Regional Organizations

Thanks to its fabulous editor, Sanjaya Baru, I’ve begun writing a regular column, “DC Diary,” for India’s leading financial daily, the Business Standard.  An inaugural piece on Monday offered Indian readers a well-intentioned warning from America’s experience in a changing Asia. What’s the warning?  Put bluntly, it is that economics, not security, still defines the essential strategic reality of Asia today:  China is fast becoming the central player in a new economic regionalism.  The U.S. and India are each enhancing their political and security profiles—albeit for different reasons and in different ways.  Yet both risk being left out as Asian economic integration tightens. I’ve written a lot about this in the U.S. case, including on this blog. The U.S. has endured decades of loose talk about American “decline” in Asia.  But in the months since North Korea torpedoed a South Korean naval corvette in March, America’s security role has been strongly reinforced.  Yet ironically, that’s part of the problem:  Even as America’s security role remains the backbone of strategic stability, the economic pillars of U.S. credibility are eroding across Asia.  For one piece of that argument, see, for example, my blog here on U.S. trade policy. As I wrote in this week’s Business Standard, this should offer a bit of a cautionary tale to India: Strategically, India has been bottled up in the subcontinent for generations, but it wasn’t always so:  Southeast Asia bears the hallmarks of a bygone era in names like "Indonesia" and "Indochina,” and Indian sailors once plied the trade routes from the Indian Ocean to the strait of Malacca. But as it again “looks East,” India risks being left out in Asia because of the significant mismatch between its lofty strategic goals and more earthbound economic realities. Make no mistake, India’s strategic connections to East Asia are being restored.  Yet this is happening, in large part, because India is widely viewed as a potential—if still very modest—counterbalance to Chinese power.   And diplomacy and politics remain the central drivers, not least, for example, in the invitation to India to become a more active player in East Asian regional groups. But, at the end of the day, strategic intentions alone cannot sustain a larger role for India in Asia writ large.  As America is rediscovering, economic content is essential.  Greater economic content to India’s relations with East Asia will be required.  And investment-related reforms will surely be essential, too, to enhance the flow of goods, capital, and opportunity. Trade plays a growing role in the Indian economy, and India has signed preferential trade agreements with ASEAN and South Korea.  Yet scale remains a handicap:  11.6 percent of ASEAN’s trade is with China, just 2.5 percent with India.  Meanwhile, the backbone of East Asian economies remains integrated supply and production chains to which India is largely irrelevant. More manufacturing in India’s southern states could mean greater integration into East Asian supply and production chains, or not.  Likewise with outbound investment from corporate India:  it could, perhaps, transform India’s interactions with Southeast Asia; but, here too, scale remains a handicap. The business of Asia is still business.  And India and East Asia have some distance yet to travel. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Erik de Castro.

Several months ago, after writing an article complaining about the Obama administration’s lack of a coherent Asia policy, I got a fair amount of angry responses, pointing out the ways in which the administration’s Asia policy was beginning to emerge and would soon pay dividends. So, let me now give the administration credit, and also offer some worries. In the past two months, the administration has both shown much greater and more nuanced attention to Southeast Asia and has staked out clearer lines on where it stands on the region’s critical future issues. The question now is, can it back up its stances? To review--after coming into office with a somewhat muddled China policy that seemed to please neither the Chinese nor many American opinion leaders, the administration has taken a tougher and firmer approach – and there is evidence from the past that, although Beijing may protest a tougher U.S. policy, it does appreciate consistency from Washington above all. The administration also has begun making good on its promises to be “back” in Southeast Asia, by weighing in on the South China Sea issue, by deciding to play a role in the East Asia Summit, and – possibly – by making Vietnam, not Indonesia, its most transformed foreign policy relationship in the region, not only through nuclear cooperation and joint exercises but also, in the longer run, the kind of security partnership the US now shares with Singapore.  