INTRODUCTION

ONE OF THE noteworthy phenomena of the second half of the twentieth century has been the progress of regional integration. For the time being, we may think of regional integration as the communal management or exercise of power – for example, where two or more sovereign states transfer a portion of their sovereignty to a communal agency. The characteristics of such communal agencies will depend on the level of communal surrender of rights, the most extreme case being a supranational form of government. In any case, regional integration is something more than a form of mutual dependence.

Incidentally, if we look at the economic aspect of regional integration, we may take its general objective as being the creation of a greater economic sphere, whether through the creation of free trade areas or common markets, or through cooperative or communal economic policy-making. In Western Europe, the European Community and its successor the European Union fit this model, while North America has seen the emergence of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and South America the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). In Asia, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has both expanded and strengthened, and – while the member nations are only loosely tied, and it can not perhaps be seen as a form of regional integration – there is also an accelerating move to cooperation at the pan-Pacific level in the form of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, in spite of substantial differences in the scale and character of such agreements, regional integration has expanded on a global scale.

The trend towards regional integration has progressed at much the same pace as the decline of United States hegemony. By hegemony, I am referring to leadership by the US across a broad sphere of activities, including not only the economic, but also the political, military, and ideological. The first half of the twentieth century saw the decline of British hegemony accompanied, amidst great turmoil, by the rise of the United States, and the second half of the century saw the establishment of US hegemony through the suppression of German and Japanese aspirations, and its consolidation against a background of confrontation with the Soviet Union.