The Americans are back. As if to reassure a region that sometimes feels neglected, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaims in an essay in the latest issue of Foreign Policy that: "The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the US will be right at the centre of the action."
If all goes to plan, America will take big steps towards this goal at an upcoming summit hosted by the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) on the Indonesian island of Bali beginning tomorrow.
The 10-member regional grouping will first be holding its own heads of state summit in Bali, but their annual shindig will be overshadowed by US President Barack Obama's planned attendance immediately afterwards at the East Asia Summit (EAS), a body to which the US will formally accede.
The EAS was founded six years ago as a diplomatic extension of Asean, and includes other countries, such as Australia, China and India, that have interests in the Asia-Pacific.
Permanent place
America's accession will be momentous for everyone, argues Robin Bush, the optimistic head of the Asia Foundation in Jakarta, because it ensures America a permanent place at the forum where the region's future will be shaped.
American diplomats claim this is reward for Obama's economic and diplomatic investment in the Asean region, America's fourth-largest overseas market. The US appointed a special envoy to Asean, based in Jakarta, signed the Asean Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, and has taken part in the Asean Regional Forum, a security talking-shop. America has long had close relations with countries like Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore (which are all treaty allies).
But in recent years it has also worked on improving ties with countries that have in the past antagonised it.
Rights abuses
It has forged what Clinton calls a "new partnership" with Indonesia, the giant of South-East Asia and the world's most populous majority-Muslim country. This has even meant a resumption of training Indonesia's controversial special forces, accused of past human-rights abuses in East Timor, West Papua and Aceh.
The rapprochement with Vietnam has deepened, both economically and politically: in 2010 the USS George Washington was the first American aircraft-carrier to visit the country since the end of the Vietnam war.
This year America even appointed a special envoy to Myanmar, a country it had previously shunned.
Meanwhile, Asean countries have become increasingly keen for America to come closer, if only as a balance against a rising China. The past couple of years have seen increasing regional tensions, for example in the sea lanes of the South China Sea.
Several Asean nations dispute ownership of islands with China, and China's preparedness to assert its claims with aggressive warnings and even a bit of gunboat diplomacy has worried smaller neighbours, notably Vietnam and the Philippines. As well as presumed mineral riches under the seabed, the sea lanes are a vital route for shipping.
Balancing Chinese ambitions is also partly why Asean has been keen to draw other powers, including Japan, Australia, India and Russia, into its summitry.
The association is far too polite to speak so frankly. It talks instead of a new policy to maintain a "dynamic equilibrium" in the region, a term coined by the Indonesian foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa. Above all, Asean hopes that America will be in a better position to help keep the peace in the South China Sea.
As interests converge between America and Asean, ambitions grow. One American think-tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, urges America to move quickly towards negotiating a US-Asean free-trade agreement.
For Indonesians, at least, all that lies in the future. For now they are just wondering whether Obama, whose stepfather was Indonesian and who lived in Jakarta as a child, will actually turn up. They have been disappointed a couple of times before, and know the president's schedule can suddenly change.
But surely a weekend in Bali is incentive enough?
