GLOBALIZATION AND REGIONA-LIZATION

The development of the regions is acrucial part of the emerging global orderin the era of globalization. The twoprocesses are closely intertwined, theregionalization – at both supranationaland sub-national levels – being at thesame time an intrinsic part of and aresponse to globalization.

For a long period of time, the debatesconcerning the regionalization werefocused on trade and trade policies,especially when regional trade agreementswere reinforced by ultraliberal traderegimes. But globalization is a multifacetedphenomenon, comprising not only aneconomic dimension, but a social, political,security and cultural dimension, too.Accordingly, how the relationship betweenglobalization and regionalization is takingshape depends on which dimension ofglobalization one is referring to.

From an economic viewpoint, theregionalization is triggered, to a certainextent, by the trans-national corporations’quest for new markets and foreign directinvestments. The regionalization ofinvestments has become so importantthat affects the nature of production andtrade. To take just one example, alreadyin 1995 more than 10 percent of theJapanese companies’ output wasproduced outside Japan, as comparedwith 4 percent in 1986. Whereas nearlyall goods produced by Japanesecompanies in the U.S. are sold on theAmerican market, a significant part ofconsumer goods produced by Japanesecompanies’ branches in South East Asiais imported by Japan. In 1992, theseimports represented 16 percent out ofthe total Japanese imports, as comparedwith 10 percent in 1982. As rapidly asthey are attracted by favourableeconomic circumstances, the foreigndirect investments are fleeing to othermarkets when these circumstances are

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∗ Adrian POP, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of the Political Sciences Department at “Dimitrie Cantemir”University in Bucharest, and Associate Professor with other universities in Bucharest. A member of theScientific Board of the Institute for the Memory of Romanian Exile, he is also a member of the AdvisoryBoard of History’s Files journal. He was Deputy Director of the Institute for Political Studies of Defenceand Military History in Bucharest, Senior Visiting Fulbright Scholar with the Department of Government andPolitics at the University of Maryland, College Park, U.S.A., and International Research Fellow with theNATO Defence College in Rome, as well as the editor-in-chief of Romanian Review of International Studies.

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A b s t r a c t . The globalization triggers macro-regionalization, which, in its turn, generatesmicro-regionalization – the EU being a good example of both. Second, in virtually allscenarios of geopolitical future the recurrent theme is regionalism, which comes in various“shapes and sizes”. That is why maybe we should start to live with the idea of a sort ofregionalization by default. Third, how the relationship among the members of the EU-Japan-U.S. triad will look like in future will depend to a large extent on how the Americanpower is going to prevail within the Western world and how it is going to handle thereassertion of countries belonging both to the Western and non-Western worlds. Thevarious possible outcomes entail a plethora of varieties of geopolitical realignments.

changing and the more so when they aredeclining. As proven by the Asian crisis,starting 1997 the fleeing of capitals andthe time needed for designing adequateresponse strategies have led to adramatic destabilization of the economicand political set up of some countries.

The EU, as heir of the EEC, is thefirst economic region of the world. TheAsia-Pacific region is characterized by anemerging regionalism focused on marketeconomy development and regionalcooperation promoted by organizationssuch as the Asia- Pacific EconomicCooperation (APEC), the Association ofSouth East Asian Nations (ASEAN), andthe South Asian Association for RegionalCooperation (SAARC). Established in1994, the North American Free TradeAgreement (NAFTA) is the second mostpowerful form of regional economicintegration, after the European one. Itssignificance should not be underestimatedas it accomplished a significant shift inU.S. foreign policy, which started in themid-1980s, from multilateralism andinternational cooperation to economicr e g i o n a l i s m .1

