Top White House official said that a strong presence of the US in Asia Pacific region in partnership with countries like Australia, India, Indonesia and Japan is key to peace and stability in the region which is experiencing the tremendous growth of China, which has caused some apprehension among its neighbours.
"I think it's absolutely the case that this is a region that sees a lot of rapidly developing change, including the rise of China.
"But in that context, the US wants to, again, make it clear that we are going to continue to be a strong Asia-Pacific power; that we are going to continue to stand by our core alliances; that we are going to build positive relationships with emerging powers like China and India," Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, Ben Rhodes told reporters at the White House.
"But also, what we want to foster is an environment where all this change is channeled to effective regional solutions, because we want to see, essentially, the success of a rules-based system in this part of the world. We want to see countries follow the rules of the road on economic issues," he said.
"Whether that's adhering to intellectual property norms, whether it's adhering to regulatory norms. So on the economic side we very much want to have rules of the road in place that all nations are committed too," he said.
Similarly on the security side, the US wants to have institutions set up like the East Asia Summit to address multinational issues like maritime security, or nuclear security, so that they have a rules-based framework to deal with that as well.
"So what the US can do is both reassure our allies, develop strong ties with emerging nations, and then try to build a regional framework to deal with issues," he said.
The East Asia Summit in Bali, Indonesia, Daniel Russel, National Security Council Senior Director for Asian Affairs, said leaders would be discussing prominent issues disaster relief, nonproliferation and the broad range of issues both on a bilateral and a multilateral issue; and maritime security.
"The East Asia Summit brings together the leaders of the entire Asia-Pacific region. They are at a forum that allows them to discuss freely the strategic and political issues of concern to their nations and to their publics," Russel said.