During Obama’s Presidency, China and Asia have been accorded higher priority. This is the region that the US turns to for renewed growth opportunities and it is the region in which several of its important bilateral military alliances are anchored. The US thus intends to remain an even more engaged power in Asia. The US relations with China play a primordial role in this. Jeffrey Bader has been one of the architects of this renewed focus in the Obama administration and will give his insider account on the development of and the prospects for the American policy in Asia and also what this change entails for transatlantic allies in Europe.

Jeffrey Bader is a Senior Policy Fellow at Brookings and was the former Senior Director for East Asia at the US National Security Council until 2011. He has recently publisheda book entitled Obama and China’s rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy.

Jonas Parello-Plesneris a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he was Director of a development NGO with activities in Asia and served as Denmark’s Senior Advisor on China and North East Asia.