LOS ANGELES -- Colin Powell's first week in Asia as U.S. secretary of state broke what almost has become an unfortunate tradition. It was a success.
There's something about Asia that unnerves otherwise unshakable secretaries of state. Remember the initial visit of Warren Christopher, the Clinton administration's first secretary, to Beijing? It was a disaster. The Chinese bridled at his lectures on human rights and showed him the door. Powell's immediate predecessor, Madeleine Albright, was usually ill at ease in Asia, especially with Chinese officials, whom she found irritating, and Japanese ones, whom she found evasive.
The retired four-star general's Asia swing, beginning in Japan and ending in Australia -- with stops in Vietnam, South Korea and China -- was filled with similar potential pitfalls. But Powell sidestepped a lot of them.