Southeast Asia

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.