All three regional structures havealready acquired a geopolitical personality.Moreover, each of the three big economicregions of the world has a leader whichplays the role of an “engine”. That role is

performed by Germany for the EU, byJapan for the Asia-Pacific region, and bythe U.S. for the NAFTA region.Consequently, when we speak aboutcompetition among the three we shouldtake into account the ability of the“engine” to “push” the region forward,securing the advancement of the regionas a whole. From this point of view,ample evidence points to the fact that theEU is lagging behind U.S. and Japan interms of high-tech products and services.The increased competition from boththose developed countries and lessdeveloped countries such as China andmore recently India have led keyEuropean countries to resort in 2005-2006to a series of protectionist measures – atendency which weakens the EU efforts toadapt to the challenges of globalization,including and most notably throughe n l a r g e m e n t .2

Turning to the political dimension ofglobalization in relation to the above-mentioned triad, things look quitedifferently. All three big players share thesame commitment to democracy, andcollaborative ties for securing stability atthe global level, but whereas the U.S.upholds a unipolar world and are ready touse what Secretary of State CondoleezzaRice calls “transformational diplomacy” asa tool of exporting democracy worldwide3,

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1 See Robert Gilpin’s Introduction to his book The Challenge of Global Capitalism: The World Economyin the 21st Century, Princeton University Press, 2000.2 For details see Florin Bonciu, “European Union and the Challenges of Globalization”, RomanianJournal of European Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 2, July 2006, pp. 24-30.3 See Transformational Diplomacy, speech of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at GeorgetownUniversity, Washington, D.C., January 18, 2006, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/59306.htm andits commentary in “Public Diplomacy Watch”, January 24, 2006, http://www.publicdiplomacywatch.com/2006/01/transformational_diplomacy.html. The approach has been heavily criticized by Henry Hyde,chairman of the House of Representatives international relations committee and a Republicancongressman: “A broad and energetic promotion of democracy in other countries that will not enjoyour long-term and guiding presence may equate not to peace and stability but to revolution ... Thereis no evidence that we or anyone can guide from afar revolutions we have set in motion. We canmore easily destabilise friends and others and give life to chaos and to avowed enemies than ensureoutcomes in service of our interests and security.” Quote by Martin Jacques, “Imperial overreach isaccelerating the global decline of America”, Guardian, March 28, 2006.

the EU and Japan are in a favour of amultipolar one and are more reluctant toimpose their political will upon othercountries’ domestic affairs (see Annex 1).What is more, in the case of the EU, itsfailure to adopt the Constitutional Treatyand to articulate common positions duringmajor international crises (including, mostrecently, the Lebanese one) as well as thedivisions between big and small countries4have made the efforts to develop a trulyCommon Foreign and Security Policy(CFSP) even more difficult, while the splitbetween the “old” and “new” Europe interms of opposing or supporting the U.S.war against Iraq has pointed out to bothan ad-hoc regionalization between themore pro-European and more pro-Atlanticcountries of the future EU-27 and anoverall weakening of the Union over thelong run.

From a security viewpoint, things areeven more complicated. We live in a“global risk society” in which is no longerpossible to externalize secondaryconsequences and threats which areintimately linked with the evolution ofsuper-developed industrial societies suchas global climate change.5 G l o b a l i z a t i o nhas exacerbated trans-national securitythreats to all states, obscuring somehowthe traditional borderline between them.Security threats such as terrorism, theproliferation of weapons of massdestruction (WMD), illegal trafficking ondrugs, radioactive materials, small andlight weapons (SALW) and humanbeings, ethnic and nationalist conflicts,man-made or natural disasters and

pandemics (one recent example beingthe avian influenza) have increasinglytrans-national consequences. All theseask for the worldwide implementation ofglobal agreements meant to counterthem. But whereas the European Unionand Japan are by and large committedto observe them, the United States hasgiven way to unilateralist impulses morethan ever. Within six months of takingoffice, the first Bush Administration pulledout of the Kyoto Protocol on globalwarming, announced its intention towithdraw from the Antiballistic Missile(ABM) Treaty, manifested its oppositionto the Comprehensive Test Ban Treatyand the pact setting up the InternationalCriminal Court (ICC), withdrew fromestablishing a body to verify the 1972Biological Weapons Convention, andreduced the effectiveness of a U.N.agreement aimed at controlling SALWp r o l i f e r a t i o n .6

