Hey folks,
Back in 2005, McKinsey Quarterly reported this. Securing Asia's energy future As Asia's appetite for energy surges, the desire of the region's leaders to ensure a reliable flow of reasonably priced oil and natural gas will also intensify. If they fail, Asia's fast-growing economies could stumble. A race is now under way—between China and India, in particular—to buy energy reserves in such far-flung places as Iran, Russia, and Sudan.
The magnitude of Asia's future energy needs explains this urgency: the region's share of global consumption will nearly double in the next 20 years, to about 48 percent for oil and 22 percent for natural gas. By 2010, the region's oil consumption will surpass North America's. Such rapid growth has led world energy markets to their most critical juncture in more than two decades: today's tight supply and hefty prices could conceivably spark an energy boom and bust like the one that shook the world economy in the 1980s.
Imagine what we could do if we were to be able to participate in this with our OWN resources. Then again, if they do, which they are near now, surpass us in their Energy needs, that would be that Supply and Demand would then shift to THEM and in which case, Raise costs for all.
Then you have to look at the possibility of new and tighter relationships being formed with our LONG time Allies and the Extremist Governments that already do not like us that much. We are losing Allies all over the place, thanks to Obama.
As a matter of fact, according to AOL News - Obama confronts an Asia reshaped by China's rise By CHARLES HUTZLER, AP
BEIJING -Days after coming to power in September, Japan's new prime minister broached forming a new East Asian trading bloc with rival China — one that would exclude the United States.
Some in Washington took it as a snub from the nation that has been America's rock in Asia for decades. Even more, Tokyo's new rhetoric underscored how China's rapid rise to power is challenging Washington's once-dominant sway in the region.
Thank you Obama. "No country is greater than any other. We are all Citizens of the World." Blah, blah, blah.
This is the reality President Barack Obama confronts as he departs Thursday for his first Asia trip, perhaps his most challenging overseas journey yet. He'll find a region outgrowing a half-century of U.S. supremacy and questioning America's relevance to its future. More so than Obama's previous foreign trips, this nine-day, four-country tour has the president on something like a salvage mission.
The trip also comes at a delicate time for Obama at home.
You see, Obama is going to try to fix what Bush messed up. NOPE! He is going to try to bring back the TRUST that they had WITH Bush. This piece admits it in a second.
He is wrestling with one of the toughest decisions of his 10-month presidency, a war strategy for Afghanistan, {Our men and women are DYING at record high numbers. SEND MORE TROOPS!} and is urging Congress to approve his biggest domestic priority, health care. {Socialistic take over of one Sixth of the US Economy}
Those pressing concerns make it notable that he is spending so much time away — a sign of Asia's importance to the U.S. and the need to tend to relationships there without delay — though he put off his original departure by a day over the weekend because of Thursday's deadly shooting spree at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. Obama will speak to U.S. troops in Alaska and South Korea, with his much-awaited decision on more troops for the Afghanistan war probably still pending.{Idiot}
Obama stops first in Japan, a traditional U.S. stalwart now looking toward closer engagement with China and the rest of Asia. He makes a two-city stop in China, where leaders proud of their country's one-generation leap to prosperity seek a bigger say in shaping the region's affairs.
The president also visits Singapore for a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders, where his participation is being cut by a day, and wraps up his trip in South Korea. Those countries are having to accommodate a more muscular China while wondering whether a U.S. weakened by financial crisis is in decline.
Thank you Obama for the out of control, FAILED Spending.
"Asia is changing very fast. It's undergoing a fundamental transition," said Huang Jing, a Chinese politics expert at the National University of Singapore. "This is not the kind of Asia or Asia-Pacific of America's traditional understanding. That old understanding is that America is dominant but friendly to the developing nations and Japan, America's perpetual ally, is No. 1. Asia is now totally different and China is the No. 1, not Japan."
Throughout his travels, starting with a scene-setting speech in Japan, Obama is expected to deliver a message of staunch U.S. commitment to old friends and newer partners alike, promising to help keep what for decades has been one of the fastest growing regions of the world secure and thriving, according to U.S. officials.
In Tokyo, he's likely to call for a reinvigorated alliance with Japan while insisting that new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama live up to a pending agreement on reconfiguring U.S. military bases. He's scheduled to take part in Beijing in the kind of pomp that Chinese leaders crave as a sign of respect, but also plans an event with Chinese university students aimed at telegraphing U.S. values to a broader Chinese audience.
