Regions in Competition: Comparative Advantages of America, Europe, and Asia

Abstract

This chapter argues that regional pluralism expresses the institutionalization of social and political state systems and the normative contexts in which decisionmakers define national interests. Furthermore, regionalism may have important implications for international politics and for American foreign policy. In regard to balance, changes in international politics have helped to pacify several regional conflicts that were inflamed or sustained by the Cold War. The main protagonists of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union, both lost that war to two trading and welfare states, Japan and Germany, who had learned similar lessons from their disastrous involvement in power politics in the first half of the twentieth century. The United States is likely to use different political methods to deal with different regions. The sharp growth in Japanese influence and power in Asia has created widespread unease about the political consequences of intensifying economic relations for an emerging regional political economy.