Remarking on recent Spanish successes in sports and elsewhere, Steven Stark adds:

Barack Obama recently returned from a celebrated international tour, where he stopped in Germany, France, and England. Alas, it was a political sightseeing trip better suited to the politics of the continent a century ago, before the outbreak of World War I. No Spain, no central Europe, not to mention no East Asia. Obama’s “New World” looked an awful lot like the old one.

Well, I suppose, but think about the foreign and domestic political implications of all this and the amount of time required to pay attention to rising countries and Asian allies.  Visiting Spain would have provoked countless attacks along the lines of “Obama visits Zapatero, who abandoned the war in Iraq and surrendered to terror…just like Obama would!”  These would be hyperbolic, absurd attacks, as the attacks on Zapatero have been, but it would not be the sort of meeting Obama wants to be seen having four months before an election.  If he went to central Europe, which countries would he visit and which ones would he end up skipping (and thus implicitly slighting) in the interests of time?  In terms of the capacity to project power, economic might and population, Britain, France and Germany remain the foremost countries in Europe and, at least in that sense, they are our most important allies in Europe.  East Asia is filled with political landmines, and going there would also draw attention to the rather glaring omission of East Asian issues from all of his relevant foreign policy statements.  If his Russia policy is scanty, his recently stated policy for China could easily be confused for what passes for McCain’s, and his policies for Korea and Japan are essentially unknown.  While it is not in East Asia, India appears nowhere in his major statements, and the extent of his campaign’s references to U.S.-Indian relations is, so far as I know, his campaign’s dismissive description of Hillary Clinton as the Senator for Punjab.  To his credit, Obama prioritized his visits with current U.S. needs and major alliances in mind, but his choice of locations is also a reminder that there are many allies in Asia, including some of our most important long-term trading partners, he has not touched on very much at all in his public remarks.

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