In its Friday afternoon news dump before Labor Day weekend, the White House announced that President Obama had invited the ten leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to join him for a summit in New York on September 24.  This will be the second U.S.-ASEAN summit, and the first to be held in the U.S.  

President George W. Bush attempted to hold a similar meeting with the members of ASEAN toward the end of his second term, but the effort was ultimately dropped, as the administration was unable to figure out how to have a summit with ASEAN without extending an invitation to Burma, one of its members.  By holding the forthcoming U.S.-ASEAN summit on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, which ASEAN senior leaders will be attending anyway, the Obama administration is attempting to finesse this problem. Nonetheless, President Obama is unlikely to escape the Burma dilemma, particularly if the junta is represented at the UN by a member of its leadership, which is currently the target of U.S. sanctions. These sanctions, which are directed at individuals responsible for gross human rights violations in Burma, have been renewed twice by the Obama administration even as it attempted to engage with the military junta over the past 18 months.