Second, APEC’s geographic drift is complemented by more wide-ranging and diffuse topics. In the 1990s, APEC was relatively focused on trade liberalization. The 1993 Seattle summit and the following summit in Bogor created a strong momentum for working on the region-wide trade liberalization target by 2010 and 2020. But the growing tension between the interests of “Western” and “Eastern” members and the Asian financial crisis eventually derailed the process of the “early voluntary sectoral liberalization” (EVSL) program in 1998. Since then APEC has been characterized by the strange combination of a loss of direction and mission creep. Every year host governments try to come up with some eye-catching slogans for the summit, while substantive trade liberalization measures are removed from the agenda. In recent years, topics for APEC leaders meeting include cross-cultural communication, shoulder-mounted missile launchers, energy security, and climate change. The annual leaders meeting has become inversely related to APEC’s original goals of trade liberalization. There is more competitive initiative-launching and more “announceables” in the annual gathering than there are substantive measures.