President Bush's Asian trip

Before the visit, Headley had indicated that the main objective was "to show the US commitment to Asia as an area of our interest" and "to indicate clearly that the President knows the United States has an important role to play in both the economic and security challenges in Asia and that he wants to play that role." However, in the wake of setbacks suffered during Bush's recent trip to Latin America, Headley tried to keep the public expectation at the minimum level.

In the first leg of his tour, Bush wanted Japan to lift its two-year ban on US beef imports. Tokyo is likely to take such an action soon in consideration of her own national interest. However, they did not declare their readiness during the visit, as they did not like it to be misinterpreted as having yielded to American pressure. In South Korea, Bush wanted to push forward the concept of free trade at the Annual Summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. The Pacific Rim leaders did not agree to reduce tariffs, and merely agreed to continue with further talks. South Korea even created greater embarrassment for US when they decided to withdraw one-third of their current troops from Iraq.

The high point of the trip was, of course, the visit to China. His meetings with the Chinese President Hu Jinatao and Prime Minister Wen Jintao, however, produced no tangible results. While the Chinese leadership expressed their willingness to speed up the resolution of economic and trade differences with Washington, they made no concessions on the vital questions of granting greater political freedom at home, and on the status of Taiwan. They also made it clear, through their words and actions that they have no intention of yielding to American pressure.

On trade and economic issues, Hu pledged "to gradually achieve balanced trade" between US and China, and reiterated his plans to allow the Chinese currency to float more freely in future, but he offered no plan to achieve any of these two objectives. The Bush Administration had sent a list of twenty-five factories, which were pirating DVDs in China. The Chinese authorities did not indicate whether they would shut down any one of them. They merely announced that they would be waging a vigorous campaign to enforce intellectual property rights.

On human rights issues, Washington had passed on to Beijing a list of Chinese political prisoners before Bush had met Hu on the sideline of the UN Summit in New York two months ago. The Bush administration had hoped that at least some of these prisoners would be released before the arrival of Bush, as has been customary in the past. On the contrary, the Chinese authorities sentenced a Christian pastor and closed down the office of a well-known human rights lawyer.

While Bush was in China, the state security officials stopped and arrested a group of thirty Christian activists outside the Church where Bush had gone for Sunday service. The group member wanted to meet Bush to complain about the lack of political freedom in China. While Secretary of State Rice "quite vociferously" complained about the Chinese crackdown, Bush did not directly raise the issue with Hu. Interestingly enough, despite earlier tough statements aimed at China, political liberalisation or human rights were not at the top of the bilateral agenda, which was dominated by trade and economic issues and the North Korean nuclear programme.

Beijing also gave much less media coverage on state television to Bush's visit than his earlier trip in February 2002 when they had allowed live broadcast of his political speech to university students and a detailed news conference with former President Jiang Zemin. This time the reporters were not even allowed to ask questions during Bush's appearance at a joint news conference with Hu.

The Chinese, however, have learnt to play the capitalist game well, and they knew that the best way to contain American pressure was to dangle the lucrative $ 4 billion deal for the purchase of 70 Boeing aircraft. Even on this issue there was no further progress. The agreement, in principle, reached earlier had envisaged the current offer as a part of a larger deal of China's buying 150 Boeing airplanes from America, but the whole deal has still remained at the preliminary stage. Incidentally, a few years ago the Chinese had also neutralised the European pressure by placing a large order for the purchase of wide-bodied Airbus aircraft.

The US press has expressed its disappointment at the outcome of Bush's visit, which they thought exemplified the "rollback" on China. They pointed out that US has, in the past, always maintained balanced economic, security and political priorities with China, but they alleged that the balance was altered this time. They were disappointed at Bush's "light touch" with Hu who, they felt, was actually taking his country in the opposite direction instead of moving towards his declared policy of "transition to greater freedom".

On his way home after a weeklong visit, Bush paid a short visit to Mongolia, the first American President to do so. His basic objective was to thank the Mongolian leadership for keeping their troops in Iraq. This once again demonstrated that Bush administration would go to any country to retain or enlist new allies in their shrinking "coalition of the willing" in Iraq.

Why did not President Bush reach his desired objectives during the Asian visit? Well, it is clear that Bush's plummeting popularity at home has sharply eroded his ability to exert influence abroad. Only three years ago, the situation was so different when he was imposing his will in various parts of the world. This power is all but gone. It is noteworthy that during his recent trip to Latin America, his adversaries had shot down his proposal for a free trade in the region while his other initiatives are in jeopardy.

Bush administration also failed in other areas recently. They could not convince the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to refer Iran's nuclear activities to Security Council for possible sanction; they met with obstacles in six-country talks to halt North Korea's nuclear build up; and they fought with the European allies on the question of keeping control over global internet. Furthermore, Bush's most loyal ally, Tony Blair, is currently under brutal political cloud at home.

Now there is a growing perception that Washington's capacity in the international arena has been badly eroded by its entanglement in the unending war in Iraq and the sharp division at home. This has made their adversaries like North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela less fearful about any possible military action from the US.

Even their friends try to distance themselves from Bush's ambitious agenda of spreading democracy to Iraq and other countries in the Middle East, and waging a global war against terror. The US forces are badly bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq with no exit routes in sight. At the same time Washington, every now and then, threatens to take fresh military actions against its other adversaries. America's allies feel that the Bush administration, at the moment, may not have the necessary resources or public support to carry out so many military operations at the same time.

Syed Muazzem Ali is a former Foreign Secretary.