Obama looks overseas

WASHINGTON (AP):In his first trip abroad since the summer heat of the re-election campaign, United States President Barack Obama will seek to reinforce American influence in Southeast Asia in spite of the large shadow cast by China.

He will become the first US president to visit Myanmar, an appreciation for its steps toward democratisation, as well as Cambodia.

The four-day trip, which started yesterday, will be the president's fourth to Asia.

It comes amid unusual challenges at home, including opening discussions with lawmakers about dealing with the nation's fiscal health and a sex scandal that's roiling his national security team.

Still, Obama is eager to return to foreign policy matters that were put on the back burner by the campaign.

The unprecedented visit to Myanmar, also known as Burma, gives the trip a historic edge while shoring up a strategic regional goal sought with stops in Thailand and in Cambodia, where he will attend the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh.

The Asia trip underscores Obama's efforts to establish the US as an Asia-Pacific power, a world view defined by 21st century geopolitics, but also by Obama's personal identity as America's first Pacific president.

Obama was born in Hawaii.

"Continuing to fill in our pivot to Asia will be a critical part of this president's second term and ultimately his foreign policy legacy," deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said ahead of the trip.

In choosing this time to travel - the East Asia Summit was scheduled some time ago - Obama is taking advantage of his electoral success, and his international counterparts are bound to be in a congratulatory mood.

But Obama also heads out at a sensitive time for the US economy.

Only six weeks remain before automatic tax increases and deep spending cuts kick in - they create the so-called fiscal cliff - that could set back the economy if Obama and congressional Republicans don't find agreement on a deficit-reduction plan.

Stephen Hadley, national security adviser to President George W. Bush, cautioned that failure by Washington to resolve the fiscal cliff could signal to emerging economies that the democratic system is flawed.

"That's why countries are flirting with this notion that maybe China has it right: state capitalism plus keeping your people in line," he recently told the World Affairs Councils of America. "That is very destructive."

But China also has problems with corruption and a sluggish economy.

"Burma is sending a powerful signal that people are rejecting the notion that an authoritarian model is the key to development," Rhodes said.

The precarious nature of the budget negotiations is not lost on Asian countries, and Obama is likely to find himself on the sidelines offering reassurances to other leaders that the US will not plunge over a fiscal cliff.