So long, and thanks for all the naval bases

Barack Obama’s Asian tour 

Apr 28th 2014, 15:08 by S.C.S., R.C. and T.B. | SEOUL, SINGAPORE AND TOKYO

BARACK OBAMA is winding down his four-country tour of Asia this evening with a banquet in Manila. Time to assess the latest chapter in America’s vaunted “pivot” to Asia, which is, as far as foreign policy is concerned, perhaps the most memorable concept to emerge from Mr Obama’s two-term presidency. In broad outline, it seems that his Asian hosts—in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines successively—got rather more out of the visiting American president than he got out of them.

To varying degrees all four of the Asian governments were all looking for beefed-up military and diplomatic commitments from Mr Obama—in view of the rise of China and, in South Korea’s case, the threat from North Korea too. In return Mr Obama was pressing Japan and Malaysia to commit further to his cherished Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, a new block that would encompass 12 countries on both sides of the Pacific—not including China. The TPP however remains deeply unpopular with voters, politicians and vested interests in many other parts of Asia. Consequently neither the Japanese nor the Malaysian governments were prepared to give the American president any firm commitments on the subject (other than to do yet more talking about it). Mr Obama must have been disappointed, not that he said so. Indeed his failure to win “fast-track" approval from the American Congress to enable the administration to negotiate a TPP agreement that could not then be unpicked line-by-line has left him in a weak position to bully any of the other members.

On the geopolitical front, Japan and the Philippines have recently been the two Asian nations to have felt most threatened by the rise of China. This is mostly because they both stand in direct confrontation with China over disputed islands and shoals in, respectively, the East China Sea and the South China Sea. As Japan and the Philippines are also treaty allies of America, both feel that they deserve extra support from the Obama administration. This week they got it.

Japan welcomed a clear declaration by America’s president that the Senkaku islands, called the Diaoyu islands by the Chinese, are covered by Article Five of the US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Co-operation and Security. America does not take sides on the ultimate question of sovereignty, but that will not stop it supporting Japan’s administration of the tiny islands. This stance is not surprising, but it was the first time a sitting president made the commitment explicit. It will reassure the government of Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, that America would indeed come to the islands’ defence in the event of a serious Chinese incursion. Mr Abe won a boost for his domestic politics with another explicit statement from the White House: it supports his move to reinterpret Japan’s pacifist constitution to allow the exercise of “collective self-defence”, whereby the armed forces may come to the aid of an ally under attack. Again, America’s defence department had already expressed support for this step, which is controversial within Japan, but the president and his state department had stayed silent about it.

Likewise the Philippines’ government welcomed the signing of a new ten-year defence pact, which is called the “enhanced defence co-operation agreement”. This will give America a significant military presence in the country (and its waters) for the first time since its giant bases at Subic and Clark were shut down in the early 1990s. Those were closed partly under pressure from an angry public, which harbours memories from America’s colonial occupation of the Philippines. The new pact will also allow the Philippines to buy more American naval vessels and aircraft more quickly—just the sort of kit it would need to mount a credible deterrence against Chinese naval incursions into its territorial waters, which it regards as a constant insult.

The most substantive outcome of Mr Obama’s two-day trip to South Korea was also military-diplomatic in nature. This was an agreement on the binational defence team, a command which would place South Korean troops under American control in the event of war. Last year, after North Korea conducted its third nuclear test, the South Koreans asked the Americans to delay the transfer of operational control to them, which had been scheduled for December 2015. Mr Obama granted the request. For good measure, he and Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s president, visited the command centre for joint operations. This was the first time the leaders of both countries have done so jointly since it was set up in 1978.

Mr Obama assured South Korea that America stood “shoulder to shoulder” with it over North Korean provocations. As if on cue, two North Korean patrol boats had briefly crossed the western maritime border between the two Koreas on April 25th, a few hours before Mr Obama arrived in Seoul. Last week, satellite imagery of the North revealed increased activity at one of its nuclear test sites. Some Pyongyangologists think it is poised to conduct a fourth underground test.

In light of that possibility, Mr Obama suggested it might be an opportune time for sanctions with even more bite. He also reaffirmed that America would not hesitate to use its army to defend allies. But talk of an intelligence-sharing pact between South Korea, Japan and America, as well as a regional missile-defence system, was less fruitful. Mr Obama ventured into wartime history by characterising the imperial Japanese army’s use of “comfort women”, as the women exploited in their military brothels were called, as an “egregious violation of human rights”. This was something the South Koreans felt gratified to hear, but it also prompted Japan’s deputy chief cabinet secretary to declare that the issue is not a “diplomatic subject”.

There was another rocky moment with Japan. Despite hours of frantic negotiations over the TPP, no agreement was reached. Mr Obama had been forceful in telling Mr Abe that he needs to confront his domestic lobby groups on trade, in particular the farmers. Their failure to reach an agreement led to an embarrassing delay in publishing the joint statement—it came only shortly before Mr Obama left for Seoul. American officials had pressed hard to secure a breakthrough for the TPP. Nonetheless Mr Abe and his negotiators refused to give way on five so-called “sacred areas” of agriculture, including beef and rice. America, for its part, wants to maintain high tariffs on light trucks. No further agreement is likely until after the American mid-term elections in November.

Likewise Mr Obama left Malaysia empty-handed. He did not see Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of Malaysia's opposition, who is appealing against a five-year jail sentence on a charge of sodomy which he says is politically motivated. Mr Obama sent his national-security adviser, Susan Rice, instead. So he was criticised for favouring the prime minister, Najib Razak, whose government lost the popular vote at last year's election and has been accused of backsliding on political as well as economic reform.

Neither did Mr Obama find any trade-dealing joy there. Just as the Japanese fear the TPP for what it might do to heavily protected bits of the economy, so ruling Malaysian politicians fear that the TPP would spell the end of their internal affirmative-action policies, which favour the majority ethnic Malays over Malaysians of Chinese and Indian heritage. The Malaysian contingent also fears that the TPP could drive up the price of basic goods. So although Mr Obama and Mr Najib agreed to strengthen bilateral ties in several areas, trade was not one of them. Mr Najib had to beg off the TPP for the time being, citing Malaysian “sensitivities” as his reason. As in Japan, the two sides were able to agree only on the one thing diplomats everywhere can agree on: the need for more talks.