Afghanistan: Obama's Asia trip: a balancing act, amid doubts about US resolve --- On an eight-day, four-nation tour of Asia, beginning Tuesday, President Obama aims to boost credibility of his US 'pivot' to Asia, while reassuring Beijing that the goal is not to contain China. -- Mr. Obama, whose signature “Asia pivot,” announced in 2009, was supposed to redirect American foreign policy emphasis away from the Middle East to the economically dynamic Asian-Pacific region, will confront deepening concerns in the countries he’ll visit – Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and, to a lesser degree, the Philippines – that the turn to Asia never got much beyond words. -- America’s Asia partners worry that, despite Obama’s intentions, US foreign policy interests have remained largely focused on the Middle East – the Syrian conflict, pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace, Iranian nuclear talks, even the drawdown from Afghanistan – and are, more recently, centered on the crisis in Ukraine. -- But at the same time, China remains suspicious that, under Obama, the US is reasserting itself as a “Pacific nation,” in large part as a means of containing a rising China and limiting what China sees as its legitimate assertiveness in the region. Although China is not on Obama’s itinerary – he does plan to visit China in the fall – there is little doubt that Beijing will be watching the trip closely.