Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- When I made an appointment to see
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard last week, I hoped we
would spend most of our time discussing her new effort to better
integrate her country into Asia.
Gillard’s pivot toward Asia, much like U.S. President
Barack Obama’s, reflects the self-evident truth that China and
its neighbors are her country’s biggest markets and the source
of many of its new immigrants. Now the pivot has been paralyzed
midrotation by events from that most unpromising corner of the
world, the Middle East.
