However, Asia has learnt from Europe that competition need not lead to conflict, and that conflict will destroy its dreams of a rising, prosperous region. The main challenge is to integrate all the key players within the evolving regional architecture. BIS Review 86/2006  3  The US, with its economic and strategic preponderance, will continue to provide the overarching stability and balance in Asia. Most countries in Asia, including China and India, welcome a continued US presence. The key relationships that underpin the region's stability are fundamentally sound. In the post-Cold War era, US-China-Japan ties underpin the East Asian landscape. Today, while this strategic triangle remains valid, India's re-emergence has added a new dimension. Relations between the US and China are the most important, and basically sound. So long as there is no miscalculation over Taiwan, occasional tensions over trade, democracy and human rights can be managed. US and Japan are steady allies. The US' Security Alliance with Japan will continue to anchor its presence in East Asia and the Pacific. Relations between Beijing and Tokyo have been historically uneasy. There has never been a period in history when both China and Japan were simultaneously strong powers. As geographically close neighbours, they will have to learn to accommodate each other. US-India relations are nascent but on an upswing. Japan has also started to actively woo India. Relations between China and India have continued to improve. Many current discussions of SinoIndian relations are based on a presumption of geopolitical rivalry. This premise is false.

The original target date of 2020 was advanced to 2015 this year. Obviously, there are practical difficulties of integration given the diversity in the region and the different levels of development. ASEAN leaders have tasked an Eminent Persons Group to come up with an ASEAN Charter to guide ASEAN's future development. This will mark a new phase of deeper ASEAN integration. Geo-strategic shifts The re-emergence of India and China, and the revitalisation of ASEAN are taking place within a broader geo-strategic context. Let me now examine some of the larger trends. At one level, Asia is slowly but surely coalescing. The entire region is being sewn together by changing patterns of trade, investment and production chains. Increasing economic integration is reflected by the rapid expansion of intra-Asia trade. From 34% in 1980, intra-Asian trade as a share of the region's total trade has grown to more than 50% in 2005. The transformations taking place in Asia are of a depth and scope historically unprecedented. The combined population of Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia and India is well over 3 billion, about half the world's population. Changes of the scale that are currently underway could be profoundly unsettling to international order. Strong growth will give Beijing and New Delhi the resources to pursue wider strategic interests across Asia and beyond. Strategic stability is not to be taken for granted, particularly in Asia where there are many territorial and other unresolved issues left over from historically complicated relationships. Great power competition and rivalry are facts of life.