Asia Rebalance - Obama Presidency Oral History

At the same time, the Administration sought to engage people across the region as a whole, strengthening alliances with traditional partners like Japan and South Korea, deepening partnerships with emerging powers in South and Southeast Asia, and playing a consistent role in regional institutions like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the East Asia Summit.

Since the campaign, Obama and other officials had argued that trade and economic ties between the United States and Asia would be crucial for the health of the American economy recovering from global financial crisis. In recalling the renegotiation of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, for example, narrators speak about the Administration’s efforts to promote a liberal trade regime in the Asia Pacific, one which would guarantee U.S. firms’ access to Asian export markets while simultaneously combatting anti-competitive Chinese practices like currency manipulation and export restrictions. The centerpiece of this agenda was the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a U.S.-led regional free trade agreement that was signed on February 4, 2016 after years of negotiations, but not ratified by the Senate before the end of Obama’s term. The debate and negotiations over the TPP are discussed from a variety of perspectives in the collection. 

As part of its Rebalance strategy, the Obama Administration sought to establish a greater U.S. military presence in the region. In this context, narrators discuss the U.S. role in responding to an array of regional security challenges that included Chinese aspirations to claim Taiwan, North Korean nuclear provocations, and territorial disputes that grew out of competing land claims and the growing Chinese military presence in the South and East China Seas. Foreign policy and defense officials recall efforts to deepen U.S. military commitments to U.S. allies including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and others, and Obama’s 2011 announcement that 2500 U.S. marines would be based in Darwin, Australia. Narrators also recall corresponding efforts to maintain cooperation with China through bilateral and multilateral diplomacy while dealing with familiar and emergent threats, including cyberattacks.

Reflecting the Obama Administration’s emphasis on climate diplomacy leading to the 2015 Paris Agreement, narrators recall the importance of environmental issues in relations with Pacific states, ranging from major industrial economies to low-lying islands endangered by climate change. Special attention is given to the role of the United States and China—as the two biggest global carbon emitters—in establishing a path to the Paris Agreement, from the fractious 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference to Obama and Xi’s 2013 agreement at Sunnylands to reduce hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and the 2014 U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change. Narrators also discuss climate diplomacy with India, the world’s third largest carbon emitter. After meeting in June 2016 at the White House, Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued a joint statement in which Modi committed to ratifying the Paris Agreement, which his government did in October 2016.

The recognition and defense of universal human rights was a theme that ran through different policies in the Asia Rebalance. Officials recall specific episodes that shed light on how the Obama Administration addressed human rights concerns within the context of broader bilateral or strategic initiatives. These include, for example, missions to free U.S. citizens imprisoned in North Korea and blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng’s efforts to claim asylum in the United States after escaping from a Chinese prison in 2012. The perspectives of non-state movement leaders who looked to the Obama Administration for support on human rights grounds are reflected in interviews with Nathan Law, a leader of the 2014 “Umbrella Movement” in Hong Kong, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader and previously political leader of the people of Tibet, who recounts multiple meetings with Obama and reflects on the relationship established between them. 

Perhaps the most revealing episode regarding human rights in the context of the Administration’s priorities in the Asia Pacific involves its dealings with Myanmar, formerly Burma. In interviews, U.S. officials recall the resumption of diplomatic relations with Myanmar during Obama’s first term. This followed initial steps towards democratization by the military dictatorship, which entailed plans for elections and the freeing of political prisoners, most notably opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. 

Although the Obama Administration welcomed democratization—marked by a visit to the country by Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2012—and Suu Kyi’s election as State Counsellor in 2015, the Administration joined many in the international community in protesting violence against Rohingya Muslims that began in 2016 under the new government. In 2022, the Biden Administration determined that the military’s role in violence against the Rohingya constituted genocide.

The Obama Administration’s commitment to reorienting the U.S. global outlook to the Asia Pacific was underscored by cultural programs, including the 100,000 Strong initiative, setting the goal of having 100,000 American students study in China by 2014, and the 1 Million Strong initiative, announced in 2015, which aimed to reach a goal of 1 million Mandarin Chinese speakers in the United States by 2020. The collection features interviews with two individuals who interacted with such programs: Christina Falcon, who participated as a guide at the American pavilion of the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai and Carrie Tan, a Singaporean legislator who participated in the Young Southeast Asian Leaders initiative.