And, a more nuanced policy toward Burma, which mixes continued engagement with a willingness to back a UN inquiry into Burmese war crimes – shows an ability to rethink sanctions and also a desire not to get fooled by the junta. The question is, what now? Having decided to join the EAS, is the administration going to really commit resources and top officials’ time to a forum that makes APEC look like a model of efficiency? Is Washington now going to support the ASEAN nations’ desire that ASEAN be in the driver’s seat of Asian integration, even though it clearly does not have the skills, resources, and ability, whereas Northeast Asia really is the locus of the region? Similarly, having increasingly committed to the relationship with Vietnam, U.S. policy now could eventually go farther, once Vietnam’s war-era generation passes away. It’s one thing to build a much closer relationship with Vietnam, but it’s another to have a security relationship on the level of the bilateral with Singapore, or even eventually a treaty alliance – neither of which China could easily accept. And then there is the South China Sea. Certainly, the Obama administration has drawn a necessary line, and taken a step quietly applauded by most ASEAN countries. But can Washington back up its stance?  What is the next step, down the line, if China increasingly treats the South China Sea in the almost-hysterical manner with which it handles other supposed “core interests” like Taiwan and Xinjiang? Can military to military ties between the U.S. and China ever include serious discussions of the South China Sea? And if pushed, what ASEAN states would publicly stand behind a tough U.S. stance on the South China Sea? Those are just questions. The administration’s policy seems to have shifted for the better, but real shifts will have long-term consequences to be anticipated now. (Photo: Jason Lee/courtesy Reuters)

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Nyein Chan Naing/Pool A post over at East Asia Forum tweaks my recent blog about America and the East Asia Summit. It argues that I have an "empathy deficit." Here’s how the post puts it: "Asian partners have good reason for concern" because Americans—on a bipartisan basis—have a tendency to "dismiss proposals for greater engagement with institutions that are not ‘results-focused.’" We "fail to grasp that concerns about regional institution building are based as much upon a preoccupation with the construction of regional identity as they are on economic arrangements or the balance of power." Actually, I grasp that pretty well. To a very great extent, Asian institution building has been about identity. Or, more precisely, it’s been about “community building,” not just results. But for one thing, that’s exactly why Americans shouldn’t balk at every pan-Asian institution that doesn’t include the United States. And for that matter, it’s also why Americans should desist from trying to slam down the door of every single regional institution, often just for the sake of it. Washington can hardly tell the world’s leading economies that they are not allowed to speak to one another without Americans in every room and in every conversation. Nor do Americans get to have NAFTA or a Free Trade Area of the Americas while telling Asians they cannot pursue pan-Asian trade arrangements. Some pan-Asian formations are inevitable, in part because Asians have been searching for a more coherent regional identity for decades. So, if the United States both respects Asia’s search for community and cares about results, it’s going to need to find a way to distinguish between the tables where it "must" sit and those from which it can afford to just step aside. After all, the U.S. isn’t in the EU. It isn’t in the GCC. It isn’t in the AU. It isn’t in the SCO. It isn’t in the CSTO. It isn’t in the OIC. And it isn’t in six-dozen other organizations around the world. What’s the message to Asians if Americans insist that only their region is the exception? And does the United States truly need to be everywhere? Indeed, since it probably can’t be everywhere, why shouldn’t it focus primarily on those institutions that affect its interests, for good or for ill, in concrete ways? We risk forgetting history here: The 1997-98 financial crisis was an inflection point—a moment at which elites across East Asia came to view the United States as arrogant and aloof, dictating clichéd solutions to skeptical Asians. The United States, which bailed out Mexico in 1994, refused to bail out Thailand just three years later. That fueled perceptions that the U.S. neglected Southeast Asia. And the United States continues to pay a price for those perceptions to this day. The events of 1997-98 helped to spur Asia’s turn away from APEC in favor of the ASEAN Plus Three. And today, it is ASEAN Plus Three—a group that has no intention whatsoever of