Post-crisis Asia-Pacific economies: building architecture on economic security

Abstract

Economic factors had been used to explain many security issues in the past such as colonialism in European countries, the eruption of the First World War, rise of Hitler and the Nazis in the Second World War, Japanese military expansion in the 1930s and 1940s, and post-war American military interventions in many third-world countries. Almost all were relegated to the need of accesssion to resources or markets. During cold-war period, many democratic countries wielded economic banner as the most efficient weapon against the communist group, in the hope to fend off or even eliminate their threats with rapid economic growth and solid economic foundations. A growing and stabilized domestic economy was yhus crucial for national security.