Summit with Asean a good opening move as US steps up its game in Asia

It is a slightly ageing adage, but nevertheless still true: that 90 per cent of success in life is just showing up.

- Nirmal Ghosh

And the United States and eight out of 10 Asean leaders did just that last week, for the first ever-in-person US-Asean summit at the White House.

On the face of it, deliverables from the summit may have been underwhelming.

"US$150 million (S$209 million) in added support for 10 South-east Asian nations with 661.8 million people and a combined GDP of US$3 trillion does not quite equal robust economic engagement," former US Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank Curtis Chin tweeted.

But giving Asean multiple platforms in Washington over two days was not insignificant.

The US is beset with problems at home and occupied with a crisis in Europe. It also continues at times to be challenged to decipher Asean - a group with a wide range of individual security and economic interests.

While Asean welcomes the US as a balancing power to China in the region, it could, to varying degrees, be allergic to the ideological aspects of US foreign policy, and to being told what is best for them.