With one exception, U.S. relations with East Asian countries are better today than when the Obama administration took office. This is no small accomplishment since the Bush administration left Asia in good shape.
Let's look at the exception first. The one relationship that has gotten worse under U.S. President Barack Obama is perhaps the most important one, between Washington and Tokyo. The fault lies primarily with Japan; a new government took power there, led for the first time ever by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which ran against the policies of the past.
While Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama still pays rhetorical allegiance to the U.S.-Japan alliance relationship as the foundation of his foreign policy, in practice tensions have grown over his apparent decision to walk away from a base-relocation agreement negotiated between the Bush administration and the prior Liberal Democratic Party-led government that had been accepted, as any government-to-government agreement should have been, by the Obama administration.