OLD jokes are best. If they are remembered it is because they are funny, and if they are funny, it is probably because they are at least partly true. So it was when Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, called APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation) “four adjectives in search of a noun”.

Last weekend's APEC summit in Sydney showed that nearly 20 years after its foundation, the group has yet to decide on its noun (what it is), let alone its verb—what it actually does. The 21 Asian and Pacific leaders (including one embattled American president) who descended on Sydney required nearly $150m worth of security arrangements, including a five-kilometre-long, protester-proof fence dubbed the “great wall of Sydney”.

Press coverage centred on local disgruntlement at the disruption, on an embarrassing security breach by somebody disguised as Osama bin Laden (shown below), and on speculation as to how Australia would fulfil the tradition of a group photograph in “national dress”. (Since this quaint custom appears designed solely to make the leaders and the American president look silly, it is to be regretted that John Howard, Australia's prime minister, rejected the idea of a swimsuit parade.)

Diplomats will tut-tut: how the press trivialises these important international gatherings! But the opposite criticism is more valid: the press took the summit too seriously. It earnestly relayed the leaders' call for a rapid conclusion of the stalled Doha round of trade talks; and it dutifully recorded their “aspirational goal” (ie, meaningless wishful thinking) to limit greenhouse-gas emissions.

There is no evidence that agreements reached at APEC serve any purpose other than providing a basis for discussion at the next summit. To report them as if they did is misleading.

AP

But does APEC have other uses? Indeed it does in theory, but none that stands up to scrutiny. First, when Australian prime ministers pushed the idea of a pan-Pacific summit two decades ago, they wanted to ensure greater American engagement in Asia and the Pacific. Particularly after the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, there was a worry that America might neglect the region in favour of its domestic concerns and Europe.

But the world has changed. The rise of Asia—and of China in particular—is not something that any American leader can now ignore. Of course Asia's prominence raises an array of issues, but most are bilateral or multilateral. Dealing with them (or rather, failing to deal with them) regionally is not helpful.

Second, there was a fear that Asian prickliness might lead to the growth of a strong regional grouping that excluded America: the economic “caucus” (without the Caucasians) championed by Mahathir Mohammad, a former Malaysian prime minister. But that, in the form of the “East Asian Summit” is happening anyway.

But surely, say APEC's fans, it is at least a good thing that these leaders meet and chew the fat? At times, it can even be opportune: last year in Hanoi, the leaders issued a statement condemning North Korea's test of a nuclear device the previous month. But that coincidence seems a pretty thin excuse for a huge international event, and the statement had no noticeable effect.

It is not just that APEC has no obvious function. It is worse than that: it actually has a pernicious effect. Its very existence creates the illusion that something is being done and so weakens other efforts to reach meaningful agreements on, for example, climate change and trade. This joke has gone on long enough.