New world actors

From the former years of the Cold War, a quiet phenomenon but ever more visible dominated the world's political stage. Behind the arming race it also took place another race: the economic one. It seems more and more clear that not only the first race will be decided by the second one, but also that the first, the arming race, is more and more a facade for the economic one. That is why in the end of the Cold War "without a break, the race was changed from military race into a political race" (Lester Thurow, "Head to head").
At present there is a unique military superpower and three economic superpowers: USA, Japan and Europe, all fighting for economic prevailing. The occurrence of some economic regions represent an entirely new phenomenon because they undertake another kind of evolution which starts from the premise that neither of the states, as powerful as it may be, can cape alone with the contemporary development problems.
The first such region showed up on the European continent and was represented by that we call the European Community, the present European Union. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) made up of USA, Canada and Mexico emerged as a reaction to this community. Besides the three great regions (Europe, Asia-Pacific and NAFTA) there also appeared other integration regions as follows: Mercosur (South America's trade agreement), Andin Pact, The Black Sea Region etc. Any of the three great integration regions have a leader, " a locomotive" : NAFTA has USA, Asia-Pacific has Japan and European Union has Germany. When we speak about the competition among these areas we must also take into account the capacity of the "locomotive" to provide the progressive force of this whole region.
It is also interesting the integration model which was adopted by one region or the other. Is it a super national model or one with independent states? Europe is promoting a super national model with super national bodies. Asia-Pacific, on the contrary, is preserving the state's suzerainty as a whole.
The occurrence of the economic regions and of the new world actors raise under new terms the problem of the international trade evolution as well as the relationships between the economic power of the respective regions and that of the security structures available. From this point of view we notice that 70 percent from the European Union's states trade is developing among the countries of this region or among them and CEFTA, while Japan has a trade activity in the Asia-Pacific area which represents 35 percent of its global trade.
Significant differences take place as well regarding the security structures of these regions. Europe has a personal structure: the Occidental Europe Union (OEC). In Asia-Pacific there isn't such a structure which may increase the risks of some conflicts in the area, particularly that two big economic actors showed up in the region: Japan and China.
Together with the set up of these economic regions it arises "a new continentalism" which claims a redefining of the corporations' strategies, a re-conceiving of the mental maps of the citizens from each country and, gradually, a new economic identity based on a global competition. Over time, the region will be in forefront, not the country. It will represent the main economic actor. The people's mental maps will be built around these economic dimensions and will operate with the measurements suggested by them.