President Obama traveled to Phnom Penh to invite Asian countries (excluding China) to join a new Trans-Pacific Parternship. The only problem? No one joined.
It is symptomatic of the national condition of the United States that the worst humiliation ever suffered by it as a nation, and by a US president personally, passed almost without comment last week. I refer to the November 20 announcement at a summit meeting in Phnom Penh that 15 Asian nations, comprising half the world's population, would form a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership excluding the United States.President Barack Obama attended the summit to sell a US-based Trans-Pacific Partnership excluding China. He didn't. The American led-partnership became a party to which no-one came.
Instead, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, will form a club and leave out the United States.
President Obama is a national embarrassment. The reason he's so popular internationally is that most of the world is pleased to see America humiliated and weak.