Among the most dramatic challengesto global security have been the variousforms of international terrorism,compounded by the problem of failedand failing states. The gravity of theseasymmetric threats to internationalstability and global security issignificantly enhanced by the potential ofthe vast devastation that could resultfrom the use of WMD or a large scalecoordinated cyber attack directed againstthe global community’s criticalinformation infrastructure and financialnetwork. The main lesson of the terroristattacks in New York and Washington,D.C. (11 September 2001) and their

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4 Heather Grabbe, The Constellations of Europe: How Enlargement Will Transform the EU, Centre forEuropean Reform, London, 2004, p. 59.5 Ulrich Beck Ce este globalizarea?Erori ale globalismului-r„spunsuri la globalizare (translation of Was istGlobalisierung? Irrtümer des Globalismus- Antworten auf Globalisierung, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt amMain, 1997), Editura Trei, Bucure∫ti, 2003, pp. 61-66.6 Charles A. Kupchan, The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century, Council on Foreign Relations, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002, p. 15.

European counterparts in Madrid (11March 2004) and London (7 July 2005)has been the fact that in order toefficiently combat the spread of terrorismbig players as well as minor ones shouldcooperate in ways which are at thesame time multidimensional, multilateral,flexible, consistent, and permanent.However, whereas the U.S. are firmlyguided by the “pre-emptive strike”concept in their global war againstterrorism, only the “new” Europe hasaligned itself with the U.S. approach, asevinced throughout the 2003 transatlanticcrisis. As for Japan, despite its growingmilitary potential, it has only reluctantlysent some peace-keeping troops in Iraq,being securely entrenched in the anti-militaristic ethic generated by its post-warsoul-searching process.

Whereas regional securityarrangements are evolving more slowlyand are likely to remain informal andflexible, against the background of arising involvement of non-state actorsand the collapse of internal control ofweak, failing or failed states a micro-regionalization occurs at the sub-national level in the form of crime-ridden “black holes”. What is more, itmight well be possible that using thenew information technologies, non-stateactors such as terrorists, illegaltraffickers, rebel armies and extremistreligious groups would get control overnon-lethal means of generating violencethus putting an end to an essentialcharacteristic of the nation-state, whichis, according to Max Weber, thelegitimate monopoly of violence.

As for the cultural dimension ofglobalization, one should bring intopicture the local rather than the regional.According to Roland Robertson, thelocal should be perceived as an aspect

of the global. In his view, globalizationis a process by the help of which localcultures are at the same timeconcentrated and intersected (leading toa “clash of localities”). Due to thismutual interdependence, rather speakingabout globalization and localization astwo different processes, one shouldspeak about glocalization. The latter, iscreating not a unified global culture buta glocal culture which, according toArjun Appadurai, has its own relativeautonomy.

Geopolitical Future(s) and GrandStrategies

The great powers, as the mainactors on the international stage, needa conceptual map in order to devise asustainable global environment. Thisnecessity is particularly felt in periods ofglobal change such as ours. This needoften translates itself into grandstrategies.7 More often than not, grandstrategies rely on scenarios of globalfuture. The last couple of years havewitnessed a proliferation of suchscenarios, the bulk of them being (notsurprisingly) American.

In the case of the EU, taking intoconsideration the failure of the LisbonAgenda to achieve its goal, and lettingaside the politically correct generalitiescomprised in the European SecurityStrategy (2003), only the EuropeanNeighbourhood Policy (ENP), could beconsidered something which remotelyresembles to an emerging Europeangrand strategy, as it entails theformation of a “ring of friends”surrounding the borders of the enlargedEU and its closest Europeanneighbours, having as its building blockthe concept of proximity and as its

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7 Ibidem, p. 3.

