Northeast Asia’s Realism: Fated External Influences on Trilateral Economic Integration

Abstract

This article examines the vicissitudes of Northeast Asian regional integration, with a focus on the development of the trilateral free trade agreement and the trilateral investment treaty. It emphasizes that Northeast Asian regionalism has proceeded through gradualism, informality, and lower-profile approaches as a realistic way for the development of cooperation, which in turn is due to the political fragility generated by Japan’s strained bilateral relations with China and Korea concerning persistent historical and territorial disputes, pushing the triangle to a 2:1 split. The article explores this particular structural problem in Northeast Asia as a fundamental vulnerability to the sound development of trilateral cooperation. The structural instability of Northeast Asian political relations with the cautious steps for the promotion of regionalism also exposes trilateral cooperation to potential external pressures, such as the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which eventually compelled China and Japan to reach middle ground in their different approaches to integration and generated a key impetus for Northeast Asian integration. The article thus concludes that given the existence of historical and territorial tensions in Northeast Asia, the incremental growth of trilateral integration will continue to be subject to external pressures or growing US pressure on China over its trade practices, which the article identifies as an independent variable. The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the TPP in January 2017 thus removes one of the key drivers for the development of trilateral integration.