On the sidelines of the gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders, he'll hold a first-ever summit with Southeast Asia's 10-nation alliance, a grouping whose economies are increasingly tied to a growing China but still are anxious about Chinese power.
Included in that meeting will be Myanmar's leader — the first such meeting between a U.S. president and the head of a repressive government formerly shunned by Washington, though now part of a new outreach by the Obama administration.
Throughout, issues like North Korea's and Iran's nuclear programs are likely to be raised repeatedly, though little concrete progress is expected.
While popular in some parts of the region, Obama does not have the rock-star appeal in Asia that he has in Europe and elsewhere. He will have to overcome strong suspicions among Asian leaders that he is more concerned about domestic battles over health care and the economy than about matters like freer trade that are so crucial to Asian nations and U.S. businesses.
He IS!
Obama comes to Asia "bringing absolutely nothing to the table" on trade, said Michael Green, a White House Asia adviser during the Bush administration and now an analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Without American leadership on trade, the fear is that the U.S. will be left behind while other nations roar ahead with their own agreements, Green said.
"There is a risk that he will come to Asia for just a star turn and photo opportunities while reserving his strength for other battles. But more is needed and should be expected of him," Simon Tay of the Singapore Institute for International Affairs said.
What you mean a Smile and a well delivered pre-written Speech will not be enough?
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration gained a reputation in Asia for distraction and an overemphasis on security. Meanwhile, China has supplanted the U.S. as the top or leading trading partner of Japan, South Korea and the ASEAN nations. The Chinese economy, a decade ago only slightly larger than Italy's, is on track to next year surpass Japan's, the world's No. 2.
Chief among Obama's goals on the trip will be to make "vividly clear to the peoples of Asia that the U.S. is here to stay in Asia," Jeffrey Bader, Obama's top Asia adviser, said at a public event in Washington on Friday. "As Asia continues to grow and as new groupings and structures take shape, the U.S. will be a player and participant on the ground floor, not a distant spectator."
In Japan, where Obama and his election inspired the public, it looks like the president will have his most difficult stop.
Yup. Because now THEY are seeing him for who and what he really is as well.
Prime Minister Hatoyama won election on an Obama-like message of change. But he's begun rethinking the U.S.-Japan alliance in which Tokyo has often felt itself the junior partner. He proposed the East Asian community that initially excluded the U.S., though he has since sidestepped the issue.
His government plans to end Japan's Indian Ocean refueling mission that supports U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
Thank you Obama.
His review of the agreement on basing 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan has caused particular tension, chiefly over relocating Futenma Marine air field on Okinawa. The U.S. has agreed to a more remote location on the island while Hatoyama has suggested moving the forces off the island. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month demanded Tokyo not put off resolving the issue until next year as Hatoyama has hinted.
In China, sizable distrust over trade tensions, Tibet and other human rights issues and Beijing's robust military buildup are likely to be papered over.
The Obama administration has tried to set a more constructive, cooperative tone for relations, calling Beijing a needed partner in tackling global issues like the economic downturn and climate change. The governments have identified clean energy as ripe for cooperation.
Chief among Obama's tasks in Beijing will be to establish the kind of trust that President Hu Jintao had with George W. Bush, according to Chinese scholars. China reacted angrily to recent U.S. moves to impose punitive tariffs to stem surging imports of low-cost Chinese-made tires, seeing it as reneging on Obama's promise earlier this year not to resort to protectionism during the economic crisis.
Folks, once again we see a Child, Obama, PLAYING President and doing it BADLY. All he cares about is his agenda here. All he cares about is OUR own Government taking over OUR own Country. All he cares about is Obamacare, Cap and Tax, which WILL effect more than just us as well, and taken even more control of our and OTHERS Economies with the nonsensical Global Warming Bunk.
Others see what Obama is doing. Other do not like nor trust what Obama is doing. What happen here in America, effects ALL that deal with America. So whatever the out come, as you can see, others are seeking alternatives. We DO have to deal with our issues, no doubt about it, but if we forget the rest of the World, the rest of the World will forget about us. With no means to take care of our own basic energy needs, WE will be the one that loses.
Peter
Sources:
AOL News - Obama confronts an Asia reshaped by China's rise
McKinsey Quarterly - Securing Asia's energy future
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