The East Asian Community: farce or reality - Essay Example

The objection of the United States of America to the initiative and the inherent doubts and lack of trust among some Asian states spelt the death kneel for the initiative. One would therefore, logically wonder if the concept of the East Asia Community, generated in the East Asia Summit with suffer the same fate or learn from the failure of that first initiative. Writing on the prospects and possibilities of this initiative, Simon said questions as to the factors driving the East Asian regional awakening, in what direction, and whether the Asians can assure themselves and probably outsiders like the United States that the development of such a community will deliver more good than harm to all involved, are questions that begs for urgent answer before the viability or otherwise of the initiative can be properly assessed.

Being such an unprecedented initiative in history of the Asians, it is imperative to consider the prospects of the East Asia Community, the factors that appear to be driving the current, though nascent sense of regionalism amidst a people that have lived independent of their neighbors, in culture, language or religion over several decades and the workability of such an attempt within the scope of the present circumstances and politics obtainable in this region. Critically examining the factors driving regionali.

Afterall, regionalism seeks to bring neighbouring states together in cooperation and mutual understanding and therefore not contrary to the spirit of globalisation, rather, it should be seen as a companion. Bringing this down to the East Asia regionalism attempt, one could conveniently assume that the drive is partly natural and long overdue as evidenced by economic data from these states.However, the 'natural theory would not completely explain off, entirely, the drive and awakening of a sense of interdependence among the East Asia states, especially, when the fact that Asian states have no strong enduring history of unity and/or peculiarity in policies, culture, language and religion, is brought to the fore.

As such, we may therefore, conclude that the 'community' sense among this people is indeed triggered by some other factors and occurrence, not essentially, natural (Simon and Casso, 16).As highlighted by Simon, some of these events are not far fetched. These factors arranged chronologically includes, first, the financial crises that swept through Asian countries around late nineties, and the attitude o the United states to the crises, before and after the crises; second, the failure of the Asian Pacific Economy Community (APEC); third, the need for a competitive and competent regionalism in Asia; fourth, the reception of United States security policies in post September 11; and fifth, the rise of china and the responses among different Asian neighbours (Simon and Casso, 16).

Looking objectively at the attempt of coming together of the East Asians, one would want to say that it is not an outrightly impossible feat. The ASEAN plus three process is a good example of Asian coming together. The A+3