The Northeast Asian Rim : A Geopolitical Perspective

Abstract

Along with the fade out of the cold war the world is undergoing a fundamental restructuring. The process is generally designated as regionalization and globalization. In this context, the paper presents a geopolitical perspective on the future of the Northeast Asia. To meet the global trend, it is expected for the countries in the area to organize an economically cooperative unity, the concept of which the author calls the Northeast Asian Rim(NEAR). With its huge potentials enough to be the largest economic area in the world and rather complicated historical and social backgrounds, the rim is tentatively supposed to have a loose and soft organization, to be flexible in dealing with the intra- and interregional relations. The idea underlying the view is that the former area of confrontation between the land power and the sea power is, under the new world environment, going to recover its proper locational attributes and develop to a merging area, a new core. As physical framework of the rim a spatial structure is assumed to consist of two sub-rims and two development axes with four development centers. The world map is changing. The traditional political map is being substituted by a new economic map. The familiar bi-polar image of the post-war world is rapidly reshaping into a less acquainted tri-polar or multi-polar world. No one dominant principle, structural or functional, seems to work in this process of global change. After the phenomena it is called globalization and/or regionalization.