East Asian Integration is Test for Big Powers
First published in Financial Times on December 14, 2005. Based on a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
In 1999, while recovering from the Asian financial crisis that wreaked havoc on his country's economy, Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's then prime minister, claimed that had a regional monetary fund existed, “the East Asian currency crisis of 1997 and 1998 would not have occurred, would not have endured and would not have gone to such ridiculous depths”.