East Asian Union: regionalism, obstacles and opportunities from multiple perspectives

¶ … East-Asian Union Emerge in the Future? Rethinking Regionalism: Analyzing the Obstacles and Opportunities from Historical, Geographical, Economic and Political Perspectives

The general topic of the proposed study concerns the evolving geopolitical and economic factors that are fueling the paradigm shift from a U.S.-based global power structure to one that centers on the Asian superpowers of China and Japan.

What questions do you want to answer?

What are the prospects that China and Japan will lead an East-Asia Union?

What are some of the possible reactions to an East-Asian Union by the United States?

What are the global military implications of an East-Asian Union?

What are the global economic implications of an East-Asian Union?

What is the key literature and its limitations?

The dynamics of the global geopolitical arena have changed in fundamental ways since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and the end of the Cold War and it is reasonable to suggest that new international structures will develop to replace or supplement existing coalitions. According to Gowan (2003), "There was indeed a partnership of core capitalist states during the Cold War in the fight against Communism and to keep the South under control. Institutions like the international financial institutions, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the security alliances as well as Western cooperation in the UN indicated this" (p. 30). Although other international alliances existed during and since the end of the Cold War, a defining characteristic of most of these organizations was the centrality of the role played by the United States and its Western allies. In this regard, Gowan emphasizes that, "But there was not only partnership. There was also American political dominance over the other core states. The partnership and its institutional expressions could be thought of as a superstructure. But underpinning that superstructure was a deeper structure of American political dominance" (p. 31).

Today, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will likely assume a guiding role in the creation of what appears to be an inevitable East-Asian Union of some type. According to Francis (2006), "East Asian countries need to take the opportunity offered by the recently inaugurated East Asian Summit (EAS) to begin the process of developing an East Asian community as the first step toward the realization of an East Asian Union. This will occur only if led by a strong, proactive Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)" (p. 76). Moreover, ASEAN is actively promoting regional alliances such as the Asian Free Trade Area (AFTA) to balance the existing hegemony enjoyed by the United States and its Western allies. The potential payoff for the member states of an East-Asian Union are enormous and may equal or exceed the economic clout currently wielded by the United States and the European Union (Gowan 2003). Likewise, according to Narine (2002), "ASEAN hopes that AFTA will attract more foreign investment to the region, to take advantage of the improved economies of scale, and offset the trade-diverting effects of other trade blocs and regional groupings" (p. 126).

These trends are important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the economic clout that these newly emerging alliances will provide to their member states. As Francis emphasizes, "An East Asian community composed of the sixteen EAS participants would represent more than 60% of the world's population and possess a combined GDP greater than the European Union" (p. 77). In fact, in the same fashion that proponents of "McDonaldization" suggest that shared economic interests can promote world peace, an East Asian Union stands to promote dramatic increases in trade benefits to its member nations while also diminishing Chinese-Japanese rivalries. According to Francis, an East-Asian Union would prevent domination of the region by any single major power, but there are some constraints involved that must be resolved before such gains can be realized. In this regard, Francis adds that, "The determining factor will be ASEAN's ability to provide the leadership necessary to create a strong, independent East Asian Union" (Francis, p. 77). In addition, Bowles (2002) notes that the ongoing efforts to create improved Asia/Pacific regional cooperation are fundamentally efforts intended to balance the influence of the United States on the region and the world in general.

4. What are the main hypotheses of the work?

The guiding hypotheses of the proposed study are as follows:

H1: Encouraging China to participate in as a coalition leader in an East Asian Union in the future would serve to ensure that the price it would have to pay in terms of loss of trade and investment if it acts against the interests of the union's other members would be prohibitively high.

H2: Former Cold War alliances will be replaced by new ones in the future that do not necessarily involve the former major actors such as the United States and Russia.

5. What methodology do you intend to use?