President Obama’s final foreign trip was a swing through Greece, Germany and Peru just after the 2016 presidential election. It was his 52nd international trip and boosted the number of countries he visited to 58 and the number of days he has spent abroad to 217.
Those numbers are comparable to those of his two most recent predecessors; George W. Bush made 48 trips to 72 countries, and Bill Clinton took 55 trips to 70 countries. But Obama’s travel map reveals a noticeable shift in focus, reflecting his stated desire to re-orient more U.S. attention toward Asia.
He put his frequent-flier miles where his mouth was.
Presidential trips abroad
In his eight years in office, President Obama has spent about 14% of his time — almost seven months — on foreign travel.
Visits
Days
abroad
Trips
94
36
37
33
27
16
16
11
8
Dwight
Eisenhower
Lyndon B.
Johnson
John F.
Kennedy
82
233
68
42
38
30
15
19
12
7
Richard
Nixon
Gerald
Ford
Jimmy
Carter
134
188
102
60
55
47
25
25
Bill
Clinton
Ronald
Reagan
George
H.W. Bush
217
215
140
108
52
48
Barack
Obama
George
W. Bush
Presidential trips abroad
In his eight years in office, President Obama has spent about 14% of his time — almost seven months — on foreign travel.
Visits
Days abroad
Trips
188
94
82
68
47
42
36
37
33
38
30
25
27
16
15
19
12
16
11
8
7
Dwight
Eisenhower
Lyndon B.
Johnson
Richard
Nixon
Gerald
Ford
Jimmy
Carter
Ronald
Reagan
John F.
Kennedy
233
217
215
140
134
108
102
60
55
52
48
25
Barack
Obama
George
H.W. Bush
Bill
Clinton
George
W. Bush
233
Presidential trips abroad
217
In his eight years in office, President Obama has spent about 14% of his time — almost seven months — on foreign travel.
215
Visits
Days abroad
Trips
140
134
188
108
102
94
82
68
60
55
52
48
47
42
36
37
33
38
30
25
25
27
16
15
19
12
16
11
8
7
Barack
Obama
Dwight
Eisenhower
Lyndon B.
Johnson
Richard
Nixon
Gerald
Ford
Jimmy
Carter
Ronald
Reagan
George
H.W. Bush
Bill
Clinton
George
W. Bush
John F.
Kennedy
Obama made an unprecedented 13 stops in Southeast Asia, a region that the administration believed had been neglected by the United States. At the same time, the president visited fewer countries in Europe and the Middle East than did Bush and Clinton, as he sought to pursue new partnerships and reduce the nation’s war footing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The White House deployed Air Force One strategically to live up to Obama’s inaugural address promise in 2009 that under his watch the United States would “extend a hand” to autocratic regimes that were “willing to unclench your fist.”
The most notable examples were Burma, also known as Myanmar, and Cuba, where Obama made historic visits to end decades of diplomatic isolation.
Obama also was the first sitting U.S. president to visit Laos and Cambodia in Southeast Asia, as well as Kenya, his father’s homeland, and Ethiopia. And he was the first to stop in Malaysia since Lyndon B. Johnson.
Republicans and activist groups criticized the administration for moving too quickly and minimizing human rights abuses, but White House aides defended the approach.
“We have tried to use presidential travel to advance this uniquely Obama effort to address history and hopefully move beyond it,” said Ben Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser. “Some call it an apology tour, but we call it an effort to open up more space for better relations with different countries. Those are among our most effective trips. People tend to be enormously gratified and surprised that the president of the United States comes to these places.”
Presidential travel alone is not enough to reprogram the levers of the federal government’s massive national security apparatus. But the Obama White House believed that the president’s foreign itinerary would help prod the bureaucracy to shift away from its traditional emphasis on Europe and the Middle East. It wasn’t just Obama who traveled more frequently to Asia, but also State Department and Pentagon officials.
For years, U.S. presidents had attended annual trans-Atlantic security and economic summits in Europe. Not long after taking office, the Obama White House proposed something radical: to elevate Southeast Asia to a similar level of importance in the Pacific.
Devoting more of the president’s time to that region was not an obvious proposition. The great distances involved required a larger time commitment, and the collection of diverse nations — which featured relatively small economies and divergent political systems — offered no obvious strategic imperative.
But Obama and his aides believed the populous and fast-growing region was increasingly falling under the sway of a rising China.
“There was a conversation among Asian countries that we were not a part of,” Rhodes said. “The price of admission was saying the president of the United States would come.”
In 2011, after intensive debate inside the White House, Obama announced plans to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit and the East Asia Summit each year.
“The downside was: Can we justify committing the president’s time to this?” Rhodes said. “And also other regions could object.”
Despite competing pressures, the president lived up to his commitment.
Of the 10 countries in ASEAN, Obama visited all but Brunei. All told, he made 13 stops in those nine countries, compared to eight stops in five nations for Bush and five stops in four nations for Clinton.
“When historians look at the ‘pivot,’ Obama will get the most credit for reengaging Southeast Asia, which has had episodic American attention since the Vietnam War,” said Michael Green, who served as senior Asia director at the National Security Council under Bush.
Foreign affairs analysts cautioned that the White House’s Asia strategy remains a work in progress, and recent anti-U.S. rhetoric from President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines reflects the limits of Obama’s personal outreach. Obama visited the Philippines twice — before Duterte was elected — to announce deeper U.S. military and economic partnerships, which Duterte is threatening to reverse.
Still, analysts said the president’s visits to countries not accustomed to such attention were generally well received.
