but also US foreign policy to his "super" secretary of state.
It remains to be seen how the two "extensions" of the West - Russia through land and the US across oceans - pivot to Asia, which will be different whether they compete, cooperate, collude or collide.
The author is a senior fellow of the Shanghai Association of American Studies.
(China Daily 09/15/2012 page5)
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