ABSTRACT
It is perhaps true to state that regional blocs were first conceived as a political response to the security problems of the regions. Much of that is hardly true today. A political commitment to regional co-operation is more commonly seen today as a response to the economic demands of trade and the global community, rather than the mere protection of regional security. The world community is gradually being organised into discernible trade blocs spanning the European Community, the wider European Economic Area (EEA) of European Community and non-European Community countries, the North American Free Trade Area, the Andean Community of South American countries, the Association of South East Asia Nations (ASEAN) and the Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement (CERTA) between Australia and New Zealand. This speaks nothing of the World Trade Organization, formerly the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and the inroads it has made into the highly protected area of international air transport on such matters as computer reservations and airline marketing. In the European Community, for example, the Cecchini Report on the Single European Market suggested that the failure to achieve a unified market had been costing the industry millions in unnecessary expenditure and lost opportunities. It noted that the completion of a common market area was a precondition for the regeneration of the European industry in goods and services and the prosperity of the peoples of Europe as well as the global community.1 These comments marked a departure from the original thinking that a common area between the European nations would prevent the sort of devastating military wars on which Europe had been the main battleground. Beyond the European Community, the ASEAN grouping is another typical regional organisation whose aims have changed with the passage of time. Although the basis for its creation was to procure solidarity and security co-operation following the Communist victories in the neighbouring countries of Vietnam and Laos, so much of that has now changed. There is a renewed commitment to greater social and economic co-operation and a programme of enlargement which has seen the entry of both Vietnam and Laos to the ASEAN regional grouping. It may well be that the shift in emphasis from security co-operation to economic co-operation is the result of an end to the Cold War. It may be that nation
states are being driven towards greater economic co-operation, unwittingly perhaps, by technology advancement and changes in the international capital markets. Indeed, it may be that there is an intrinsic belief that military confrontations are solutions which provide for no winners, only losers.