theoretical foundation the concentriccircle model.8

The Japanese grand strategy for thethird millennium was synthesized byTakashi Inoguchi, after a thoroughreview of statements made by variousJapanese opinion leaders – academics,journalists, bureaucrats, businesspersons, and politicians. He thinks thatthe Japanese grand strategy could bebest described as a mix of threedifferent scenarios, which he labels theWestphalian, Philadelphian and Anti-Utopian. The three scenarios havedistinct geopolitical, geoeconomic, andgeocultural features. In the Westphalianscenario the actors are “normal states”,the basic principle is state sovereignty,the behavioural modalities are balancingand bandwagoning, the key economicconcept is national economy, and thekey media is the state run radio-TV. Inthe Philadelphian scenario the actorsare liberal democracies, the basicprinciple is the ideology of liberaldemocracy, the behavioural modalitiesare binding and hiding, the keyeconomic concept is global market, andthe key media is the cable TV network.In the Anti-Utopian scenario the actorsare failed and failing states, the basicprinciple is loss of sovereignty, thebehavioural modalities are “hollowingout” and collapse, the key economicconcept is economic development, andthe key media is the undergroundnetwork/samizdat (see Annex 2).Speaking about a Westphalian-

Philadelphian-Anti-Utopian mixedscenario of the global future, Inoguchirefers to the fact that whereas the basicframework will remain Westphalian, thewaves of globalization (in the economicfield), unipolarization (in the securityfield) and democratization (in thegovernance field) will strengthen thePhiladelphian framework. In their turn,excessive Philadelphian practices arebound to lead to negative phenomenasuch as the peripheralization of manyparts of the South, anti-globalizationand anti-hegemonic movements anddemocratizing rhetoric which mighteventually bring about an Anti-Utopianscenario.9

As for the Americans authors, theyhave envisaged different grand strategies,whose various approaches depart fromopposite premises regarding thecontinuation or not of the prevailing U.S.hegemony. In addition to this, some ofthem have gone even beyond thetraditional assessment of the geopoliticalfuture broken down into short term (upto 5 years), medium term (5-10 years)and long term (10-20 years) scenarios,venturing to envisage how the worldwould look like up till the middle of thecurrent century.

The Pentagon’s view on what shouldbe the American post-9/11 grand strategywas formulated by Thomas Barnett, aprofessor at the U.S. Naval War College,in an essay entitled Pentagon’s New Map(2003) and then in a book based on it,The Pentagon’s New Map: War and

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8 For the ENP promoting a pan-European and Mediterranean region organized according to theconcentric circle pattern see Adrian Pop (coordinator), Gabriela Pascariu, George Angli˛oiu, AlexandruPurc„ru∫, Romania and the Republic of Moldova – between the European Neighbourhood Policy and theProspect of European Union Enlargement, European Institute of Romania, Pre-Accession Impact StudiesIII, Study No. 5, Bucharest, 2006, p. 163, available also at http://www.ier.ro/PAIS/PAIS3/EN/St.5_EN_final.PDF.9 Takashi Inoguchi, “Three Japanese Scenarios for the Third Millennium”, in Immanuel Wallerstein,Armand Clesse (eds), The World We Are Entering, 2000-2050, Luxembourg Institute for European andInternational Studies, Dutch University Press, Amsterdam, 2002, pp. 189-202.

Peace in the Twenty-first Century( 2 0 0 4 ).1 0 According to B a r n e t t , the worldis divided into two camps, the nationsthat have successfully implementedglobalization (the Functional Core) and thenations that have rejected globalization(the Non-Integrated Gap). Examples ofCore states are “North America, much ofSouth America, the European Union,Putin’s Russia, Japan and Asia’semerging economies (most notably Chinaand India), Australia and New Zealand,and South Africa, which accounts forroughly four billion out of a globalpopulation of six billion.” Examples ofGap states are “the Caribbean Rim,virtually all of Africa, the Balkans, theCaucasus, Central Asia, the Middle Eastand Southwest Asia, and much ofSoutheast Asia.” On the borders betweenthe Core and Gap states are the so-called Seam states, often used forexporting terrorism and instability from theGap to the Core. Examples of Seamstates are “Mexico, Brazil, South Africa,Morocco, Algeria, Greece, Turkey,Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, thePhilippines, and Indonesia.” Looking at aMercator projection of the world, solutionset countries lie in a ring along the edgesand potential problem countries largelyrest in the middle forming a black hole oftrouble for those embracing globalization(see Annex 3). The disconnectedness vis-à-vis globalization defines the current andfuture threats to global security.Consequently, recent military actions, aswell as future one, are and will beconducted in the Gap states or along theSeam states continuously throughout the21st century, until globalization takes hold.In order to win the war on terror, whichhe views as a result of problems withglobalization, the U.S. should increase the

