The backbone of stability and amity in Asia and the Pacific is an open economic system, which has encouraged deep trade and investment interdependence within the region, and the United States security umbrella that provides reassurance to US allies and partners as well as those, like China, outside the alliance framework against a resurgence of military or political adventurism. Despite the rise of Asia and the dramatic change in the structure of regional economic and political power, both elements remain important, though even some realists would concede that economic interdependence nowadays provides more day-by-day ballast in regional affairs than the threat of deploying American power.