including the United States—that has become by far the most coherent and substantive pan-Asian grouping. So, here’s my point: While the United States has been debating what to do about EAS, it is ASEAN Plus Three, as well as the China-Japan-South Korea “Plus Three," that have steadily forged ahead—without Washington, and on issues and agendas that should matter greatly to Washington. In that sense, identity is converging with sheer economic reality but not at all to American advantage. At the same time, let’s not forget that Asian institution building hasn’t been solely about identity and community, either. Asians, no less than Americans, care deeply about results. And they certainly care about “economic arrangements and the balance of power.” At its inception, ASEAN sought, in part, to balance Chinese power. ASEAN sought to integrate the Indochinese states after 1975 for strategic reasons. And since then, Southeast Asian countries have themselves sought to foster greater balance by discussing maritime claims with Beijing collectively. Indeed, in recent weeks—from exercises in the Yellow Sea to discussions of the South China Sea at the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)—we have seen, once again, that it isn’t just Americans who care about power balances and their effects. Ultimately, Americans do need to understand that, for many Asians, the search for a common identity matters. It has been integral both to Asian regionalism and to Asian institution building. But a proper respect for Asian efforts to fashion greater community produces precisely the same prescription as my focus on “results”—the United States ought to focus principally on the institutions that actually matter to its political, economic, and security interests. For the United States, the cardinal rule in Asia remains, “show up.” There’s just no substitute for intensive American engagement. But when we get down to the brass tacks of this or that institution, it’s time the United States began a different kind of conversation with its Asian partners—focused on a more purposeful and, yes, a more functional multilateralism that respects Asia’s trajectory while redefining how and where the United States fits into a 21st century Asia. If the U.S. is, as it appears, truly determined to join EAS, the very least the administration can do is to try to build in some real capabilities. EAS needs to do something. The good news is that the administration’s Asia team understands that. And EAS at least has the virtue of including the right players. One last point: Inevitably, U.S. membership in EAS will reduce the role of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). So perhaps the recent ARF meeting in Hanoi—where 12 nations offered complementary perspectives and approaches to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea—offers an example for EAS of how to make political discussions current and meaningful? It’s a model that won’t sit well with Beijing, to be sure. But at least EAS would, in time, become more than just another leaders’ group-grope.

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Na Son-Nguyen/Pool So the U.S. is going to join the East Asia Summit (EAS) … and you can hear the cheers all the way to Hanoi. But why exactly are they cheering? Here are a few of the arguments: (1) The US has been “missing in action” in Asian institution-building; so joining EAS “puts the U.S. firmly into the picture.” (2) The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is the convener of EAS; so joining EAS “signals U.S. support for ASEAN.” (3) U.S. membership can help counterbalance pan-Asian groups that exclude Washington, such as ASEAN Plus Three. And (4) U.S. membership in EAS “could help bring Presidential attention to individual Southeast Asian countries that are downplayed in US policy.” It would enable President Obama to “become the first serving President of the United States to visit Cambodia.” And in 2013 we would have “the first-ever visit of a U.S. President to Laos.” Deep sigh. Look, I’m not surprised the U.S. is joining EAS; American officials have been signaling as much for a year. But does joining EAS do anything at all to remedy the most important challenges to American interests in Asia? I’ve argued repeatedly over the last year (for example, here, here, here, and here) that America’s problem in Asia is not that the U.S. is absent from every regional institution. Rather, America’s problem in Asia is that the institutions that are most meaningful to U.S. interests are precisely those that have defined the United States out. Put differently: joining EAS gets the U.S. into yet another room. But the rooms Washington isn’t in, isn’t being invited to enter, and will probably never be invited to enter are the ones that actually matter. At the end of the day, EAS simply may not matter much at