Core’s immune system capabilities forresponding to 9/11-like systemperturbation events, work with the Seamstates to firewall the Core from the Gap’sexports (terror, drugs, pandemics), andshrink the Gap. This could be done by“exporting” security and globalization tothe Seam and Gap states. In order to dothat, the U.S. military should bereorganized into two components, aheavy force structured much like today’smilitary (L e v i a t h a n) and a light forcedesigned for nation building (S y s t e mA d m i n i s t r a t i o n). Barnett’s solution forworld stability is to reduce the size of theGap by recreating Iraq as a functionalsociety, let China become a near-peer ofUS, removing North Korea’s Kim Jong II,create an Asian NATO, depose Iran’smullahs, develop an Asian NAFTA, bringfree trade to all of the Americas, admitnew states to the United States, bringAfrica into the Core by 2050, and – onthe energy security side – move fromburning oil to natural gas.

In a follow-up study written withP r o f e s s o r Bradd C. Hayes, Barnettproposed four scenarios for the evolutionof globalization according to the states’ability to set new rules for guiding theglobalization and to cooperate forcontaining those who oppose it, includingsuper-empowered individuals such asOssama bin Laden a n d t r a n s n a t i o n a lnetworks such as Al-Qaeda. “If new rulesdon’t emerge and the developed worlddoesn’t get together to challenge thosewho oppose globalization, the world couldremain a very messy place in which tolive. We call this future G l o b a l i z a t i o nT r a u m a t i z e d. If the world cooperates toadvance globalization, but fails to adopt anew rule set, economic growth willproceed haltingly and governments will be

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10 Thomas P. M. Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century, G. P.Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2004.

reactive rather than proactive. We call thisfuture Globalization Compromised. Thoseare the darker scenarios we posit. On thebrighter side, if developed nations agreeon some broad rules directing howglobalization proceeds (rules, for example,that would protect workers, theenvironment, and tax bases), but fail tocooperate when dealing with thoseopposing globalization, they should expectto be plagued by continual, large-scaleprotests. We call this future G l o b a l i z a t i o nS t a b i l i z e d. The best scenario would seedeveloped countries cooperating toensure that the world’s economy expandssmoothly and justly. They agree on rulesthat protect workers’ rights, local cultures,and the environment. They alsocooperate to contain disaffected groupsand work to bring opponents into the fold.We call this future Globa l iza t ionN o r m a l i z e d” .1 1

Alternatively, a comprehensivesurvey conducted by the NationalIntelligence Council with non-governmental experts on the maindrivers of global change and how theywould interact through 2015 led to fourscenarios of global future. The fourscenarios could be grouped in twopairs: the first pair contrasting the“positive” and “negative” effects ofglobalization – I n c l u s i v e G l o b a l i z a t i o nvs. Pernicious Globalization; the secondpair contrasting extremely competitivebut not conflictual regionalism and the

plunge into regional military conflict –Regional Competition vs. P o s t - P o l a rW o r l d. From the viewpoint of thisstudy, of particular interest are not somuch their differences, but thegeneralizations across the scenarios. Inall but the first scenario, globalizationdoes not create widespread globalcooperation. Rather, in the secondscenario, globalization’s negativeeffects promote extensive dislocationand conflict, while in the third andfourth, they bring about regionalism. Inall four scenarios, countries negativelyaffected by population growth, resourcescarcities and bad governance, fail tobenefit from globalization, are prone tointernal conflicts, and risk state failure,the effectiveness of national, regional,and international governance and atleast moderate but steady economicgrowth are vital, and the U.S. globalinfluence diminishes.1 2

