Barack Obama and John McCain, the US presidential candidates, should understand better than most why Asia is important to any incumbent of the White House. Unlike former president George H.W. Bush, neither has been an envoy to Beijing, but each has at least spent time on Asian soil, Mr Obama as a schoolboy in Indonesia and Mr McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
Those experiences will stand them in good stead. As home to more than half the world's people and a large share of its conflicts, Asia has a way of mugging unwary US presidents.
Asia's historical impact on the US has been more calamitous and bloody by far than anything Middle Eastern; think of the conflict with Japan during the second world war, the Korean war and Vietnam. Even today, the US is fighting one of its two big wars in Afghanistan in central Asia.
George W. Bush is only the latest president to start by underestimating Asia's importance and taking a confrontational stance towards China. Like Bill Clinton, he later changed his tune and courted Beijing.
There is a danger that this pattern of early hostility and belated bridge-building will be repeated. It is no help that the Beijing Olympics, along with possible human rights protests and ugly displays of nationalism, are to be staged in August, shortly before the Democratic and Republican national conventions.
Whatever happens at the Olympics, neither Mr Obama nor Mr McCain can escape the significance of Asia's rise for US voters. The Asia-Pacific region exerts more economic and strategic influence each time the US goes to the polls.
In the age of globalisation, it is of no use for US politicians to focus on the "domestic economy" as though it can be isolated from foreign influences. The mocking campaign statement by Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama's Democratic former rival, that "we borrow money from the Chinese to buy oil from the Saudis" was a truism. The Chinese, after all, have money and the Saudis have oil.
In the midst of the credit crunch, the importance of Asia's robust economic growth is particularly visible in the finance sector. Mergers, acquisitions and share offerings by companies in China, India and Australia have boosted the incomes of investment banks struggling in the US and Europe. Asian sovereign wealth funds have injected capital into western financial institutions.
Asia's economic importance, however, goes deeper than that. With his eye on the US electoral calendar, Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist for Bank of America, this month begged US politicians to recognise how interdependent the US economy is with the rest of the world and urged them not to turn to trade protectionism. "America's dependence on such critical inputs as foreign labour, resources, capital and markets has never been greater," he wrote.
As for security, there is no doubt that China in particular is rapidly increasing the power of its armed forces. Lieutenant-General Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, was evidently dreaming of a balance of superpowers when he told the annual Asian security meeting of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS): "Peace is a product of parity, an equivalence of power and a balance of offensive and defensive strength." For all his diplomatic fumbling, the second President Bush was right to call China a "strategic competitor".
Even those who doubt China's ability to match US military strength before decades have passed understand the risks of conflict and need for co-operation. Both Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates, US secretaries of state and defence respectively, have gone on the record in recent days to defend close US engagement with China and the rest of Asia. "Asia has become the centre of gravity in a rapidly globalising world," Mr Gates told the IISS meeting.
So far neither of the two main candidates has said much about Asia policy in a campaign dominated by the economy and Iraq. US business leaders, fearing the populist anti-China rhetoric that marked the early phase of the Democratic contest, hope it stays that way. But it has not escaped them that Mr Obama is the worst offender. He has accused China of currency manipulation and opposes a trade deal with South Korea.
The free-trader Mr McCain, by contrast, noted in an opinion piece with Senator Joseph Lieberman for The Wall Street Journal that the tripling of US trade with Asia in 15 years had created American jobs as well as Asian wealth. The US, they wrote, had common interests with China that could be the basis of a "strong partnership" on climate change, trade and nuclear proliferation.
US presidential hopefuls should openly celebrate the US relationship with Asia, not hide behind a screen of spurious economic nationalism for the sake of a few blue-collar votes. Since the 1970s, Asia and the US have contributed immeasurably to each other's well-being. Only a foolish president would put that at risk.
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