http://news360.com/article/283265476/#

Pressure is mounting in the US on President Barack Obama to join the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

With Britain deciding to join the new rival to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank and Australia, South Korea and other nations contemplating following suit, the moves are viewed as China eroding America's ties with its closest allies.

Obama's strategy of pressing allies not to join the AIIB is a losing proposition, according to Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow and director of Asia Studies at the US-based Council on Foreign Relations independent think tank.

Economy argues the US needs to join the AIIB.

"There is no sense expending further political capital trying to persuade regional and other actors not to join the bank," Economy wrote on the council's website.

"It is a small-potato issue that is making the United States look weak at a time when US influence in the region is otherwise quite strong."

The Brookings Institution's Thomas Wright described the US approach to the AIIB as "confused and contradictory".

"Looking forward, the United States needs to move beyond obstructionism and figure out a better strategy for dealing with China's competitive economic diplomacy," Wright wrote.

An article on the influential Washington DC website thehill.com is titled, "Will Australia, Canada and others follow Britain to the new China bank?"

It describes Obama as the "man who wasn't there", with world leaders and members of Congress ignoring him.

"So much for Obama's heavily promoted 'pivot' to Asia," the hill.com article states.