Regional summits can still play a role in reducing tensions
Simon Tay and Cheryl Tan say East Asia Summit provides a chance to talk
Asia has entered its annual season of political summits and US President Barack Obama will be a key player, first at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and then at the East Asia Summit, hosted by Myanmar.
Simply turning up shows that America is making the effort to continue its rebalance to the region. But after the pomp and ceremony dies down, will Asia be satisfied with what America has to offer? And will Obama judge his time here well spent?
There has always been some debate about how to define the region - whether Asia should be paired with the US and others on the far side of the Pacific, or be a region unto itself. Apec and the East Asia Summit are two key meetings in the jumbled and partly overlapping arrangements that result.
Apec includes 21 members from both sides of the Pacific, and sometimes seems too sprawling.
In contrast, the East Asia Summit membership remains more limited. Hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the summit has gone beyond China, Japan and South Korea to include the US, Australia, New Zealand, India and Russia. The summit currently seems to meet a kind of "Goldilocks" test - neither too small to matter nor so large that it is unwieldy.
Hosting the summit is a major part of Asean's claim to "centrality" in a region of rising powers. The East Asia Summit is, however, neither without critics nor potential rivals.
Different major powers are taking different initiatives. The Obama administration's centrepiece for trade and economic ties, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, includes its ally Japan but just four out of 10 Asean member states - Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. China, moreover, is notably excluded.
