ASEM and the construction of the New Triad

Abstract

Since the mid‐1990s, the idea of a trilateral or tripolar world order based on the economically most advanced macro‐regions North America, Western Europe and East Asia ‐ the new Triad ‐ has gained much acceptance in Asian and European policy‐making circles. Though the triangle imagery is still quite far from what seems to be reality, it provided the major rationale for the creation of the Asia‐Europe Meeting (ASEM) process which was designed to strengthen the ‘weak leg’ in the triadic interregional relationship. The paper analyses the role of ASEM in the construction of the new Triad and identifies five functions of ASEM in this context. It concludes that the recent Asian economic crisis tends to undermine the rationale on which ASEM was built, at least temporarily, whereas ASEM itself may not lose its importance for the countries involved.

Keywords:

• Globalization
• regionalism
• interregional relations
• ASEM
• Triad
• trilateralism