“America’s security and prosperity are closely and increasingly linked to the Asia Pacific,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said recently in Honolulu, Hawaii, emphasizing that was why President Barack Obama began “the rebalance to Asia” in 2009, and has asked him to “redouble” the efforts towards Asia in “the next two and half years.”
Secretary Kerry focused on four opportunities that the United States embraces in the Asia-Pacific region: creating sustainable economic growth, powering a clean energy revolution, promoting regional cooperation, and empowering people.
“These important opportunities can and should be realized through a rules-based regional order . . . that [is] reinforced by institutions,” he said. “We support this approach . . . because it encourages cooperative behavior . . . fosters regional integration . . . [and] ensures that all countries, big and small . . . have a say in how we work together on shared challenges.”
This vision, the Secretary added, that “the underlying reason that so many countries in Asia choose to work with the United States.”
How can this shared vision be realized?
Secretary Kerry voiced that today, a nation’s interests and the well-being of its people are advanced not just by troops or diplomats…they’re advanced by entrepreneurs, by chief executives of companies, by the businesses that are good corporate citizens, by the workers that they employ, by the students that they train, and the shared prosperity that they create. He continued by reinforcing that “we are working with partners across the Asia-Pacific to maintain and raise standards as we expand trade and investment by pursuing a comprehensive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.”
The United States is ambitious about these ongoing opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region: completing the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, creating sustainable growth, powering a clean energy revolution, managing regional rivalries by promoting cooperation, and empowering people from all walks of life.
“This is a region whose countries can and should come together, because there is much more that unites us than divides us. This is a region that can and should meet danger and difficulty with courage and collaboration,” Secretary Kerry said. “We are determined to deliver on the strategic and historic opportunities that we can create together.”