“Obama’s willingness to go beyond the usual suspects . . . sends a different message to the world of a more open United States that is not locked into old patterns,” said Rosa Brooks, a former Pentagon official and contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine.
Obama was the first president to visit Burma (twice), Laos, Kenya and Ethiopia.
George W. Bush made more trips to Europe, many to the Balkans to shore up relations with countries that were home to “black site” prisons.
Obama’s foreign policy pivot to Asia has expanded relationships in the region.
52
OBAMA
Total trips
48
BUSH
33
18
Allies and neighbors
Europe
31
30
9
8
Southeast Asia
Cen. and N. Amer.
6
5
7
5
Africa
S. America
11
6
5
2
Russia
Middle East
7
9
2
4
Italy
Afghanistan
6
2
4
3
China
Saudi Arabia
2
4
2
1
Vatican
Iraq
5
4
1
Egypt
3
George W. Bush made more trips to Europe, many to the Balkans to shore up relations with countries that were home to “black site” prisons
Obama was the first president to visit Burma (twice), Laos, Kenya and Ethiopia.
Obama’s foreign policy pivot to Asia has expanded relationships in the region.
52
OBAMA
Total trips
48
BUSH
33
18
9
8
Allies and neighbors
Europe
Southeast Asia
Central and N. America
31
30
6
5
7
5
5
2
Russia
Africa
S. America
Middle East
7
11
6
9
2
4
4
3
Italy
Afghanistan
China
Saudi Arabia
6
2
2
4
2
1
1
Vatican
Iraq
Egypt
5
4
3
George W. Bush made more trips to Europe, many to the Balkans to shore up relations with countries that were home to “black site” prisons
Obama’s foreign policy pivot to Asia has expanded relationships in the region.
52
Obama was the first president to visit Burma (twice), Laos, Kenya and Ethiopia.
OBAMA
Total trips
48
BUSH
33
18
9
8
7
5
5
Allies and neighbors
Europe
Southeast Asia
Central and N. America
Africa
S. America
Middle East
31
30
6
5
11
6
9
2
2
4
4
3
2
1
1
Russia
Italy
Afghanistan
China
Vatican
Iraq
Egypt
Saudi Arabia
7
6
2
2
4
5
4
3
Obama did not ignore the major U.S. allies and neighbors. He made 33 stops in seven key countries — France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, Japan and South Korea — compared to Bush’s 31.
In other cases, however, the White House was willing to curtail Obama’s travel to send a different message.
Obama canceled a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in August 2013 over a series of disputes, including Russia’s harboring of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
In all, Obama made just two trips to Russia and visited Moscow just once — when Dmitry Medvedev was president in 2009. By comparison, Bush made seven trips to Russia, the most of any country of his presidency, and Clinton made five.
As Obama’s tenure winds down, Russia has reemerged as a major geopolitical headache in Ukraine and Syria and on cybersecurity matters. Obama and Putin have met only informally, on the sidelines of global summits.
Obama and Bush have a “different approach to diplomacy,” said Thomas Graham, who served as senior Russia director on the National Security Council from 2004 to 2007. Obama “tends to go looking for results. Bush was more about managing the relationship and showing up. This president hasn’t had that type of personal relationship with foreign leaders.”
Graham said he thinks Obama erred in canceling the summit. But Bush also ultimately failed in his courtship of Putin, and their relationship had deteriorated by the time Bush left office.
Rhodes said that if Medvedev had remained in charge, Obama probably would have made two more trips to Moscow.
“We did not have a real, affirmative agenda to drive with them,” he said. “It was symptomatic of a shift under Putin.”
Fiona Hill, a Europe expert at the Brookings Institution, said that Obama delegated some diplomatic duties to Vice President Biden in Ukraine and Secretary of State John F. Kerry in Russia. Kerry visited Moscow four times between May 2015 and July 2016.
Aside from Russia, Bush visited 13 other Eastern European nations, including many in the Balkans, where his administration had set up CIA “black site” prisons to house terrorist suspects. Obama has visited just three other countries in that region.
At a recent security conference in Germany, Hill said, European allies made “so much noise about missing President Bush. They missed the backrub: ‘Where is the U.S. when you want them?’ ”
In the Middle East, where his tenure was largely defined by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bush visited nine countries and stopped in Iraq four times.
Obama, who opposed the Iraq War and has pulled most U.S. troops out of that nation, has visited five countries in the Middle East, including Iraq only once. (However, Obama made four visits to another war zone — Afghanistan in Central Asia — compared to Bush’s two.)
Rhodes said the White House aimed to make up for fewer stops in the Middle East by organizing U.S.-led regional summits that brought Obama together with Persian Gulf leaders in Saudi Arabia and at Camp David.
The administration employed a similar group strategy in Africa, where Obama, the first African American president, visited seven countries to Bush’s 11 and Clinton’s 10. In August 2014, Obama welcomed more than 50 heads of state to a first-of-its-kind Africa Leaders Summit at the White House.
Asked about the biggest holes on Obama’s travel résumé, Rhodes pointed to Nigeria, the richest African nation, and to Sri Lanka, which has made recent democratic reforms.
Foreign policy experts said the next president likely will feel compelled to spend more personal attention on Europe, given Britain's exit from the European Union and Russia’s aggression.
But White House aides said they hoped Obama’s successor will find a way to maintain his commitment to overlooked parts of the globe.
“Presidential travel sends a huge message,” Rhodes said. “A trip can be somewhat transformative.”
