Author: Nina Hachigian, Center for American Progress

Less than a month into the new Obama administration and the Secretary of State was on the ground in Asia.

Add that to the growing list of acts, symbolic and real, that signal a major departure from the last eight years of American policymaking.

Already, ‘green jobs’ are actually being created, not just debated as a concept, and the Secretary of Energy is a Nobel Prize winning scientist who speaks forcefully about the devastating potential of climate change. Women now enjoy broader rights to sue over unequal pay, millions more American children have access to health insurance, two additional brigades are on their way to Afghanistan and the CIA can no longer torture detainees.

Asia policy is unlikely to undergo as radical a change. But the fact that Secretary Clinton was there on her very first overseas trip when Condolezza Rice didn’t even regularly attend ASEAN summits, certainly shows a different kind of appreciation for the enormous importance of the region to the US.

One possible change in US Asia policy could be an increased emphasis on climate and energy. Trade and the economy, North Korea’s nuclear program, avian flu and the need to develop new Asian security architectures will continue to be critical issues. But America is finally turning the corner on its irresponsible denial of global warming. With that shift, plus the Copenhagen conference in December, will come – I hope – an intense focus on global warming and energy. If handled well, a new Asian partnership on energy issues could put the major fuel importers, China, Japan and the US and major emitters, China and the US, on the same side, all working together on solutions. But the chance for new, vicious political fights to erupt around the costs of reducing emmisions is there too.

Europeans are nervous about America’s renewed attention to Asia. But they needn’t be. Engagement with Asia, over climate and the host of other issues, won’t come at the expense of Brussels. The American diplomatic pie just got a lot larger, and there is enough to go around.

Nina Hachigian is Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.