By David Tweed and Toluse Olorunnipa

(Bloomberg) — U.S. officers need to superheroes of their quest to protect Asia’s postwar safety order within the face of an more and more assertive China.

“If Batman had a ship, this’d be it,” Admiral Harry Harris, head of U.S. Pacific Command, instructed a crowd of Asia specialists in Washington final month as he pointed to a slide of a DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer, the U.S. Navy’s largest and stealthiest. “Everything that is new and cool that the United States is developing is going to the Asia Pacific.”

Harris’s account of the navy part of Barack Obama’s “rebalance to Asia” comes because the president prepares to host leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations on the Sunnylands property in California subsequent week. Obama has sought to tighten U.S. affect after the administrations of George W. Bush and others targeted extra on the Middle East and elsewhere. There’s an financial crucial, too: China overtook Japan to turn out to be Asean’s greatest buying and selling companion in 2009, after displacing the U.S. a 12 months earlier.

Holding the summit on the 200-acre property will permit leaders to spend casual time with Obama, mentioned Ernest Bower, senior adviser on the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Obama selected Sunnylands for prolonged “shirt-sleeve” talks with newly minted Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013.

“The White House sees Sunnylands as a very special treatment, where the president of the United States is leaving Washington and is going to spend two full days exclusively focused on leaders,” Bower mentioned.

The assembly comes amid concern in Washington {that a} rising China will ultimately compel the U.S. to cede floor. Xi has spoken typically of a brand new mannequin of “great power relations” and a navy that’s higher capable of undertaking power outward within the area, and is searching for to again that with financial clout.

By 2030, the disputed South China Sea “will be virtually a Chinese lake” on account of China’s near-constant presence and enhanced regional status, in keeping with a Congress-mandated CSIS report launched final month. That would upend a safety order in place since Japan’s defeat in World War II left the U.S. because the undisputed grasp of Asia’s seas.

‘Benign Neglect’

“The Bush administration was criticized for having this benign neglect toward the region because of his preoccupation with Afghanistan and the Middle East,” mentioned Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a political scientist on the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. “No region wants to be seen as a momentary convenience. You cannot sustain a relationship when you turn around and only pay attention when you need friends.”

Obama is searching for Asean unity over China’s claims to greater than 80 % of the South China Sea, that are contested by nations like Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, mentioned Alexander Sullivan, an affiliate fellow on the Center for a New American Security in Washington. In the previous two years China has reclaimed greater than 3,000 acres within the sea, which yearly hosts $5 trillion in transport, and is constructing navy amenities there.

While the Philippines and Vietnam have protested, different Asean states have been extra keen to accommodate China and its financial muscle. In November, Asean protection ministers didn’t launch a communique from their assembly, amid stories of Chinese opposition to language on the disputes. There was an identical failure at a leaders’ summit in Cambodia in 2012.

“The U.S. is trying to get Asean to speak with one voice on the South China Sea issue,” Sullivan mentioned. “It is not competing to divide the body in the same way that I think China is.”

Indonesia shouldn’t be a celebration to the South China Sea disputes however needs them resolved by means of talks, President Joko Widodo instructed Bloomberg Television this week.

“If the region is not stable, the economy will get into trouble,” he mentioned. “Indonesia wants to play a more active role in resolving the South China Sea issue.”

Asean leaders could look to the U.S. to lastly ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a treaty signed by China, mentioned Anwar, who was an adviser to former Indonesian President BJ Habibie. “If we are talking respect for the rule of law, and the rule of law in the maritime realm is UNCLOS, then the U.S. isn’t exactly strengthening its hand.”

Adding to a way of urgency is the prospect of a ruling by mid-2016 by a world tribunal on a Philippine case difficult China’s South China Sea claims. China refuses to acknowledge the swimsuit, saying it is going to solely have interaction in bilateral talks on disputes.

Kerry Trip

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry started laying the groundwork for Sunnylands in January, visiting Laos — holder of Asean’s rotating chairmanship this 12 months — after which Cambodia. He completed his journey in Beijing, the place he made little headway with Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the South China Sea subject.

Days later, the U.S. despatched a warship into waters claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan to problem the “excessive” maritime claims of all three. It was the second time in lower than six months the U.S. has challenged China with a freedom-of- navigation voyage.

Obama will search to deepen U.S. financial engagement with Asean by touting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a commerce deal encompassing a dozen nations together with Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines have expressed curiosity in becoming a member of.

Silk Road

China is in flip is pursuing its “21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” a community of regional infrastructure tasks partly funded by the brand new Beijing-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. In December, the Philippines agreed to affix the AIIB.

“It is very clear that with nearly half the world’s population, one-third of the global GDP and some of the most capable militaries, the Asia Pacific is increasingly the world’s political and economic center of gravity,” Daniel Kritenbrink, senior director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council, mentioned at a briefing in Washington. “That’s why, from the very beginning of his administration, President Obama has prioritized engagement with the Asia-Pacific region.”

–With help from Chris Brummitt.

©2016 Bloomberg News