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Regionalism Beyond the Regions: South Asia Outside SAARC

Dr. S.D. Muni is Appadorai Professor of International Politics, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. REGIONS HAVE ALWAYS played an important role in world politics. But the parameters of a given region, including its geographical composition and its policy focus, whether economic, strategic or socio-cultural, have been influenced by global politico-strategic and economic forces. This is clearly evident from the evolution of regional groupings both during and after the cold war. For instance, in the post-Second World War period when boundaries of cold war conflict were being drawn by the West against the East in Europe and Asia, regionalism emerged as a credible mechanism to provide economic support and sustenance to military alliances, on the one hand, and also to rebuild, coordinate and integrate markets and economies of the allies and dependable friends, on the other. Accordingly, the US played a dominant and significant role in European reconstruction which provided a strong impetus to the growth of regionalism in Europe while helping the American economy to expand and grow. This, on the whole, reinforced the Western alliance. The role that NATO and the ’Point Four’/Marshal Plan played in strengthening America’s trans-Atlantic alliance and its integration with European economy still awaits an objective, indepth and critical study. Similarly, the role played by these strategic initiatives in inducing and strengthening moves towards European regionalism also have not been fully examined. Likewise, in the post-Second World War period, the US helped to rebuild the Japanese economy so as to cement and sustain Japan’s