European experience for East Asian integration: ideas, national interests, and the international circumstance

Abstract

This paper traces the possibility of East Asian integration through comparison with the early stage of European integration on three different levels: ideas, national interests, and international circumstance. Judging from the European experience, ideas always come first, then national interest contests, and eventually the international circumstance conditions the context. I compare the multilateral approach in Europe with the imperial hegemony competition in East Asia, Adenauer’s regionalization policy in Europe with the Yoshida line of Westernization detouring from Asia, and the US and Russia’s different roles in the two regions as external forces constraining the international order. My conclusion for the future of East Asia is located somewhere between views of procedural divergence and fundamental skepticism. I worry about integration for the sake of integration in which regional integration is presupposed as inherently good. Such discourse will easily be deteriorated and such a blind community simply collapses when circumstances change. For these reasons, there needs to be an adequate discussion regarding for what, by whom, and through which method integration is achieved.