Asian states have united to officially oppose the Euro-American formula for global dominance emphasizing "peace and security" with one based on "peace and prosperity" instead, and which has a much better track record historically. The two focal points of their meeting in Hua Hin, Thailand, was on reducing China-India tensions over a dispute about commercial projects in Kashmir and capitalizing on Asia's relative and growing economic strength worldwide compared to others, like the U.S. and U.K., who continue to struggle with the financial crisis and downturn. This meeting marks a watershed moment in world power politics and world history that should not be underestimated.
The most vocal member of this group of states was newly elected Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who has already shown clear signs of wanting to distance Japan from a half-century of U.S. dominance. The new bloc would build upon the existing 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with additional regional partners including China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand, Japanese officials have said. No mention was made of Pacific Rim organizations which include states like the U.S. and Canada. Pakistan was also conspicuously absent at the meeting and in mention. With the African Union, the European Union and other regional organizations in development, George Orwell's vision for 1984
, a regionally fragmented world in which continents compete, may belatedly becoming true.
Another global, state-based movement also started with an effort to reduce tensions
between China and India: the Non-Aligned Movement
(NAM), which sought to offer the world a third option to the Cold War superpower approach. But NAM sought less to 'lead the world' as this new bloc explicitly does than to offer an alternative, and it included many Middle Eastern, African and South American states. The negative example for this new Asian bloc would be the pseudo-alliance Japan formed during World War Two as a public relations tactic to further it's imperial aims: The Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. In any case, whatever form it takes, just the idea of a strong pan-Asian organization on EU-lines is a significant current event that cannot help but shape the future.
