Analysis: Asia Pacific is key to Obama’s final year foreign policy focus

US President Barack Obama has given his eighth and final State of the Union address.

Brought forward because of the beginning of the forthcoming presidential primary election season to find his successor, the speech had a strong international focus setting out an ambitious foreign agenda for “American leadership” in 2016.

With the Republicans controlling Congress, and just a year left in office, Mr Obama can potentially have significantly more impact on foreign than domestic policy in 2016, and has at least five high profile trips already in the diary to Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Americas.  This includes visits to Japan in May for the G7 summit; and Laos and China in September for the G20 summit. 

The White House is also exploring the possibilities of historic stopovers in Cuba and Vietnam, too, (with perhaps a stopover in New Zealand). 

Thus, in the next 12 months, Mr Obama is seeking to consolidate his presidential legacy in areas ranging from countering so-called Islamic State in the Middle East and international terrorism more generally, finalising major economic trade deals with Asia-Pacific and Europe, and consolidating last year’s diplomatic breakthroughs with Iran and Cuba. 

Of all these arenas, Asia-Pacific stands out with the Obama team wanting to secure congressional passage of the recently concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with 11 other markets -- Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam -- encompassing around 40% of world GDP. 

This would be a massive victory for the White House, not least as TPP also includes a significant geopolitical component too inasmuch as it will help reorient and lock-in US international policy toward the Asia-Pacific region (the so-called “Asia pivot”) and other strategic high-growth markets. 

Setting the rules for trade
As Mr Obama noted, the TPP “will open markets, protect workers and the environment and advance American leadership in Asia… "with TPP, China doesn’t set the rules in that region, we do”. 

A significant part of this agenda is reassuring allies in Asia-Pacific about US commitments to the region in the face of a rising China. 

This diplomatic charm offensive will also be much in evidence too with Asian allies at one of Obama’s first major events outside Washington this year – a February 15-16 trip to California to host the 10 national leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

The Middle East is another region that will attract significant presidential focus in 2016. And a top mission for Mr Obama here is helping to bed in last year’s landmark Iranian nuclear deal. 

This not only opens up the possibility of a wider warming in bilateral ties, but also consolidating the president’s broader desire to enhance global nuclear security.  As well as inter-state nuclear diplomacy, the administration has created the Nuclear Security Summit process, the next heads of state meeting of which will be in Washington this northern spring, to counter nuclear terrorism which the president has described as the “most immediate and extreme threat to global security."

In the Middle East, Mr Obama re-emphasised his intention to pursue the further depletion of so-called Islamic State’s territorial foothold and capabilities in Iraq and Syria. 

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, one poll in December found 60% of the US populace disapprove of Mr Obama's handling of the fight against Islamic State, and he will seek to double down in 2016 on seeking a political transition in Damascus that could lead to a more unified regional effort.

On the counter-terrorism front, the Obama team is also intent on stabilising the national unity government in Afghanistan, headed by new President Ashraf Ghani and de facto-Prime Minister Abdullah Abdullah.  To this end, the White House recently announced the present US force of some 10,000 troops will remain in place for much if not all of 2016 in the face of significant new Taliban insurgency.

Agenda for Europe
In Europe, Obama has a multi-track security and economic agenda.  On the latter front, a top priority is finalisation in 2016 of negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the US and the 28-member European Union, a combined economic bloc accounting for around 50% of global GDP. 

The president will travel to Poland in May for a NATO summit meeting which will showcase the security dimension of his European agenda.  While the last months of 2015 appeared to see the conflict between Russia and Ukraine move toward stalemate, recent weeks have seen it potentially heating up again, with Moscow widely reported as being responsible for cyber-hacking that resulted in a series of major power outages in Ukraine.

The fact that Obama’s presidency still has considerable foreign policy potency is underscored by the fact that several of his two-term predecessors have secured significant international achievements in the last year of their periods in the White House. 

For instance, Democratic President Bill Clinton, who in his last year of office in 2000 also faced a Republican Congress, won landmark congressional approval in October 2000 for so-called Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China setting the stage for Beijing to join the World Trade Organisation about a year afterward.

Similarly, Republican President Ronald Reagan, who faced a Democrat Congress in his last year of office in 1988, secured a number of significant international achievements, including at a key summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow that helped bring an end to the Cold War.  Indeed, in November 1989, only 10 months after Mr Reagan left office, the Berlin Wall came down, paving the way for the collapse of Soviet Communism.

Taken overall, Mr Obama has an ambitious foreign agenda for 2016 and is intent on further major victories. Key potential achievements, including finalisation of major economic trade deals with Europe and Asia-Pacific, and bedding in diplomatic breakthroughs with Iran and Cuba, will help define his presidential legacy. 

Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS (the Centre for International Affairs, Diplomacy and Strategy) at the London School of Economics