Homi Kharas

The damage of [President Obama's canceled Southeast Asia trip] is not irreparable. At the end of the day, these are just meetings. I think the question is more one of credibility – that credibility, trust and confidence in the U.S. ability to engage on a sustained basis. That’s a difficult thing to try to recover once that sense of the guarantee that the U.S. will always be there starts to erode.

One can never tell when one bump will be the bump that will really knock you off-kilter. In the grand scheme of things, I think [President Obama's canceled Southeast Asia trip] is a small bump, but it is nevertheless a bump.

The whole objective of the pivot was to try to say that the U.S. views Asia as a really important partner and will continue to devote high-level political attention, but what’s been happening is that there are other demands on [President Obama's] time. From the perception of Asia it raises the question, ‘Maybe they want to, but can they in practice?'