Cultural identification, not economic logic, drove the proposed East Asian Economic Caucus.

Evidence

The underlying premise of the EAEC is thus that economics follows culture. Australia, New Zealand, and the United States are excluded from it because culturally they are not Asian. The success of the EAEC, however, depends overwhelmingly on participation by Japan and China. Mahathir has pleaded with the Japanese to join. “Japan is Asian. Japan is of East Asia,” he told a Japanese audience. “You cannot turn from this geo-cultural fact. You belong here.” The Japanese government, however, was reluctant to enlist in the EAEC, in part for fear of offending the United States and in part because it was divided over whether it should identify itself with Asia. If Japan joins the EAEC, it would dominate it, which is likely to cause fear and uncertainty among the members as well as intense antagonism on the part of China. For several years there was much talk of Japan creating an Asian “yen bloc” to balance the European Union and the NAFTA. Japan, however, is a lone country with few cultural connections with its neighbors and as of 1995 no yen bloc had materialized. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 362

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the larger thesis of the book that civilization/culture clusters drive post-Cold War alignment, and to the ‘economics follows culture’ premise that parallels the trade-law readings.