A small Japanese town on the coast of the Sea of Japan had a special reason to celebrate the election victory of Barack Obama. The name of the town is Obama.

After the American elections, the mayor of the town expressed the hope “that Obama would visit Obama”. Local business people expect that their town will make it to the tourism map and profit from a surge in Japanese and foreign visitors. Neither China nor South Korea can claim to have a town bearing the name of the next American president.
Westerners tend to forget that the United States is not only an Atlantic but also a Pacific power. During the last 10 to 15 years, particularly after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the “iron curtain”, Washington’s focus has been increasingly on the Asia Pacific region.

The re-emergence of China and India as major players in the world economy underpinned this new orientation. It was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who brought communist China back into the world. Bush senior had a strong understanding of and inclination for the Middle Kingdom. president Clinton, with his historic visit in 1998, gave China a lot of face, even at the cost of snubbing Washington’s closest ally in Asia, Japan.

It was with much relief that Tokyo welcomed the election of Bush junior in 2000. president George W Bush was to stress that in its foreign and security policies the United States had to focus on its friends and allies. One member of Bush’s famous “axis of evil” was an East Asian country, North Korea. This meant that after a distinctly pro-Chinese tilt during the Clinton administration, Japan reverted to favour after George W Bush occupied the White House.

Once the maverick of Japanese politics, Junichiro Koizumi, became prime minister, American-Japanese relations became very close. Koizumi, who led the Japanese government from 2001 to 2006, was a very reliable partner of George W Bush. He even made the Japanese Self-Defence Forces (SDF) provide logistic support to the American forces in Iraq and to the coalition forces in Afghanistan. Never before had units of the SDF been employed “out of area”, that is, outside the territorial waters of the Japanese archipelago. Although these were not combat units, the significance of this support was not lost on the Bush administration in Washington.

During the current economic crisis, the world has had to realise that Asia is the key player to get things back on the rails. Nothing will work without the collaboration of India, China and Japan. Today, Beijing controls the world’s largest foreign exchange reserves, almost twice the amount that has been accumulated by the Bank of Japan.

Nevertheless, when it comes to overseas investment, the Japanese are far, far more important than the Chinese. In fact, Japan is the world’s (and that means also the United States’s) most important creditor. There can be no doubt that president-elect Obama has to take note of these new global realities. The question that is at present being mulled in Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo, concerns new possible shifts in US policies towards the Far East.

It is an old Washingtonian wisdom that very early on in a new administration the tone, the general direction, some might even say the degree of tilt is being set. This is true for the domestic scene as well as for the international presence. Therefore, East Asian capitals, like all other capitals, will observe carefully the very first steps of Obama’s presidency.

While with North Korea, Obama inherits a dangerous crisis spot, in some respects he is luckier than his predecessor. At present, the relations between China and Japan seem to be in a thaw. The same holds true for the situation across the Straits of Taiwan. However, nothing can be taken for granted.

Beijing will want a clear affirmation from the new administration that it is the pre-eminent power not only in East Asia, but in Asia as a whole, if Washington wants any kind of order in international relations. After a lull of some two hundred years, the Chinese have found their old glory as a major world power. This makes them prickly and prone to probe every step of Washington, looking for possible signs if it is an insult to China or not.

On the other side, there is also certain prickliness on the part of the Japanese. They still are the pre-eminent economic power in East Asia and will remain so for the duration of Obama’s presidency. However, Japan is facing serious demographic problems and suffers from a rapidly ageing population. Therefore, Tokyo looks warily at its boisterous neighbour, China. Old rivalries can suddenly resurface and put Obama in a spot — whether to side with the most important Asian ally, Japan, or to accommodate the emerging world power, China?

This writer is the Far East correspondent of Swiss daily Neue Zurcher Zeitung