Corey Wallace
Teaching Fellow, Political Studies, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Youth delegate GM XIX 2010

Keen observers of Asia-Pacific regional integration will not have missed the development of an interesting dynamic in recent years - that of geopolitical competition driving the economic liberalization agenda. The politicization of economic relations and interconnections is of course nothing new. The opening of the American market after World War II to Germany and Japan was a critical part of early US Cold War strategy, as was encouraging Japan to limit its trading relationship with the People’s Republic of China and other Communist governments in Asia. The Soviet Union attempted to forge its own economic bloc through Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) at the same time. This was the logic of the Cold War: superpower competition and containment. Geopolitical competition, far from dividing the Pacific, is now having the opposite effect in the post-Cold War era however. While geopolitical considerations have never truly been out of the picture, and indeed the formation of APEC itself was propelled by (often differing) political as well as economic motivations, the last one to two years has seen geopolitical considerations playing a much more explicit role in the decisions that economies have taken regarding the joining of and commitment to various trade pacts and economic frameworks. Read more…

Don Gunasekera, Senior Economist, CSIRO, Canberra

The 2004 Asian tsunami illustrated the disproportionate impact that natural disasters have on poorer communities. More recent natural disasters in New Zealand, Japan, Australia and the US have shown that even well-to-do communities can be significantly hard hit by the impact of catastrophic and severe weather events. Preparing for natural disasters has many facets. They can range from adaptive response measures to the use of modern technologies to provide early warnings. A measure which is often talked about and seldom practiced is disaster risk management. In this regard, the recent mid-term review by the UNISDR of the Hyogo Framework for Action to substantially reduce disaster losses by 2015 is timely. A key message emerging from the UNISDR mid-term review is the need for economies to undertake proper disaster risk assessments that could help them to draw up better risk management plans which can be implemented by effective institutions with adequate resources in a well coordinated manner.

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Senator Daniel Inoye
Chair, U.S. Senate Appropriation Committee
APEC Promotes Stability in the Asia-Pacific

YOKOHAMA, JAPAN (Nov. 12, 2010) – Speaking yesterday at the 2010 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Yokohama, Japan, U.S. Senate Appropriation Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawai‘i) said the meeting comes at a time when “the interdependence among the world’s economies have reached a level never seen before.”

Inouye said APEC springs from a “foundation of peace and stability [that has] made it possible for countries with a history of conflict to come together.” He also looked ahead to APEC 2011, which will be hosted by the U.S. in Honolulu, Hawai’i, next November. “We are honored by President Obama’s selection, and his confidence that we will carry out our duty as America’s host city with distinction, deference to diplomacy, and always, with the spirit of aloha,” Inouye said. “Hawai‘i’s people are the faces of APEC. We have been shaped by the history, culture and events of this region.”

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