After the fireworks at last year's meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the big question at this year's get-together was whether the United States and China would again clash over the South China Sea.
They did not. Instead, China and ASEAN defused the biggest issue — sovereignty over disputed territory in the South China Sea — by agreeing on new guidelines to handle those disputes. That left participants to applaud that success and focus on other regional security concerns.
Indeed, as ARF meetings go, this one was relatively successful. The test, as always, is the follow-up discussions.