"CEEAC Commmentary" intro
oduces new
ws analyses andoppinions in Japan on topics relatted to reg
gionalcoooperation andaintegration in East AAsia, but theey donoot represent thet views of CEAC as ann institution.

OOctober 23, 2012

Myy View of “Eaast Asiaa Commmunityy”
By H
HAKAM
MADA ShhigekiI was invited to join a reseearch projeect for “Eaast Asia Coommunity” as aa
how I should app
pproach the offer.
speciialist on Ruussian affairrs, but I thoought hard about
Therre are attem
mpts for eco
onomic andd political integrations
is of formerr Soviet Unnion’srepubblics, such as Custom
ms Unions innvolving Russia,
RKazaakhstan andd other countries
and Putin’s “EEurasia Alliiance.” Theese attemp
pts can be compared with Euro
opean
Cy. It was pro
obably such comparativve analysis that I
integgration and East Asia Community.
was eexpected too conduct ass a collaboraative researccher of the project.
pIn all honesty,
hhow
wever, I funndamentallyy have critical views oof the conceept ofgressed andd was“East Asia Community.” When Eurropean inteegration rapidly progrw
asa a future mmodel for hu
umanity in both Westeern countriees andenvissaged and welcomed
Japann with greaat euphoria, I thought it more diifficult to overcome
othhe limitatio
ons ofsoverreign states, internation
nal conflictss and nation
nalism than they seemeed.
Of couurse, I intro
oduced bothh affirmativ
ve proposittions and sskepticism about
neral guidan
nce on the E
European sp
phere”
Euroopean integrration in dettail in my cllass of “genin uuniversity. However, I more aactively exxplained sk
kepticism aabout Euro
opeaninteggration withh a particulaar focus on views of some experts in financee and econoomics
who were skeptiic about thee future of inntegrated Europe from the beginniing.
Today, Greek finan
ncial issues and Euro crisischave causedcpeopple to discuss thenegaative aspect of Europeaan integratioon rather th
han optimistic outlookss on it. I go
ot theimprression thatt many of the joint rresearchers in the aforementioneed project I wasinviteed to partticipate in embraced considerab
bly favorable views of “East AsiaCommmunity,” ass opposed too my case. T
That is whyy I had to thiink hard aboout how I shhouldapprooach the prroject from the beginniing. When the time caame when jooint publicaations
woulld be compiiled as a colllection of ppapers, I deecided to tak
ke that as thhe opportunnity tohoneestly expresss my criticaal views of ““East Asia Community
Cy,” and I didd so.

The most significant critical point I had with regard to “East Asia Communitytheories” was about state sovereignty. As long as it is called “community,” not just acooperation organization and economic cooperative of East Asian countries, it ismeaningless if it does not delegate a significant part of state sovereignty to an upperorganization. The point is whether such possibility is there in East Asia. I do not thinkthat there are any conditions for that in East Asia. Conflicts over state sovereignty are
far from being alleviated even after the collapse of the Cold War structure; they arebecoming increasingly severe. The biggest weak point of “East Asia Communitytheories” lies in the neglect of sovereignty issues.
We organized a symposium as part of our project. At this symposium, I acted as
the facilitator and honestly spoke about my questions to Satoshi Amako, who was a
joint project researcher and a discussant at the symposium. Amako, who is my former
colleague and also a close friend, wrote favorably about East Asia Community in his
recent book. However, I pointed out that the book ignored or neglected state sovereignty
issues.
In the era after World War II or Cold War, people temporarily had the idealistic
expectation that the modern world in which sovereign states conflicted with each otherand repeated wars would be overcome and a stable peaceful world of de-modernization
would be constructed. From the perspective of economic interests as well, drives forregional integration beyond national borders spread as real phenomena. In this way, theidea that regional integration promotion is more reasonable in terms of both politics andeconomy emerged in East Asia as well. It is true that several organizations of regional
integration that were established in line with this trend raised results that could not beignored.
However, it is also true that the post-Cold War world became more unstable
than in the Cold War era despite such regional integration attempts and that racial,religious, territorial and sovereign conflicts intensified. Conditions for regional
integration for overcoming state sovereignty still have not been put in place. It isbecause I think sovereignty issues still cannot be ignored in international relations that I
have critical views of “East Asia Community.” In East Asia Community from thePerspective of International Politics, a collection of papers that I recently publishedfrom Minerva Publisher, I honestly discussed my personal views that can be thought ofas dissenting opinions in the project. I sincerely hope that my approach will contributeto making discussions about this issue colorful and deeply engraved.
(This is the English translation of an article written by Prof. HAKAMADA Shigeki,Professor, University of Niigata Prefecture, which originally appeared on the BBS"Hyakka-Somei" of CEAC on September 8, 2012.)