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s short term andmedium term scenarios of futuregeopolitical realignments start from thepremise that “America does not have,and will not soon face, a global peer.There is thus no realistic alternative tothe prevailing hegemony and the role ofU.S. power as the indispensablecomponent of global security”.1 3Brzezinski’s optimistic scenarioenvisages a sort of U.S.- EU globalpartnership14 in which the two entities

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11 Thomas P. M. Barnett and Bradd C. Hayes, “System Perturbation: Conflict in the Age ofGlobalization”, in Raymond W. Westphal Jr, ed, War and Virtual War: The Challenges to Communities,Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford 2003, chapter available also online at h t t p : / / w w w . i n t e r -disciplinary.net/publishing/idp/War%20&%20Virtual%20War.pdf.12 Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts, December 2000,http://infowar.net/cia/publications/globaltrends2015/.13 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Basic Books, New York,2004, p. X.14 As Brzezinski puts it: “an essentially multilateralist Europe a somewhat unilateralist America makefor a perfect global marriage of convenience. Acting separately, America can be preponderant but notomnipotent; Europe can be rich but impotent. Acting together, America and Europe are in effect globallyomnipotent.” Ibidem, p. 96.

would act together, becoming the “coreof global stability,” on the one hand,and a “genuine European-Russianbonding” facilitated by Russia’s need forhelp in order “to develop and colonizeSiberia”, on the other. As for the FarEast, “the most likely pattern willinvolve the interplay of China’s overtrise to regional power, Japan’scontinued but ambiguous acquisition ofincreasingly superior military power, andAmerica’s efforts to manage both”. Inorder to foster a sort of informalChinese-Japanese-American triangle inthe region, the U.S. will have topromote a stable and cooperativerelationship with China and toencourage Japan to “become morepolitically engaged” against thebackground of its cautiously but steadymilitary build-up. On the long run, ifNATO would continue to expand andRussia would become one way oranother “an extension of it”, thecircumstances would be ripe for settingup a trans-Eurasian collective securitystructure that would involve Japan andChina and transforming the G-8 into aG-10, comprising China and India.15The pessimistic scenario put forward byBrzezinski would be a severe U.S.-EUrivalry stimulated by a Franco-Germanalliance combined with Russia’s relapseinto a nationalistic dictatorship, in thewestern regions of Eurasia, and anexclusive Asian economic and possiblysecurity regionalism spurred by China,followed by Japan’s rush intoremilitarization, in the eastern regions ofEurasia. The resulting anti-Americanpan-Europeanism and pan-Asianism,especially if aggravated by U.S.unilateralism could not only push the

U.S. out of Eurasia, but halt anyattempts to forge a framework forglobal security16 and plunge the worldof the twenty-first century into a newtwentieth century regionalism. Thatparticular scenario, envisaging anenlarged EU together with Russia andEast Asia (Japan and China) becomingcounterweights of the U.S., is sharedalso by Charles A. Kupchan, thepersuasive advocate of the need of anew American grand strategy in orderto smooth the transition from a unipolartowards a multipolar world.17

Other scenarios are those proposedby a June 2005 Power and InterestNews Report (PINR). It envisages aperiod of short term stability duringwhich each of the major regional powercentres would have a stake inpreserving it “either by a perceivedneed to retrench or by the goal ofprotecting processes of economic andmilitary development.” That periodwould be followed on the medium andlong term by the rise of the EU, China,India, Brazil and possibly Russia toworld power status and the turning of“several states that are currently eitherregional powers or are themselvesunder strong influence or domination bythe world’s major states” into either“second wave” powers or major hurdlesto global stability and security, includingIndonesia, Egypt, Iran, some Westernand Central African states (Nigeria, theDemocratic Republic of Congo Ethiopia,Uganda and Rwanda), Vietnam and thePhilippines. There are also goodprospects for China, India, Brazil andother states to establish strong linkswith these countries which wouldcomplicate even further the geopolitical

