Dan Simpson: The right kind of pivot in foreign policy

The U.S. should avoid military involvement in East Asia

December 4, 2013

By Dan Simpson

If one accepts the questionable assumption that the United States needs to be actively involved in some external part of the world to be happy and successful, President Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia, away from the expensively war-prone Middle East, makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is for the United States to concern itself militarily with some of Asia’s tired, centuries-old rivalries and petty scraps. I put squarely in that category the current mini-duel between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu pieces of rock sticking out of the East China Sea and the U.S. military response (a B-52 flyover) to China’s claim that it controls the air space above them.

Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador, is a columnist for the Post-Gazette (dsimpson@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1976).

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