By Arun Kumar, iANS,
Washington : US President Barack Obama will continue to give priority to building ties with emerging powers like India, China and Brazil in rebalancing US foreign policy in his second term too.
“It’s not related” to a second term, Obama’s press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Monday citing President’s National Security Advisor Tom Donilon about the approach that the Obama took when he took office in January 2009.
To rebalance US priorities in foreign policy, Obama took “into account the emergence of countries like China and India and Brazil in the way we look strategically at the world, and not to focus solely on one or two regions,” he said.
“More broadly, I think also that he came in determined to re-establish America’s leadership-America’s standing in the world-and feels that great progress has been made in that regard as well,” Carney said.
In a little over two years that he has been in office, Obama has taken “enormous steps: towards overcoming a lot of challenges, “principally the economic ones, but also rebalancing our foreign policy and re-establishing American leadership around the world,” he said.
But to suggest that all the challenges that the US faced when President Obama was sworn into office have been successfully negotiated is simply, obviously, not the case, Carney said.
“And so there’s much work to be done, and not least of which-in fact, most important of which-is the continued need for economic growth and job creation and investment in those areas of our country that will help us compete in the 21st century and win the future,” he said. “That’s his principal, top-line focus.”
The White House spokesman was asked about Obama’s second term priorities after the president launched his bid for re-election with a short video on BarackObama.com using what apparently will be one of his campaign slogans, “It begins with us.”
Obama also sent an e-mail to supporters before officially filing papers for the November 2012 election Monday with the Federal Election Commission.
“We’ve always known that lasting change wouldn’t come quickly or easily. It never does. But as my administration and folks across the country fight to protect the progress we’ve made – and make more – we also need to begin mobilising for 2012, long before the time comes for me to begin campaigning in earnest,” Obama said in his e-mail message.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])