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15 Ibidem, pp. 103, 111, 115, 120-123.16 Ibidem, pp. 91, 103, 126-127.17 Charles A. Kupchan, op. cit., pp. 29 and 63.

picture. “This possible development –concludes the report – demands thatWashington and other power centresaround the world prepare themselvesnot just for the more obviousgeopolitical challenges stemming fromrapidly emerging new powers, but alsofor the upcoming difficulties anduncertainties in dealing with a dozennew regional players.”18

Obviously, projections longer than 20years are venturesome becausepossible contingencies multiply at ageometrical progression. However, onepossible useful, although schematic wayto go beyond sheer guess in predictinglong term plus geopolitical future (up to50 years) and understand globalizationis through the lenses of long cycles.According to the world-system theorypromoted by Immanuel Wallerstein,globalization is far for being somethingnew. In fact, it is the business as usualway of how capitalism works. For him,there is no evidence that the world isnow more globalized than it wasthroughout la belle époque period, beforethe First World War. What is really newin the post-war era, argues Wallerstein,is the fact that after a period of roughly20-25 years when the U.S. hegemonywas at its peak after the Second WorldWar (1945-1965/1970), due to theeconomic reconstruction of WesternEurope and Japan, by the 1970s wecould speak of a triad of centres ofcapital accumulation, whose forginginaugurated the competition for sharesin the world market and for control ofthe next generation of cutting-edge

industries. The U.S. tried to control thepolitical consequences of this economicpower shift by setting up the TrilateralCommission and then by escalating theCold War. Starting 1970 the worldexperienced one long Kondratieff B-cycle (downswing) characterized by asharp reduction of profits fromproductive activities. This, in turn, led toattempts “to export the consequences ofthe downturn, especially theunemployment, to each other” and “ashift in emphasis from accumulatingcapital via productive profits toaccumulating capital via financialmanipulations, in which the U.S. hasretained an advantage because of therole of the dollar as the reservecurrency”.

For the first half of the 21st centurythe world-system theorist envisages areturn to a Kondratieff A-cycle(upswing) during which cutting-edgeindustries based on informatics,biotechnology and new energyresources, largely monopolized, willtoughen the competition among thetriad. In order “to ward off the Europeanthreat”, the U.S. and Japan will unitetheir economic efforts. Other two bigactors, China and Russia, provided theymanage to preserve their nationalintegrity, will negotiate their entering inthe resulting dual structure of economicpower: China into the U.S.-Japanregional economic complex and Russiainto the western European one.19

Letting aside the issue ofglobalization being merely the workingof the capitalist world-system, which is

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18 “The Coming World Realignment”, Power and Interest News Report (PINR) drafted by Dr. MichaelA. Weinstein, Yevgeny Bendersky, 20 June 2005,http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id= 317&language_id=119 Immanuel Wallerstein, “The World We Are Entering, 2000-2050 (32 Propositions)”, in ImmanuelWallerstein, Armand Clesse (eds), op. cit., pp. 17-18, 46. For long cycles according to the world-systemschool see also Joshua S. Goldstein, Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age, Yale UniversityPress, New Haven and London, 1988, pp. 133-141.

a debatable point in itself20, there areseveral weak points in Wallerstein’sscenario. First, taking Wallerstein’sdefinition of a hegemonic state, namelya state that is imposing a structure ofworld order upon the world-system, withthe exception of few years after 1945,the U.S. hegemony never existedthroughout the bipolar era. It would bemuch fair to say that, by and large,because the omnipresence of the twosuper-powers – directly or indirectly –on the global stage, the bipolar era wasone of co-hegemony of the U.S. andSoviet Union. Second, the fact that theU.S. hegemony has started to faltersince 1970 seems contradicted by theleading role the U.S. have played in theGulf War as well as in the wars inKosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Third, itis not clear at all that China wouldaccept the role of a junior partner ofthe U.S.-Japan alliance and Russiawould opt out for an energy securitydeal with the EU instead of a strategicone with China and India. It is muchmore likely that China and Russia,provided that they manage to preservetheir territorial integrity (which is notentirely sure) and overcome the factorsthat undermine attempts to bring thetwo countries closer together,21 wouldtry to consolidate the close tiesdeveloped in recent years, in order topromote their mutual interests in energysupplies and defence sales and to

