(Note: This commentary originally appeared in The Honolulu Advertiser on Nov. 8, 2009.)

This week President Obama begins his first trip to Asia as the U.S. head of state. His visit to Singapore for the annual APEC meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders and additional stops in Japan, China and South Korea offer an opportunity for the president to give further dynamism to America’s relationships with this vital part of the world.

In visiting Asia, Mr. Obama has many assets to draw upon. Although his adult experience in Asia is relatively limited, he is the first U.S. president to have actually lived in the region and to have a genuine Asia-Pacific orientation from his earliest years. He is widely popular in the region, especially his boyhood home of Indonesia, where according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, positive images of the United States climbed to 63 percent in 2009 from 37 percent last year.

Obama’s way to the region has also been paved by two successful visits by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who in February chose Asia for her first overseas trip as the top U.S. diplomat, and in July stopped by a meeting of regional foreign ministers in Thailand, where she signed a Treaty of Amity and Cooperation with the ASEAN nations.

The president also inherited a quite successful Asia policy from his predecessor.  The new administration has added a few twists, expanding high level dialogues with China, opening a dialogue with Burma, and taking a more relaxed attitude, at least so far, toward North Korea. Human rights rhetoric has been toned down under Obama, but the basic parameters of U.S. Asia policy have remained the same.

The APEC meeting provides an opportunity for the president to meet again with some of the key world leaders he has already met twice this year at G-20 events, and to connect for the first time with others. The economy remains the number one item of the APEC agenda, with a need to successfully exit the temporary recovery packages now in place and to rebalance both government spending and trans-Pacific economic imbalances.  

Also in Singapore, the President will be having the first-ever summit of an American president with the heads of ASEAN, the Southeast Asian grouping that is now being heavily courted by China, Japan, India and Europe. A summit had been promised two years ago by President Bush, but never carried out.

The bilateral visits that comprise the rest of the Asia trip show respect for the three major economies of Northeast Asia – China, Japan, and South Korea