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9 S.Y.B.I.L. 19 (2005)
The Asian Century: Implications for International Law

handle is hein.journals/singa9 and id is 27 raw text is: © 2005 Singapore Year Book of International Law and Contributors ARTICLES THE ASIAN CENTURY: IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW by DAVID P. FIDLER* Predictions that the 21t century will be the Asian century have sparked analytical interest from many disciplines but not international law. This article focuses on what implications Asia rising may have for international law in the 21t century. The article begins by looking at the 19th and 20th centuries as the European and American centuries respectively to assess the impact these centuries made on international law. The article then analyses possible meanings for an Asian century and frames such a century's implications for international law around the concept of a Concert of Asia. The article argues that, through a Concert of Asia, Asian nations have the opportunity to make the region a laboratory for global governance that determines the next stage of international law's historical development as an instrument in human governance. I. INTRODUCTION Predictions that the 21s' century will be the Asian century have been made for years,1 and such predictions have strengthened and suffered as Asia and the rest of the international system have experienced dramatic events and change. The Asian century debate waxed and waned, for example, before and after the Asian financial crisis of 1997. For all its ups and downs, the notion that this century will find Asia attracting more world attention has shown remarkable resilience, largely because the importance of Asia in international relations continues to grow. The phenomenon of Asia rising has drawn scrutiny from experts who study the geopo- litical balance of power, trends in military strength, threats to national and international security, economic growth and competition, the processes of globalisation, and even public health. Missing from the discourse on the rise of Asia's prominence is the analysis of the implications for international law of this rise in Asia's importance.2 This article attempts B.A. (University of Kansas); M.Phil. in International Relations (Oxon); J.D. (Harv); BCL (Oxon). Professor of Law and Harry T. Ice Faculty Fellow, Indiana University School of Law. Analysis on the 21't century being the Asian century appears to have gained prominence first in the late 1980s and continued into the 1990s. See, e.g., J. Weiss, The Asian Century: The Economic Ascent of the Pacific Rim and What It Means for the West (New York: Facts on File, 1989); W. L. Rivers Black III, Maritime Arbitration in the Asian Century (1990) 14 Tul. Mar. L.J. 261; K. W. Abbott & G. W. Bowman, Economic Integration for the Asian Century: An Early Look at New Approaches (1994) 4 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 187; C. Lingle, The Rise & Decline of the Asian Century: False Starts on the Path to the Global Millennium (Hong Kong: Asia 2000 Ltd., 1997); S. Sanders, ed., The U.S. Role in the Asian Century (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997). The earliest published reference to Asian century I found appears in J. Romein, The Asian Century: A History of Modern Nationalism in Asia, trans. by R. T. Clark (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1962). 2 The Singapore Journal of International & Comparative Law sponsored a symposium in 2001 that explored the challenges confronting the teaching and practice of international law in Asia. (From the Editors (2001) 5 S.J.I.C.L. ix). The essays in this symposium did not, however, directly address the implications of the growth in the power and importance of the region for Asia's relationship with international law that is the mainstay of (2005) 9 SYBIL 19-35

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