ABSTRACT
The old saying about East Asia during the Cold War was that it was ‘a region without regionalism’. 1 Writing in 1992, Albert Fishlow and Stephen Haggard could confidently argue that ‘the puzzle with reference to the Pacific is not to explain the progress of regional initiatives but to explain their relative weakness.’ 2 In 1994, the paucity of regional institutions in East Asia even led Aaron Friedberg to worry that the region was ‘ripe for rivalry’ and at serious risk of war. 3
