Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

US President Barack Obama's recent visit to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines was aimed at reassuring US friends and allies, refreshing his own image from his exhausting duals with Russians and Republicans and rebooting his "pivot to Asia" policy. However, Obama's efforts at resuscitating even the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) proved to be a non-starter.

The reason for his lackluster performance might have been the poor timing of his trip. Apart from the Ukraine crisis diminishing his magic, recent tragedies of sunken ferry Sewol in South Korea, missing airliner MH370 in Malaysia, and the Israeli withdrawal from negotiations with Palestinians produced a rather somber backdrop.

Meanwhile, domestic pressures from the continuing advances of pro-Russian forces in Ukraine reenforcing the need for further sanctions were worsened by deadly tornadoes hitting the US South and Midwest, leaving many people dead followed by CNN reporting 40 veterans dying while waiting for care in the Phoenix VA health system.

This, juxtaposed with Obama's graying hair and growing focus onto his legacies, saw him consoling and trying to inspire trust and hope by reminiscing of him being groomed in Asia's mosaic cultures. Indeed, enjoying world's best sushi at Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo's Ginza district and green-tea ice cream at an imperial dinner were the only hallmarks of his trip untill a binational defense team and 10-year defense agreement were added to the list in Seoul and Manila.

Obama began his Asia trip by supporting Japan on the Diaoyu dispute but his comment "The treaty between the US and Japan preceded my birth, so this isn't a red line that I'm drawing" in Seoul poured cold water on Japanese hawks.

Similarly in Seoul, even though they talked of tightening economic penalties on North Korea, they urged China to help rein in North Korea over its recent threats of conducting another nuclear test. As a backup, they set up a national defense team that, in the event of war, would put South Korean forces under US control.

Likewise, Obama's visit to not-so-close ally Malaysia, the first since US former president Lyndon Johnson's in 1966, was seen as rewarding Malaysia's tougher stand against China's claims to the South China Sea.

Obama's recent response to the Israeli decision to suspend peace talks with Palestinians and the Crimean episode provides apt examples to understand this shift from "rhetoric" to "nuance" in US "pivot to Asia."

Obama's second term has been characterized by the withdrawal of forces and opting for diplomatic tough-talk followed by sporadic delayed sanctions. The US was seen as reluctant to undertake air strikes in Syria or to provide direct military aid to Ukraine. Even on sanctions, Obama confessed in Tokyo: "So far, the evidence doesn't make me hopeful" that sanctions will work against Russia.

Just like US military interventions, the impact of US sanctions has been eroded by the continuing disjunctions among its European partners. No wonder Malaysia and Japan were reluctant to commit further to a 12-member TPP trade bloc that does not include China.

Driven by their domestic and regional concerns, his hosts were equally anxious to flaunt their gains from this trip.

So while Japan's right-wing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe got the US green light for amending the Japanese constitution for a role for their armed forces beyond self-defense, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III and South Korean President Park Geun-hye got some US military commitments, and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak managed to hobnob with Obama while keeping him away from popular opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.

Obama's concluding remarks in Manila seemed to warn against Cold War precepts: "Our goal is not to counter China. Our goal is not to contain China … Our goal is to make sure that international rule and norms are respected. And that includes in the area of maritime disputes."

The author is a professor from the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn