US President Barack Obama's Afghan strategy - 100,000 troops and a withdrawal beginning in July 2011 - will demand costly intangibles and some are wondering whether it is here, in East Asia, that Washington will end up paying that bill.
Quagmire in Afghanistan could further play into the hands of an emerging China that is fast challenging the strategic assumptions that have governed East Asia for decades.
Even if the dramatic escalation of 30,000 extra troops goes smoothly, the military, political and diplomatic capital expended will be considerable. And it is not being spent by a fresh, young hopeful, but an exhausted warrior trying to restore his reserves of blood and treasure after two conflicts, and the worst economic crisis in a generation.
Will Afghanistan divert Washington's attention from the more subtle but vital task of dealing with the rise of China and balancing ties across East Asia, where, for decades, it has been the primary military power? Will it divert the energies of US institutions just as they are supposed to be engaging China on an ever-broadening range of issues, from the environment and water management to freedom of navigation?
Then there are the worst case scenarios. Would Afghanistan commitments mean the US could not respond fully to a military crisis in the region, say a conflict over Taiwan or the Korean peninsula? Afghanistan, after all, is now Obama's war.
These are the questions being asked across the region just weeks after Obama staged his first visit to set the tone for what he hopes will be eight years of complex engagement - deepening ties with China while boosting existing alliances and reaching to out to new friends.