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The Seoul stop was the last on a trip that has notably lacked concrete achievements but has seen Obama's personal narrative on full display, as he reminisced about the ice cream he ate during a childhood visit to Japan, invoked his "historic ties" to Indonesia and recalled his mother's work in the villages of Southeast Asia. After more than a week of using his biography to connect to audiences in Asia -- perhaps the last corner of the globe where he had yet to take his story -- Obama appeared as popular as ever among ordinary citizens in the region.

But is his biography-as-diplomacy approach beginning to show its limits?

Looking back on the Asia trip, it seems that it was about as useful as the Olympic trip.

OBAMA ON THE ASIAN HIGHWAY
Myanmar up close
By Eli Clifton

WASHINGTON - United States President Barack Obama's attendance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum leaders' meeting in Singapore next week will chart a new direction for US participation in Asian multilateral diplomacy and call attention to the new administration's policy of engagement with the reclusive military-led government in Myanmar.

By Mure Dickie, Japan bureau chief

Here’s an interesting question ahead of Barack Obama’s arrival in Tokyo on Friday for the first leg of his Asia tour: would Mao Zedong have approved of the US president’s itinerary? Or would he have worried that Obama was not doing enough to make sure that Japan felt loved?

It might be surprising to some, but the late Chinese chairman was an astute observer of the impact that trip scheduling could have on sensitive Japanese sentiment. So much so that he discussed the matter in forceful terms with Henry Kissinger way back in 1971.

I wasn’t following international affairs back then, but I remember well the doubt and concern that swept some Japanese policymaking circles in 1998 when then US president Bill Clinton skipped Tokyo on an Asian tour that included a long multi-stop visit to China. That itinerary was taken as the sign that that the Japan-bashing of the 1980s trade wars had morphed into an even more worrying “Japan passing”.

Mao would certainly have chastised Clinton, had the great dictator not long since been transformed into a waxy corpse on grisly show in a Tiananmen Square mausoleum.

As Kenneth Pyle describes in his 2007 book “Japan Rising”, Mao lectured Kissinger on his slighting attitude to the status-sensitive Japanese leaders, ticking off his US visitor for not spending enough time in Tokyo when he visited the region.

“You only talked with them for one day…and that is not good for their face,” Mao said.

As Pyle points out, Mao knew well that Japan was not to be taken lightly and should not be made to feel neglected.

So what of Obama? The US president has trimmed his time in Japan to a mere 24 hours and plans to linger much longer when he gets to China – a fact already noted with dismay by some Japanese observers.

But I think Mao might have forgiven the Obama administration its scheduling (which involved a late cut of a day in Japan because of the recent US military base shooting). Japanese officials I’ve talked with in recent days didn’t seem too upset.

Crucially, the Obama administration has taken pains not to “pass Japan”. And Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama himself has stressed that Japan is Obama’s first Asia stop (as indeed it was for Hilary Clinton on her first Asia tour in office). And the first foreign leader to win a coveted White House meeting with Obama was Hatoyama’s predecessor Taro Aso. Put together, that should be enough face for the moment.

 

The strategic value of Hawaii was evident a quarter-century ago, when I visited Pearl Harbor as a midshipman in the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. The US Navy was building up toward 600 ships; its Pacific Fleet had an overbearing Soviet Far East Fleet to contend with.

The navy could do none of this without island bases connecting the US to maritime Asia, no matter how many gee-whiz warships and aircraft it built.