リージョナリズムの展開過程

経済ブロックから環太平洋連帯構想まで

抄録

“The Pacific community study” proposed by the late Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira's policy study group in May 1980 is working to determine policy areas in concrete terms, with its target set on an “open regionalism.”
This paper aims to indentify the position of open regionalism in the whole process of formation of the economic blocks in the 1930s and the EC and evolution of regionalism into a Pacific community.
History tells us that the worldwide panic of the 1930s came from the fact that an imbalance in the economic structure formed during World War I was amplified by the short-term inflow of funds into the United States due to American economic boom. However, this did not directly lead to the formation of economic blocs. The formation was prompted by a lack of world leaders wishing to maintain the international currency and the free trade system and by an insufficient influence of Socialist economies, both of which helped aggravate economic confrontations between free countries. A good example is the sterling bloc formed by the British Commonwealth of Nations.
The formation of the EC was accelerated by two factors which helped European countries to join forces: loss of national wealth of European nations as a result of two world wars and erosion of the international influence of European nations as a result of being flanked by two superpowers. More directly it was prompted by the Korean war, the Suez conflict and the Hungarian disturbance.
Since its economic growth rate is lower than that of Japan or the United States, the EC atempts to have greater political and economic influence by increasing its members. Its greater diplomatic influence is often exerted at the Summit conferences and OECD's ministerial conferences. Since the oil crisis, however, the EC has had to place emphasis on economic security by setting up the EMS designed for greater stability of its currencies and by making greater efforts for energy development and industrial restructuring. Particularly since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the EC has had to consider its security in a wider perspective of the West at large.
In the changing international environment in the 1980s, both the growing threat of the Soviet Union and the expanding power of the oil-producing countries will remain major sources of external pressure on the Western nations. The aggravating balance of international payments of the non-oil-producing countries caused by the greater power of the oil-producing countries shows an expanding imbalance in the international economic structure.
The declining power and influence of the United States will help push the international order more toward regionalism. However, the formation of economic blocs as seen in the 1930s would only help disrupt the international order. Under the circumstances, cooperative trilateral relations between Japan, Europe and the U. S. would be the basis for maintaining the international order, and an open regionalism would be a realistic choice. In this sense an open regionalism offers many points that would help us study the present international order.