ABSTRACT
The most prominent examples include the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Free Trade Area of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the South African Development Community Protocol on Trade, South America's Mercosur, and the European Union (EU). This chapter proposes that regional trade area (RTAs), in the process of helping regional identities form, promote both peace and conflict in their respective geographical spaces. Almost every country on earth belongs to a RTA. Regional integration projects can stir conflict well beyond specific geographies within nation-states. Regional integration projects generate symbols and images that shape in a variety of ways people's viewpoints and beliefs. Their impact is all the more relevant when it is combined with that of law, administrative building, and public discourse and mobilization. The process of identity construction has promoted peace but has also engendered conflict.
