While the recent World Trade Organization meetings were marred by protestors, the more significant meetings may have been those held the week before in the Philippines. Asian leaders gathered for a summit meeting that laid a foundation for the formation of a regional bloc of East Asian nations.

The South China Morning Post reported: "Leaders of North and Southeast Asian nations have signed a historic pact to strengthen bonds through closer economic and monetary co-operation.

"The mainland, Japan and South Korea joined the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in the first step towards the eventual creation of a giant East Asian common market, an economic powerhouse encompassing two billion people.

"Philippine President Joseph Estrada, who chaired [the] informal summit in Manila, said: 'If we persevere and work harder, maybe, the promise we fulfill will realise an even loftier dream. An East Asian common market. One East Asian currency. And one East Asian community-a family from the happy union of north and south'" (November 29, 1999).

A December 2, 1999, Stratfor report added this comment in light of the Malaysian turmoil: "Asia is on the threshold of abandoning its longstanding policy of non-interference. On Nov. 2, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad called on the region to form a pan-Asian security structure to promote peaceful cooperation. His move echoes a growing paradigm shift, as Asian countries begin to realize that threats to individual nations' stability threaten that of the entire region. The ongoing separatist struggles in Indonesia have strengthened this sentiment; the 10 ASEAN members, and Japan, China and South Korea have announced that they stand behind Indonesia's sovereignty. Although they now lack the military capability to support their stand, Asian nations are moving faster than ever toward acting like a regional bloc."

Stratfor predicts American "protectionist measures" will have a major impact on Asia. "It is vital to understand, of course, that a round of protectionist measures by the United States late in the decade will have profound effects on the international system. Most important, as the United States disengages from the Eastern Hemisphere, powerful hegemonistic forces will emerge in Eurasia that will tend to destabilize the international system as a whole. That will leave a politically resentful, militarily powerful America, suffering from serious but far from catastrophic economic dysfunction, facing an increasingly unstable world.

"It is therefore our view…that economic destabilization in the United States will contribute greatly to a massive rise in international tension late in the decade. Several great powers will arise throughout Eurasia, challenging American primacy. The competition among those powers and between them and the United States will be intense, complex and dangerous. It will lack the elegant simplicity of the Cold War, posing instead the mind-numbing complexity of the pre-World War I period."

Bible prophecy shows that in the end time massive armies from the east will converge upon the Middle East and Jerusalem in particular. These forces will gather to fight against Christ at His Second Coming. See Revelation 9:14-16 and 16:14-16. Events in Asia are moving, perhaps slowly for now, toward some form of cooperative effort that will have a major impact on the world in the coming years. WNP