ISAS Insights

US President Barack Obama renewed his dedication to the ‘Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy’ during his successful re-election campaign. The contours of this strategy have started getting into shape with his first post-election foreign visit to the East Asia Summit in Cambodia on 19 November 2012 and his visits to Myanmar and Thailand days earlier. An emerging aspect of this strategy is the deference for democratic partnerships. This deference was visibly and loudly projected during the first-ever US presidential visit to Myanmar where President Obama acknowledged the ongoing democratic reforms there and added that “this remarkable journey has just begun and has much further to go”. This deference for democracy has also been significantly underlined on a relatively quieter but confident note in the declared US “full embrace of the rise of India”. At the Cambodian summit, President Obama, responding to ‘congratulations in person’ from India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said: “India is a big part of my plans”.