all. The fact is, most pan-Asian institutions will move forward regardless of American views and preferences. So the groups that merit vigilance from Washington are those that pursue functional agendas detrimental to American economic or security interests, such as preferential trade agreements. Some pan-Asian formations are inevitable. And so, while joining a group like EAS allows the U.S. to barrel its way into yet another room, it does little to solve America’s central problem in Asia—namely, that Asians (including some of Washington’s closest allies) are groping for their own solutions to regional problems, especially economic and financial challenges. The U.S. continues to have a very static view of a region that is changing rapidly. Linked by a growing web of economic and financial connections, a diverse Asia is searching for a common identity—and for ways to turn economic success into greater global clout. And Asians are increasingly doing this on a pan-Asian basis, without the United States. It is widely acknowledged by diplomats and intellectuals in the region (if mainly in private conversations, and usually over a couple of cold beers) that the proliferation of Asian fora hasn’t done much to address functional problems. Some of my closest friends, even in Southeast Asia, readily admit that these fora are long on rhetoric and long overdue for a stock-taking: What works, and what doesn’t? How could multilateral efforts be more effective? Would Asia really be less secure if the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) did not exist? Who does Asia call when there is a tsunami or a cyclone in Burma? What’s needed isn’t a headlong American rush into groups like EAS but a hardheaded assessment of what tables Washington actually needs to sit at, and when and where it can afford to just step aside. The dominant trend in the region is that Asians are making pan-Asian groups, not trans-Pacific ones, their defining regional institutions. And the United States still isn’t adjusting to these. It’s too focused on getting into whatever rooms it can, and merely for the sake of it. The challenge I see for the U.S. is how to redefine the American role—how to link trans-Pacific groupings, such as APEC and ARF, to the pan-Asian groups. Several key U.S. partners (Indonesia, Vietnam, and South Korea, for starters) badly want the U.S. involved. They know the current architecture is flawed, and either have ideas for how to fix it or are open to such ideas. What to do? I’ve written about how the U.S. could adjust in a CFR Special Report. But my punchline is this: At the end of the day, the problem of Asian architecture is a functional one—too much redundancy, and too much architecture that does nothing much at all. The problem for the United States, then, is that the groups that do actually do something—usually on economic and financial issues, not least trade, investment, and standards—are pan-Asian clubs. Skillful American diplomacy would use the U.S. entry into EAS as leverage, seeking to redefine the group as more than just another leaders’ group-grope of no consequence. Ultimately, joining EAS solves what my friend, Bob Manning, likes to call America’s “Woody Allen problem.” As Woody put it, “90 percent of life is just showing up.” So, it’s nice that America is showing up. But joining EAS does nothing—nothing at all—to resolve the fundamental challenge to U.S. interests. To the contrary, it is ASEAN Plus Three, not EAS, that is already the most functional body at the core of a new pan-Asian regionalism. And ASEAN Plus Three is likely to focus on an economic agenda that challenges traditional American approaches and ultimately disadvantages U.S. firms. For example, if Japanese and Korean firms enjoy tariff-free treatment of the manufactures they sell in China while U.S. firms face the current average most-favored nation rate of 9 percent, American firms will lose substantial sales in an import market worth well over one trillion dollars. The same will be true if Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo use their “Plus Three” dialogue to agree on telecommunications or other standards for emerging technologies that create impediments for U.S. firms in a very large Asian market. (By the way, U.S. firms will lose substantial sales in Korea and Japan too, as ASEAN Plus Three moves toward further tariff reduction and becomes the locus of Asian trade liberalization). Since the U.S. has been defined out of ASEAN Plus Three, a more vigorous trade policy would do far more for American interests than will pounding down the door of another large, unwieldy, mostly purposeless group. Not every architectural problem requires an architectural solution. Let’s at least hope the U.S. parlays its membership in EAS into an attempt to rationalize pan-Asian and trans-Pacific groupings. That would be useful.

