http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/world/asia/rodrigo-duterte-south-china-sea-obama-snub-east-asia-summit.html 2016-09-07 02:51:59 Bad Luck and Worse Manners Tarnish Obama’s Asia Trip The trip brought progress, but it was marred by a chaotic arrival ceremony in China and an ugly personal outburst from the Philippine president. === VIENTIANE, Laos — On his final visit to Asia as president this week, Mr. Obama had intended to confront America’s wartime legacy in Laos and to reaffirm his strategic pivot to the region. Like all presidential trips, it has been meticulously planned to showcase achievements: a climate-change partnership with China and vigorous American engagement with China’s neighbors. But in four messy days, the president lost the clear message choreographed by his advance staff. There was the chaotic arrival ceremony in China, in which missing aircraft stairs unexpectedly trumped the theme of On Tuesday, the White House scrambled to limit the fallout from skipping a meeting with Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines’ president. Mr. Obama pulled the plug after hearing that Mr. Duterte had unleashed a profane diatribe against him, threatening to repeat it to Mr. Obama’s face if he dared ask him about Mr. Obama is dealing with other headwinds, not least that he is a lame-duck leader in the last five months of his term. Back home, his struggles are viewed through the unforgiving lens of election-year politics. Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee, tweeted that the Chinese snubbed Mr. Obama and that Mr. Duterte called him a “ ‘son of a whore.’ Terrible!” For a president eager to burnish his legacy, the trip has in fact yielded progress on several fronts, most notably climate change. But the miscues illustrate how poor planning, or even plain bad luck, can undermine a president’s performance abroad. Worse, the dispute with Mr. Duterte carries genuine risks for the United States, given the sensitive role of the Philippines as an American treaty ally that is engaged in an increasingly dangerous standoff with Beijing over Mr. Rhodes insisted that the alliance between the United States and the Philippines was “rock solid”; the two countries work together on a range of issues, from drug interdiction to counterterrorism. He said it was possible that Mr. Obama might run into Mr. Duterte anyway, since the two are attending a meeting of the Hillary Clinton said Mr. Obama’s decision to cancel the meeting was “exactly the right choice.” She said the president was likely to raise concerns about extrajudicial killings of alleged drug dealers, “and when the president of the Philippines insulted our president, it was appropriate in a very low-key way to say, ‘Sorry, no meeting.’ ” Mr. Duterte seemed For Mr. Obama, it was an unseemly distraction from what he hoped would be a somber day of remembrance and reconciliation. The first president to visit Laos, Mr. Obama came with a pledge to double American aid, to $30 million a year over three years, to help Laotians find unexploded bombs in their forests and fields. The United States dropped more than two million tons of explosives on this country during its secret war from 1964 to 1973, a legacy Mr. Obama said too few Americans understood. “As one Laotian said, the ‘bombs fell like rain,’ ” he said to a polite audience at the Lao National Cultural Hall. There was no evidence that Mr. Duterte’s tiff with Mr. Obama mattered much to Laotians. But it could matter more to Philippine-American relations than Mr. Rhodes’s reassuring words suggest. Mr. Duterte appears determined to carve out a more independent foreign policy than his reliably pro-American predecessor, The United States worries that China will use its influence to pressure its neighbors into agreements over disputed reefs and shoals throughout the South China Sea that could eventually hinder the freedom of navigation for American ships. Mr. Rhodes said the United States would give the Philippines leeway to negotiate an agreement with China, with the important caveat that it adhere to international law. That is a message Mr. Obama would likely have given Mr. Duterte in person. “We should prepare for a wild ride since the constantly changing outbursts of President Duterte undermine the stability of the government’s foreign policy, including U.S.-Philippine relations,” Ramon Casiple, head of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform in Manila. The diatribe against Mr. Obama, he said, was “kneejerk as an outburst, but calculated to produce a certain breathing space for negotiations with China.” Mr. Obama had his own awkwardness with the Chinese when he arrived at a As with the Philippine affair, administration officials said the airport scene would have no spillover effect. Mr. Obama himself described the visit as “extraordinarily productive,” noting that he and President And yet, administration officials showed delight in the fact that when Mr. Obama left Hangzhou on Monday evening, the Chinese moved a shiny staircase with blue lighting to the side of Air Force One.