ABSTRACT
As elsewhere in the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, academic and public discussion in Europe focused on whether the so-called new world order would be dominated by the US or would develop into a multipolar system with the US, East Asia and the European Union as its principal centres. In 1992 when ASEAN announced the gradual implementation of a Southeast Asian Free Trade Area (AFTA) and in 1993 when the APEC countries’ heads of state met for the first time in Seattle, European newspapers published scenarios presenting AFTA and APEC as emerging trading blocs and direct competitors of the European Common Market. Although it soon became clear that economic co-operation in the Asia Pacific will not lead in the foreseeable future to a level of integration comparable to Europe’s, many in Bonn, Paris, Rome and other capitals worried that a ‘Pacific Century’ could leave Europe as the odd person out in the new international order. Special attention was given to the role of the US. It was believed that Washington would shift its main foreign policy focus from transatlantic to transpacific relations (although the US was a Pacific power long before it became an Atlantic one). Concern was caused by trade figures showing that in 1995, for example, 66 per cent of total US trade was carried out within the Asia Pacific area (including Canada). At the same time, of the ten biggest US trading partners, five were Asian economies (Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore, in this order) but only three were European (Germany, the UK and France).
