On July 22, 2009, in Phuket, Thailand, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and representatives from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN) signed the Instrument of Extension and the Instrument of Accession to ASEAN's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC). Secretary Clinton was in Thailand to attend the annual ASEAN Regional Forum Foreign Ministerial. The move came less than six months after she had announced, during a visit to Jakarta, that the Obama Administration would launch its formal interagency process to pursue accession. One of ASEAN's pillars, the TAC was first negotiated in 1976 and subsequently amended to allow non-regional countries to accede. The Administration's move is designed to symbolically boost the United States' standing in Southeast Asia by expanding the multilateral component of U.S. policy in the region. Following consultations with selective offices in the Senate, the Administration decided that accession would take the form of an executive agreement, which does not require Senate approval. The debate over whether the United States should accede to the TAC raised at least three issues for the Obama Administration and the Congress: 1. how would accession to the TAC advance U.S. interests in Southeast Asia? 2. would accession to the TAC constrain U.S. policy in Southeast Asia, particularly with respect to Burma? 3. should the Administration send the TAC to the Senate for ratification? Periodically, Congressional measures have called attention to ASEAN and/or called for upgrading U.S. engagement with ASEAN. In the 109 th Congress, the Senate passed by unanimous consent S. 2697 (Lugar), the United States Ambassador for ASEAN Affairs Act, which mandated the naming of an Ambassador to the organization. None of the congressional measures dealing with U.S. engagement with ASEAN mentioned U.S. accession to the TAC. The Obama Administration's primary motivation for acceding to the TAC appears to have been to send a signal that the United States seeks to upgrade its presence in Southeast Asia. Many leaders in the region have felt neglected by the United States in recent years. ASEAN leaders have long viewed the TAC not only as a constitutional document for the organization, but also as establishing guiding principles that have built confidence among members, thereby contributing to maintaining regional peace and stability. Accession to the TAC by non-members often is seen as a symbol of their commitment to engagement in Southeast Asia and the organization's emphasis on multilateral processes. As shown in Table 1 , prior to July 2009, the United States was the only major Pacific power that had not joined the TAC; traditionally, the U.S. presence in Southeast Asia has been organized primarily along bilateral lines. Additionally, acceding to the TAC is also one of the three requirements for joining the East Asia Summit (EAS), a four-year old forum that features an annual meeting among the heads-of-state of the ASEAN members, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, and New Zealand. The other two requirements are dialogue partnership and significant economic relations with ASEAN, both of which the United States already meets. It is unclear whether the Obama Administration plans to join the EAS, or to what extent U.S. participation would be resisted by EAS members, particularly China and Malaysia, which in the past have voiced reservations with U.S. participation. Australia's accession to the TAC in 2005, which reversed years of official policy, was primarily motivated by Canberra's desire to be a founding member of the EAS. Joining the TAC had been proposed by many in the Asia policy community for several years, and the idea was debated in the George W. Bush Administration. Objections to joining the TAC included arguments that the TAC's emphasis on non-interference in domestic affairs (particularly in Articles 2, 10, and 13) would constrain U.S. freedom of action, particularly its ability to penalize Burma; a concern that the treaty would undermine U.S. security agreements with Asian allies, notably Japan, South Korea, and Australia; a belief that acceding would accord greater legitimacy to the ruling Burmese junta; a view that ASEAN is insufficiently "action-oriented"; and a belief that the TAC is an ineffectual, largely symbolic agreement. Proponents of accession countered that the decisions by U.S. allies Australia, South Korea, and Japan to accede to the TAC should negate concerns that the TAC would constrain U.S. policy and/or undermine U.S. alliances. As discussed in detail below, as part of their accession negotiations, Australia and South Korea both signed side letters with ASEAN that were designed to alleviate similar concerns. (See Appendix B .) Along the same lines, Japan reached an understanding with ASEAN prior to its accession to the TAC. Following the Australian and South Korean model, the Obama Administration negotiated and exchanged side letters with the Chairman of ASEAN (who in July 2009 was the Thai Foreign Minister) designed to prevent the TAC from constraining U.S. foreign policy actions. During the debate over accession, Australia's October 2007 promulgation of targeted financial and travel restrictions on over 400 members of the Burmese regime in the aftermath of the regime's September 2007 crackdown against peaceful protesters was cited as evidence that the TAC would not necessarily constrain U.S. policy. Australia, like Japan, has generally followed a policy of quiet engagement of Burma, seasoned with occasional public criticisms and targeted penalties. Canberra's restrictions against the Burmese regime are not nearly as expansive as U.S. sanctions. During its first weeks in office, the Obama Administration announced it would initiate a review of U.S. policy toward Burma. During her February 2009 visit to Asia, Secretary Clinton said that neither sanctions nor the engagement strategies pursued by ASEAN members were working. One of the world's largest regional groupings, ASEAN is Southeast Asia's primary multilateral organization. Its 10 member-nations include over 500 million people. Geographically, Southeast Asia includes some of the world's most critical sea lanes, including the Straits of Malacca, through which pass a large percentage of the world's trade. The straits also are important routes for U.S. naval deployments around the globe, including the Middle East and South Asia. Southeast Asia has served as a center and a base for terrorist operations by radical Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda, though the threat posed by such indigenous groups appears to have been significantly reduced since the middle of the decade. The region is a key source and transmission point for many of the world's "human security" problems, including smuggling, narcotics trafficking, piracy, human trafficking, and the spread of contagious diseases such as avian influenza. Southeast Asia is home to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, which is important to the United States for its size, its democratic example for other majority-Muslim countries, and its status as one of the world's largest carbon emitters, largely by virtue of the rapid pace of deforestation. U.S. relations with Malaysia, another core majority-Muslim ASEAN member, also have global and regional importance because of Malaysia's democratic and economic example (it is a middle income country) and because of its attempts to mediate long-running conflicts between Christian and Muslim factions in the southern Philippines. The region also includes two formal U.S. treaty allies with functioning, although sometimes troubled, democracies—Thailand and the Philippines—as well as another close U.S. security partner, Singapore. Furthermore, diplomatically and strategically, Southeast Asia is the site of a contest for influence among China, the United States, and to a lesser extent Japan. China in particular has expanded its presence and influence in Southeast Asia since the early 2000s. Some commentators have argued that Beijing's increased presence has jeopardized U.S. influence. Others contest this assertion, arguing that the U.S. and China are not locked in a "zero sum" situation in Southeast Asia, that some of China's actions since 2007 have made some Southeast Asians wary of Beijing's actions, and/or that Chinese diplomacy in Southeast Asia is perceived as successful because China has tended to prioritize areas of mutual agreement while putting off issues that are more difficult to resolve. Regardless of whether U.S. interests are materially threatened, China's increased presence in Southeast Asia has made many Southeast Asian leaders eager for a strong U.S. presence in the region. Indeed, one factor motivating the United States' increased engagement with ASEAN in the 2000s has been the desire to support Southeast Asia's political stature as China expands its influence in the region. Collectively, ASEAN is a major U.S. trading partner. Total trade between the United States and the 10 ASEAN countries in 2008 totaled $178 billion. If ASEAN were treated as a single trading partner, it would rank as the fourth largest U.S. export market (at $68.2 billion) and the fifth largest source of U.S. imports (at $110.2 billion) in 2008. Since 2005, between 5%-6% of total U.S. exports by value have been shipped to the ASEAN market, slightly more than exports to Japan. Over the same period, ASEAN has been the source for about 5%-6% of total U.S. imports. ASEAN's share of U.S. trade has fallen since 1995, when it was the destination for nearly 7% of U.S. exports and the source of 8.5% of U.S. imports, by value.