ABSTRACT
The boundaries and constituent parts of the “Asia-Pacific” region are uncertain and contested. Readers in Europe or North America may find it surprising that ideas about regional identity and boundaries remain comparatively unsettled elsewhere. For all the European Union’s recent problems, it is associated with a range of political practices, levels of economic development, and even cultural influences that give it some sense of collective identity and destiny. Even in North America, which may not have the same level of political integration or common heritage as the EU, the overwhelming dominance of the United States and the importance of its economy to its neighbors gives the North American Free Trade Agreement a certain irresistible momentum, particularly if American policymakers consider it a good idea. In the Asia-Pacific, by contrast, there is a far greater range of potential members in terms of their respective levels of economic development and organization, political practices and structures of government, and even in their respective cultural traditions and backgrounds, something that reduces the ability to act in concert as a consequence. There are dramatic differences in the size of the economies of APEC’s members, for example, before we even begin to think about the way such economies are organized at the political level or integrated into wider structures of international governance, development and security. As we shall see in Chapter 3, the diversity of APEC’s membership
and the scale of its geographic reach have proved formidable challenges to its overall coherence and effectiveness. This has raised difficult questions for policymakers about the optimal size of any institution if it is to prove useful and therefore attractive to potential members. A similar challenge confronts the analyst of regional institutions: where should we direct our attention if we are to keep the discussion manageable and highlight issues of comparative significance? Given that the epicenter of debates about identity in the Asia-Pacific region has
centered primarily on the key nations of East Asia like China, Japan and the ASEAN countries on the one hand, and the U.S.A. and the other “Anglo-American” economies on the other, the discussion throughout the rest of the book will focus primarily on these nations and only consider Latin America, Russia and India in passing. Even this initial narrowing of the focus still leaves us with an intimidatingly broad canvas compared to North America or even the recently expanded EU. To begin to make sense of even this circumscribed notion of the Asia-Pacific and its relation to the alternative idea of East Asia, we need to place both of these possible regions and their respective institutional outgrowths in historical context.
