The Malaysian Insider

NOV 16 — Beyond the rhetoric, early signs are encouraging that the United States may be back in Asia, or to be precise, Southeast Asia.

As Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong pointed out yesterday, it was an achievement that the first-ever Asean-US summit took place at all.

“That Asean considers it important to have a summit meeting with the US President, and the US President considers it worthwhile to have a summit meeting with all 10 Asean members, notwithstanding difficulties which they have particularly with Myanmar — I think that is very significant,” he noted at a closing press conference.

Indeed, the US enjoyed a partial thaw in ties with Myanmar just over a week ago when two envoys visited the military-ruled Asean member and paved the way for the summit.

Better yet, President Barack Obama has suggested a second Asean-US summit for next year.

This, for Asean, must be gratifying. For too long, Southeast Asian countries have felt neglected by the superpower, whose focus of attention in Asia has been confined largely to the Korean peninsula nuclear crisis and America's complicated relationship with a rising China.

Asean was disconcerted when then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice skipped the Asean Regional Forum (ARF) in 2005 — her first opportunity after her appointment to meet her Southeast Asian counterparts. She gave the regional security meeting a miss again in 2007.

In contrast, current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Indonesia on her first trip overseas after her appointment this year and has been to the region two more times since then — in Thailand for July's ARF and here last week for Apec.

Apart from a show of presence by the leaders, there were nascent signs of renewed American commitment to the region as well.

In July, the US acceded to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation — established by Asean at the height of the Cold War to ban the use of violence to settle regional conflicts — more than 30 years after establishing ties with the grouping.

Washington was the last major power to sign the pact, and did so with an eye to joining the larger East Asia Summit (EAS), which gathers Asean and six other countries including India, China, Japan and Australia.

Obama in his Asia policy speech in Tokyo on Saturday said his country would seek formal participation in the EAS, for which accession to the friendship treaty was required.

Still, it does have the effect of drawing the Americans closer to Asean.

Furthermore, in July, Clinton met foreign ministers of the Lower Mekong countries — Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand — and promised more than US$160 million (RM560 million) in aid this year for projects related to water management, health and education.

The US is a latecomer in the Mekong delta — the scene of keen rivalry between China and Japan over the past decade, with the two sides pouring in huge amounts of aid to build roads, bridges and other infrastructure there.

Indeed, much of Washington's re-engagement with Southeast Asia has to do with its regional rivalry with China.

In recent years, while the US was preoccupied with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the fight against terrorism, China has steadily and quietly increased its influence in the region.

It has signed free trade agreements with individual countries and will sign one with Asean collectively next January.

Together with Japan and South Korea, China has built a strong partnership with Asean under the Asean+3 framework, under which many mechanisms have been set up to facilitate exchanges.

Now, the US wants to get back into the picture in a region where it was, during the Cold War years, a stabilising influence, and where it has in recent years allowed ties to drift.

It has taken the right first steps. Whether it can live up to its promises given its many distractions elsewhere, though, remains to be seen. — The Straits Times