Community-Building with Pacific Asia
Task Force Report #51
The Trilateral Commission (© 1997)
Charles E. Morrison, Akira Kojima and Hanns W. Maull
ISBN: 0-930503-75-9
123 pp./paper/$9.00 plus S&H
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I: The Setting
- The Legacy of History
- The Economic and Political Setting
- Efforts at Regional Cooperation
Part II: Trilateral Relations with Pacific Asia
- Japan
- North America
- Europe
Part III: Challenges and Trilateral Responses
- Enhancing International Security
- Regional and Global Economic Progress
- Enhancing Domestic Political Stability
Part IV: Partners in a Global Community
Summary
I n the past three decades, as the authors of this report write, “the frontier of the accelerating late industrial revolution has moved beyond Japan to the rest of East and Southeast Asia. The economic takeoff of this region ....is of historic significance for several reasons: With 1.8 billion people (excluding Japan), the countries of Pacific Asia are much more populous than the original core areas.... In the developing countries of Pacific Asia, modernization is taking place in societies which have long historical traditions and cultures quite different from those of the West.... The pace of economic and social change is faster than for any previous area or era.”
The thrust of this report is the need for “community-building” with emerging East and Southeast Asia on the part of the “Trilateral” areas-Japan, North America, and Europe. “The challenge for the Trilateral countries is to assist the nations of the region in joining the Trilateral world as a new area of economic prosperity, security and good government. Should this happen, the international ‘zone of peace’ will be dramatically extended.” Recommendations focus on enhancing international security, continued economic progress, domestic and regional political stability, and accommodating Pacific Asia as “partners in a global community.”
Authors
(titles at time of publication)
Charles E. Morrison, Director, APEC Study Center at the East-West
Center, Honolulu
Akira Kojima, Chief Editorial Writer, Nihon Keizai Shimbun
(Japan Economic Journal)
Hanns W. Maull, Professor of International Relations, University
of Trier, Germany