Crack Palinggi/courtesy Reuters My colleague Elizabeth Economy raises some important points about my article in Newsweek, but I think that, overall, she takes a far too rosy  view of the White House’s efforts, and its rewards, in Asia. Much of the polling data showing the White House’s popularity or favorability in Asia, for example, reflects as much Asian enthusiasm for Obama, and dislike for his predecessor George W. Bush, as it does any real regional response to the Obama administration’s efforts, or lack thereof, in the region. In Indonesia specifically, the favorability rating reflects Obama’s status as a kind of “local boy,” having spent part of his childhood there; by contrast, specific elements of the mooted US-Indonesia comprehensive partnership are not necessarily popular in important segments in Indonesia, including a renewed relationship with Kopassus. I do, as Liz notes, acknowledge when the administration has made headway. However, even some of the supposed triumphs are not necessarily so. The U.S.-South Korea free trade deal was negotiated by the previous administration, and despite Obama’s vow to move forward with it, the conditions he might attach to rethinking it may well kill it anyway, thereby both raising Seoul’s hopes and crushing them at the same time. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, meanwhile, is not an initiative launched by the Obama administration – it was started by Chile, Singapore, and New Zealand, and joined by the United States years later. The Obama administration, as even some administration officials admit in private, highlighted the TPP during the president’s visit to Asia last year exactly because the White House did not have any other good news on trade to offer, and TPP is so far from coming into reality that Washington could support it without having to face any real consequences of that support. Liz’s criticisms of my critique of China policy are reasonable, and perhaps some of my points got too compressed in the article. I do believe that the administration’s conciliatory moves toward China earlier on alienated India, Singapore, and to some extent the Philippines. By contrast, I think that, at times, the White House’s lack of attention to the region has pushed other countries – namely, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, and at times Japan closer to Beijing. However, to ask “are we really worried” about China’s soft power compared to that of the United States is too trusting in the United States’ long-term roots in the region. Yes, polling data comparing the United States and China’s popularity now shows the United States ahead, just as several years ago, when I did research for my first book, it showed China ahead – again, the polls then were skewed by the response to George W. Bush and now have been skewed by the personal popularity of Obama. Were Obama to be replaced by a figure with less global popularity, like Sarah Palin, you might see the figures reverse once again. But the underlying trends surely must cause U.S. policymakers to worry: regional economic integration occurring largely without the United States and now including even Taiwan, even if the US-Korea deal actually by some miracle is finalized; Chinese outreach to Indonesian students and academics, even as Washington has ignored the Indonesians’ desire to include Peace Corps  programs to send Indonesians to the US; growing Chinese aid across mainland Southeast Asia, which has emboldened leaders like Hun Sen and in part prompted the US to re-engage with regimes like the Burmese junta; and rising Chinese projection into areas, like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, where the US already had weak historical links. One popular president can’t forestall all those trends.

Jim Young/courtesy Reuters In Liz Economy’s assessment of Simon Tay’s new book Asia Alone, she writes that Tay argues that the United States should accept ASEAN as a full partner in a more multilateral Asian environment – that ASEAN is becoming a regional power of its own. I have always enjoyed Simon Tay’s work, and I am sure that Asia Alone makes for a compelling and well-written read. However, the argument that ASEAN is becoming a regional power, an argument that I have heard increasingly from opinion leaders in Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, is, I think, flawed. ASEAN has to date served as the hub of Asian institution-building, but that is primarily because, as a relatively weak organization, it can serve as a kind of neutral player; for the same reasons, the European Union is headquartered in Belgium and not France or Germany. Since ASEAN has served as the hub of Asian institution-building, a strange dynamic has developed over the past decade. Because of this central role, ASEAN leaders, and many Southeast Asians, have begun to see the organization as increasingly powerful and important in the region, when in reality, ASEAN actually in many ways has become weaker over the past decade. This divergence is creating a kind of mismatch between ASEAN’s rising intentions and its declining reality. How has ASEAN become weaker? For one, the states that historically have driven ASEAN’s integration – Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia – have not, with the exception of Indonesia, developed politically over the past decade. Thailand now faces constant political crisis, the Philippines’ democracy has degenerated badly, and both Singapore and Malaysia’s ruling parties have had difficulty shedding bad habits, like using the judiciary in Malaysia to attempt to silence the opposition. With four of its core five backsliding, ASEAN continues to drift, unable to develop coherent stands on issues from the ongoing political stalemate in Burma to the increasingly authoritarian rule of the government in Bangkok, hardly giving outside partners like the United States or China confidence that they should be dealing with ASEAN instead of their typical bilateral relationships with Asian capitals. (The other members, with the exception of Vietnam, are so small or isolated they have little influence.)  Indeed, though Beijing has in recent years made a big show of working multilaterally with ASEAN – and gained points in the region for it – Chinese officials privately admit that when any serious issues arise, China handles them bilaterally. In addition, ASEAN also has failed to move forward in the key role it could play, addressing nontraditional security challenges. No one honestly expects the ASEAN Secretariat to play a major role in resolving traditional thorny bilateral security challenges, like the conflict over the South China Sea. But ASEAN could play a much larger role in nontraditional challenges like environmental degradation, piracy, migration, disease, and narcotrafficking – these are trans-border issues that could use a neutral player to help facilitate information sharing and, if necessary, mediate between countries. Again, however, ASEAN has largely failed. It remains at best a secondary player in addressing any of these nontraditional challenges, and the quality of research on these issues at the ASEAN Secretariat itself pales in comparison to the work done at the best think tanks and universities in Singapore, which generally produce the most incisive studies of ASEAN’s potential. Given ASEAN’s continued weaknesses, then, it’s hardly surprising that all major powers in the region – the United States, China, and increasingly, India – pay lip service to working with ASEAN while they continue to handle important business bilaterally. ASEAN can demand to become a full partner in regional security, but the organization’s leading members don’t show any signs they will hold up their end of the bargain.

