Experience and Prospects of Financial Cooperation in ASEAN

Abstract

In December 2000, the U.S. National Intelligence Council published a report on Global Trends 2015 which projected world “drivers and trends” as background for U.S. policy-makers to plan foreign, security, and military policies. The report paints a generally optimistic picture of world trends in the economy, resources, technology, politics and conflict, and expects the United States will face no major difficulty in managing the world over the next 15 years. However, at the very end, the report lists eight “significant discontinuities” that could “produce trends quite different from those presented in the body of the study.” These eight include: economic collapse in the Middle East; “the formation of an international terrorist coalition”; another global epidemic on the scale of AIDS; an ethnic/religious conflict in a strategically sensitive area; a powerful anti-globalization movement; a China (People’s Republic of China)—India—Russia pact against the United States; and the collapse of the Atlantic alliance. The last of these “significant discontinuities” reads:

Major Asian countries establish an Asian Monetary Fund or less likely an Asian Trade Organization, undermining the IMF and WTO and the ability of the U.S. to exercise global economic leadership (National Intelligence Council 2000: 81).