April 23, 2014
US President Barack Obama’s current tour of some of the Asia-Pacific’s foremost states freshly underscores the region’s continuing importance for Washington. Reassuring its allies in the region of US support and succour in times of crisis is apparently one of Obama’s primary aims in visiting South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Malaysia, but indicating that the US could square-up fully to China’s rising economic and military presence in the region may be a closely connected reason for the wide-ranging tour as well.