In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

President Barack Obama took the oath of office this week and acknowledged the complex roster of foreign policy challenges that will land on his desk in the Oval Office. We at The Asia Foundation are asking what America’s role in Asia will be. We asked that question over the past year in a series of high-level, closed door meetings with the world’s top Asian and American policy experts. America’s Role in Asia: Asian and American Views is a volume of the concrete, candid recommendations that came out of those meetings. The American co-chairs of the project, Michael H. Armacost and Stapleton J. Roy, laid it out this way in their overview:

“What then should be the key features of a plausible U.S. strategy toward Asia? The starting point must be a willingness to accord Asia the attention its intrinsic importance to us demands. After all, Asia contains over half the world’s population, and six of its ten largest countries. In Asia, we run our largest and most persistent deficits. It produces more than 30 percent of global exports, and controls a much larger share of the world’s savings pool, which we tap to finance our trade deficits and offset our puny national savings rate. Asia also contains the three countries”Indonesia, Pakistan, and India”with the world’s largest Muslim populations. These are ample reasons to pay more attention to Asia and to give our policies in the region a higher priority in the next administration.”

Read what Asia wants from the next U.S. president and specific recommendations for the new Administration in America’s Role in Asia, where you can view or download the full report.