Asia Alone by Simon Tay This is the title of a thought-provoking new book by Singaporean writer and political analyst Simon Tay. I had read a draft of the book several months back and been so impressed that I offered a blurb for the back of the book. Now that it is out, I hope that a lot of people will read it. It is one of the best new books on Asia out there. What makes it so good? Two things, I think. First, Tay’s argument is novel and compelling. Asia, defined primarily as the states of ASEAN, is not simply a playground or pawn for a game between the United States and China. It is a regional power unto itself, and Tay argues that neither the United States nor China ought to take the region for granted—both must work to engage the region in new ways. Tay pushes for the United States to recognize ASEAN as a full partner; American leadership and even “mentorship” will continue, but it must be exercised in a new, more multilateral approach. Similarly, in Tay’s vision of the future, with ASEAN as a hub, China is a spoke, along with Japan and South Korea. While Tay is not interested in Asian countries banding together against a rising China, he also has no interest in a revival of the tributary system. Tay sees no reason for Asia to welcome China as "the new regional leader". Second, Tay is an informed and nuanced writer. Singaporean born and bred, Tay writes about the United States from a deep well of experience; he has spent a lot of time here as a student, teacher, and visiting scholar. He has a unique outsider/insider perspective on both the United States and Asia that few can replicate. He thus avoids the trap of many Asia hands (both those in Asia and those in the United States) who tend to see China (and the United States) as either a perpetrator of good or evil, with not much in between. Tay’s Singaporean compatriot Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, for example, travels the world as a defacto emissary for China. In his view, the United States is a largely malign power whose time has passed. You have to dig deep, on the other hand, to find much positive in Australian analyst John Lee’s writings on China. For him, China, whether on the home front or abroad, means trouble. There is perhaps a third reason to pick up Tay’s book—it is just superlatively written. In addition to his full-time work in the political world, Tay writes novels, and it shows. The book is full of lively descriptions, anecdotes, and interviews. Pick it up for the plane or the train…or even the beach. You won’t be disappointed.

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Francis R. Malasig/Pool The Australian National University’s East Asia Forum has reprinted a fascinating speech by the talented Surin Pitsuwan, secretary-general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). After reflecting on how ASEAN is helping the world emerge from the present financial crisis, Surin argues that ASEAN is “now more integrated, and resilient, than many had thought.” But for the sake of argument, I think it’s worth picking apart that statement on three dimensions. Here’s the core of Surin’s argument: “Over the past 40 years we have developed a ‘workable diplomatic sculpture’ called ASEAN.  The experience of other regional groupings shows that they all have a strong core.  The European Union has coal and steel cooperation.  The North American Free Trade Area is centred around the United States—the strongest economy in the world.  [But] ASEAN is designed in the reverse.  ASEAN has a rather loose core but draws on connectivity and dialogue to generate real partnership.” And here’s Surin’s punchline:  “We are not perfect but we can provide centrality and leadership to shape the regional landscape.” With the Obama Administration reviewing the U.S. posture, both toward Asian regional organizations and toward Southeast Asia more generally, Surin’s argument raises three important—but tough—issues: (1)   Is ASEAN, with its “rather loose core,” quite so integrated? (2)   Can ASEAN provide “centrality and leadership” to Asian regionalism? (3)   And how many, and what kind of, eggs should the U.S. put in the ASEAN basket, anyway?  An alternative would be to pursue a largely bilateral approach, or at least to diversify the U.S. portfolio in Southeast Asia. I won’t settle these issues here, but I addressed them (hopefully, in provocative way...) in a recent Council on Foreign Relations Special Report that I co-authored with Bob Manning, The United States in the New Asia. First, it’s worth noting that ASEAN integration is a work in progress.  