In December 2005 leaders from 16 Asia-Pacific nations gathered in Kuala Lumpur for the first East Asia Summit (EAS). The US was conspicuous by its absence. Should Washington be concerned about being excluded from the process of building an East Asia community? Serious questions remain about the prospects for such a community and the intentions of its creators. Will the EAS and the Asian-only ASEAN Plus Three rival or complement broader frameworks that include the US, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation? How does one create avenues of interaction between East Asian and Asia-Pacific mechanisms to make them mutually supporting rather than mutually exclusive? Ralph Cossa will address these questions and draw the implications for US policy.

Ralph A. Cossa, in addition to running the Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu - a non-profit foreign-policy research institute affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC - is senior editor of its quarterly electronic journal, Comparative Connections. He is also a founding member of the Steering Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), co-chairs the CSCAP International Study Group on Countering the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Asia Pacific, and belongs to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) Experts and Eminent Persons Group.