First off, I should warn everyone that I’m just finishing off a 14-hour work day. Moreover, it is Monday and I have an early flight to Shanghai for a client meeting tomorrow – I have to leave for the airport in about eight hours. Take all that into account before you read this.

OK, I was watching BBC News over the weekend and caught a few minutes of Condi Rice’s APEC speech. It was chock full of hopeful sentiment about how much promise there is in APEC, how it should be used as a platform for Asian integration, etc. You get the picture.

What annoyed me is that several well-known people, including Fred Bergsten of the IIE, had been loudly saying the exact same thing for quite a number of years. They were ignored, even in the face of significant Asian economic integration via ASEAN/ASEAN+3 and other organizational efforts. The U.S. during this time was busy in the Middle East, and prior to that was responding to the Asian Financial Crisis by blocking the formation of an Asian version of IMF – and that is just one example. There may have been good reasons for the latter, but the general perception was that the U.S. was not that interested in Asia and participating in Asian economic development from an institutional perspective.

After some progress with ASEAN, the Chinese charm offensive, and other regional developments, now suddenly the U.S. is interested again in APEC. Someone finally realized that it was not in the U.S. interest to cede all authority in Asia to Japan and China. Better late than never, I suppose.