Chinese leaders are committed to economic modernization, not only because it will make China strong but also because they need it to sustain popular support.

From a U.S. perspective, the summit agenda seems vague. Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi describes it as “the first milestone on the route to the East Asian Community.” But a supra-national Asian Union comparable to the European Union is not remotely in the cards. Asians’ huge stake in North American and European markets rules out a protectionist Fortress Asia. The first effort to establish such a grouping, spearheaded in the early 1990s by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, aroused fears of a closed and implicitly anti-American bloc. By contrast, Asian leaders are presenting the current drive as a fluid, benign effort to address common challenges based on an outward-oriented, cosmopolitan East Asian identity.

What is clear, though, is that the countries of this Asian-Pacific pact believe that since the 1990s, the United States has lost interest in their part of the world. In the meantime, these countries have formed their own preferential bilateral and regional trade agreements that engender closer relationships. These agreements have both commercial and symbolic value in Asia, and many Asians think the United States has not paid enough attention to the diplomatic message behind them. The United States still dominates the balance of power in the Asian Pacific region, but China (and increasingly India) is gaining ground in the influence game. The ASEAN +3 grouping puts America’s broader strategic interests at risk, however, not because of what China is doing, but because of what the United States is not doing.

Malign Neglect
In recent trips to Southeast Asia, I have met with numerous concerned Asians from business, government and academic circles who have asked me, “Why isn’t the United States paying attention to this region?”

Tommy Koh, a widely respected Singaporean diplomat and think tank leader, phrased regional concerns eloquently in a recent article in PacNet, the online newsletter of the East-West Center in Honolulu. “We do not wish to be treated either with benign neglect or merely as the second front of the global war against terrorism,” Koh writes. He suggests, as do many opinion leaders in the area, that the United States hold its own summit between heads of state in ASEAN—as China, Japan, Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand have all done. President Clinton convened the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Seattle in 1993, but U.S. interest in APEC began to wane in the second half of the Clinton administration.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Brunei  Darussalam Cambodia Indonesia Laos Malaysia Myanmar Philippines Singapore Thailand Vietnam

U.S. presidents generally do not like to travel halfway around the world to meetings that offer no tangible outcome, while the Asian leaders consider meetings along the line of the December summit important less for addressing clear-cut goals than for relationship building. Moreover, we have consistently refused to hold a summit with ASEAN itself because of our legitimate dismay over the treatment of the popular opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, which is a member of ASEAN but not APEC. Both political parties in the United States have taken the position that such a summit could legitimize Myanmar’s ruling military junta. Meanwhile, China and India are courting Myanmar’s regime because of the country’s energy resources and strategic location. Asian leaders, many of whom are dismayed by the ability of single-issue constituencies to capture and narrow U.S. policy, would better understand a strategy of at least limited engagement.