counter the perceived U.S. hegemony.Fourth, Wallerstein’s scenario of futuregeopolitical realignments is rooted intwo nowadays debatable theoretical andepistemological frameworks: theWestphalian tradition; and theconceiving of the world as being in alinear upward curve in a past-present-future time continuum. In a time of“bifurcation” (as Ilya Prigogine has aptlycalled it) and “butterfly effect”,22 whenthe nation-state is in decline, and weare facing an increase in theprivatization of power by legal andillegal groups, it is difficult to envisagewhich new actors apart states may stepinto the global arena – criminal groups,clans, tribes, provinces, regions,organizations etc – which may leadfuture geopolitical realignments to lookvery different to the ones we were usedto.23

Conclusions: Regionalization byDefault and Geopolitical Realignments?

At least three main conclusionscould be inferred from what has beenassessed. First, the globalizationtriggers macro-regionalization, which, inits turn, generates micro-regionalization– the EU being a good example ofboth. Second, in virtually all scenariosof geopolitical future the recurrenttheme is regionalism, which comes invarious “shapes and sizes”. That is whymaybe we should start to live with the

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20 Even if one concedes that globalization is nothing new, there are at least three new developmentsin the way capitalism has been working in the last 100-150 years: “the integration of the world interms of the speed of communication and the scale of trans-national exchange in cultural, economicand political matters”; the formation of “some 50-60,000 trans-national co-operations”; and “theemergence of a rather dense network of international organizations, which, to some extent, seem tocontrol the workings of the interstate systems, as well as of the workings of capitalism”. See “Debateon the Propositions”, in Immanuel Wallerstein, Armand Clesse (eds), op. cit., p. 65.21 “Russia’s changing relations with China”, Jane’s Foreign Report, 25 August 2006, http://frp.janes.com.22 The “butterfly effect” refers to the fact that we live in a world that is so interdependent that a smallchange somewhere could change the course of events completely. 23 “Debate on the Propositions”, in Immanuel Wallerstein, Armand Clesse (eds), op. cit., p. 93

idea of a sort of regionalization bydefault. Third, how the relationshipamong the members of the EU-Japan-U.S. triad will look like in future willdepend to a large extent on how theAmerican power is going to prevailwithin the Western world and how it isgoing to handle the reassertion of

countries belonging both to the Westernand non-Western worlds. The variouspossible outcomes entail a plethora ofvarieties of geopolitical realignments.The investigation of possible institutionalresponses to these significantglobalization challenges falls outside thescope of this study.24

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24 Nevertheless, one cannot help asking if Ulrich Behr wasn’t right in stating that a possible alternativeto the national state and the global hegemonic state is the trans-national state. The trans-nationalstates are not national, international or supranational states. Within trans-national states, the system ofpolitical coordination is organized along the axis globalization-localization. Therefore, trans-national statesare glocal states, provinces of the global society which are struggling to earn their position on theglobal market.

Annex 1Unipolar vs. Multipolar World

Annex 2

Outline of Westphalian, Philadelphian, and Anti-Utopian Legacies

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Source: Takashi Inoguchi, “Three Japanese Scenarios for the Third Millennium”, in ImmanuelWallerstein, Armand Clesse (eds), The World We Are Entering, 2000-2050, Luxembourg Institute forEuropean and International Studies, Dutch University Press, Amsterdam, 2002, p. 190, Table 1(adapted).

Annex 3

The Functioning Core vs. the Non-Integrated Gap

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Source: Thomas P. M. Barnett and Bradd C. Hayes, “System Perturbation: Conflict in the Age ofGlobalization”, in Raymond W. Westphal Jr, ed, War and Virtual War: The Challenges to Communities,Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford 2003, chapter available also online at h t t p : / / w w w . i n t e r -disciplinary.net/publishing/idp/War%20&%20Virtual%20War.pdf