WASHINGTON – The crowd of Washington’s South-east Asia watchers in the room on Dec 14 was small but enthusiastic, whooping and clinking champagne flutes as a red ribbon fluttered to the floor, signalling the inauguration of the US-Asean Centre in Arizona State University’s offices in downtown Washington, DC.

The centre will support research, training and people-to-people connections between Asean and the United States. It will also elevate Asean’s profile in Washington, where the grouping, while enjoying wide consensus as an economic partner of the US, must still compete for air in a city where energies are often consumed by threats and crises, real or perceived – currently the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and, of course, China.