It's a long way to the summit, and the view is pretty hazy
"APEC is an interesting, indeed, unique organisation" ... Julia Gillard. Photo: AFP
MAYBE the Stockholm syndrome has taken hold, even in Vladivostok.
I arrived in Russia convinced yet another leaders' summit in Asia was about as useful as the last, only to come around and see some benefit in all this talk.
Surely that means I am a brainwashed hostage taken in by the allure of the cocktail circuit, a captive mind addled by motorcades, smiling Russian students and not-so-friendly security guards ushering me from one bilateral leaders' meeting to the next.
Because logic suggests the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation - jokingly derided by Gareth Evans as ''four adjectives in search of a noun'' - must now be one forum too many, when it overlaps with the East Asia Summit, the Asia-Europe Meeting, the G20 and even the Pacific Islands Forum.
Hillary Clinton must have felt tired - she looked it. Starting in the Cook Islands on August 31, the US Secretary of State zipped between Indonesia, China, East Timor and Brunei and then to Russia in the course of a week.
Julia Gillard admitted getting to Vladivostok from Canberra had been ''quite a long flight'' and sadly, after the death of her father, she had to leave early. She had also made a premature exit from the Cook Islands after the death of five Australian troops.
But did Gillard think the organisation that adds such demands to the schedule might be drifting?
''I certainly don't think it will disappear,'' she said at the forum, seemingly surprised by the thought. ''APEC is an interesting, indeed unique organisation that brings peer pressure to work to get people to embrace change and it has enjoyed success at that.''
The claim to success seems a little overstated - the organisation has failed to meet free trade targets it set in 1994, and the agenda changes depending on the whim of the host.
But Gillard anticipated the criticism. The issues discussed were often technical, she said. ''They require a lot of hard work and continuous labour. So you don't see overnight results, but we can track the journey of APEC from its first iteration as a leaders' forum in 1993 and point to things that have been achieved.''
Doubtful, I watched. Sure enough, over the coming days, things did happen. The main agenda was a little turgid - a small cap on tariffs for 54 environmental products.
But other events unfolded, too, the kind of dynamic that happens when you bring decision-makers together. Australia, obsessed by the issue of asylum seeker boats, took the chance to meet Papua New Guinea and Malaysia. Gillard had planned a ''pull aside'' with China's Hu Jintao, a few minutes' chat with the leader of the most important economy to Australia.
Russia talked to America, America to China. Big problems were discussed, if not solved.
But was all this worth the 600 billion roubles ($18.2 billion) Vladimir Putin threw on the table to stage the event?
''I do not know what to tell you right now,'' he said. ''What could the answer be to this question? Please do not get angry with me.'' Then he found a much longer way to say yes.