ABSTRACT
Institutionally based regional orders in Asia/Eurasia are in their formative stages with only glimmering prospects on the horizon for their gradual transformation into cooperative security and economic orders, which are only likely to emerge if regionally dominant countries choose collaborative pathways to pursue their quest for status, security, and prosperity. Such choices in turn are shaped by a constellation of domestic, regional, and global variables and the contradictory claims of a range of complex interstate and transnational issues. In their dyadic strategic partnerships, China, India, and Russia have sought to engage each other economically and politically. This chapter explores the conditions under which these relationships are likely to promote or hinder prospects for regional cooperation in Asia/Eurasia. The central argument in this chapter is that while security preoccupations
and status aspirations often create the dynamics for competitive interstate politics anticipated by realists, particularly in the short and medium term, efforts at cooperative regional endeavors, if sustained over the long term, hold out the hope for generating progress toward more meaningful regional integration. The latter vision is intellectually compelling in a globalizing world that confronts problems-man-made and natural-of planetary proportions that transcend territorial boundaries and that are not amenable to single-state solutions. However, the attainment of this liberal vision depends upon the unfolding of fortuitous developments at the domestic, regional, and global levels requiring sustained, committed, and progressive political leadership. The latter is inconsistently supported by the prevailing policy trajectories of countries in Asia and Eurasia. Furthermore, given the diversity of Asian traditions and worldviews, coupled with the lack of a uniformly developed democratic political culture, movement toward the solidarist vision of an Asian/Eurasian pluralistic security community bound by a common identity and a unitary set of political values seems an even more distant possibility. In developing this argument, the chapter outlines the theoretical literature
on regional organizations and compares the context framing the origins of European and Asian organizations. Then, prior to reviewing the organizations in which India (the South Asian Association for Regional Coopera-
the Eurasian Economic Community-EurAsEC, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization-SCO), and China (SCO) play a central role, the chapter explores the evolution of the “idea” of Asia and the reasons for the centrality of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the regional approaches of India and China. The concluding section assesses the future trajectory of regional collaboration in Asia and Eurasia.