We shouldn’t ignore the successes.  Forty years of commitment have altered the fundamental dynamics between Southeast Asian states.  ASEAN has successfully leveraged meetings at all levels to foster a sense of common interest, reinforced by personal acquaintance with counterparts in other ASEAN capitals.  (And it has had some notable successes—for example, in the 1991 Cambodian peace settlement). But disparities of capacity and conflicting objectives make it difficult to address functional challenges.  Expansion of its membership to Indochina and Myanmar and the weakness of ASEAN’s alphabetically rotating chairmanship have created structural limitations to ASEAN effectiveness. ASEAN’s founding members, understandably, wanted all ten Southeast Asian countries joined as a cohesive force to help balance China.  But their timing was poor:  Myanmar could not be assimilated to ASEAN ways and—unlike Vietnam—Cambodia and Laos carry little weight.  A “wise persons” commission asked to advise on the creation of an ASEAN charter recommended replacing consensus with majority decision-making, but the adopted charter has fallen short of this goal. Second, I’m increasingly skeptical that ASEAN will be quite so central to the future of East Asian regionalism. This is a pregnant subject, as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who advocated a new, non-ASEAN-centric architecture, has discovered.  Indeed, as Graeme Dobell sharply put it over at the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter blog, “Rudd to ASEAN: You Win.” Still, the United States should take heed because China, Japan, and South Korea, each in its own way, are posing their own questions and challenges. One of the ironies of modern Asia is that Southeast Asians built most regional groups, even though the region’s economic, military, and diplomatic power resides overwhelmingly in Northeast Asia.  There is now a serious mismatch:  the part of East Asia with so much less economic, technological, and military capacity has become the principal architect of nearly every recent effort to pool Asian power and capacity. That’s important because Beijing, Tokyo, and Seoul seem openly skeptical of this state of affairs.  And that partly explains their growing emphasis on their own mechanisms, including dialogues, a prospective trade agreement, and especially a “Plus Three” process that began in Bali in October 2003. Third, then, while the United States would be foolish to pay ASEAN no heed, American policy shouldn’t conflate “ASEAN” with “Southeast Asia.”  Indeed, for all the rhetorical hype from the administration about how “the U.S. is back” in its relations with ASEAN, the administration’s actions make clear that it has decided—correctly—that a little portfolio diversification is in order. The U.S. now works with ASEAN through an array of mechanisms, including the ASEAN-U.S. Cooperation Plan announced in 2002; the ASEAN-U.S. Technical Assistance and Training Facility established inside the ASEAN secretariat in 2004; the ASEAN-U.S. Enhanced Partnership agreement signed in 2005; the Enhanced Partnership Plan of Action signed in 2006; the ASEAN-U.S. Trade and Investment Framework Agreement also established in 2006; and under the rubric of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which the United States joined after Obama took office in 2009.  In September 2008 the U.S. became the first ASEAN dialogue partner to appoint an ambassador to ASEAN, an initiative spearheaded by Senator Richard Lugar.  And President Obama has also taken the important step of inaugurating a U.S.-ASEAN leaders meeting. But Thailand and the Philippines have become less coherent polities, less effective both inside and outside the ASEAN context. Meanwhile, Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam have become more prominent and economically dynamic, with robust bilateral ties to the United States. As a vibrant new democracy and a member of the G20, Indonesia has rightly garnered special attention from the administration.  And U.S.-Malaysia relations have improved on the basis of trade, counterterrorism cooperation, and military exchanges. Given the considerable gap in military, economic, and diplomatic power between Northeast and Southeast Asia, it’s increasingly clear that there will always be serious limitations to ASEAN-centric multilateralism.