This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 8th, 2013. I'm Caleb Brown.

What are the implications of China's emergence as a military and economic power?

And how should the foreign policy establishment in

Washington think about it. Justin Logan, director of the Cato Institute's foreign

policy studies, makes his case in a new policy analysis China, America, and the pivot to Asia.

We spoke yesterday.

To say that the United States is engaged in a process of a pivot toward Asia. What does that even mean?

Well, it's maybe a little bit inside baseball and wonky, but it's interesting enough, hopefully, to our

podcast listeners to get into.

It originally was rolled out as the idea of a pivot to Asia,

and so I've stuck with that formulation,

although it's been rebranded as a rebalancing to Asia because certain parties and

international politics were concerned and took some umbrage because a

pivot after all when you pivot you're turning toward something

but away from something else and some of our friends and clients in

international politics were very very displeased by the idea that America's back would be

turned on them.

So it was pivoted as a rebalancing.

So in a rebalancing, you don't turn your back on anywhere. But it is an interesting idea. I was at a meeting of Asia

experts in the think tank community a couple of weeks ago and there was broad consensus

on two points.

The first point was that pretty much everyone in town favored the idea of a pivot to Asia or rebalancing.

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