American International Journal of Contemporary Research Vol. 4 No. 1; January 2014 230 Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation: An Appraisal Chukwuma Osakwe, PhD Department of History and International Studies Nigerian Defence Academy Kaduna Kelechi Johnmary Ani Department of History and Strategic Studies Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ikwo Ebonyi State Nigeria Abstract History of nations in times past often record some form of relations between them and other nations. Thereafter, the rise of sovereign states transformed the nature of relations amongst states as they began to form alliance with other states and regions. Consequently, regional and inter-regional organization continued to rise in global history. However, the emergence of Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 1989 advanced open inter- regional integration. This paper has documented the background history of APEC. It showed there strategic economic cooperation dynamics as well as the security dynamics that the organization has adopted in the course of their evolving history. The work equally captured the challenges faced by APEC and called for progressive, sustainable, inter-regional strategy in order to for the member states to attain greater cooperative height in world economic relations. Key Words: Asia, Pacific, Economy, History, Trade Introduction An inquiry into the wealth of nations (Smith, 1770) in contemporary world politics (Kegley and Wittkoppf, 1997) reveals that the economies of individual and multilateral states are centred on economic cooperation. This has made “the politics of international economic relations” (Spero, 1980), which is a branch of international relations (Goldstein, 1994) to become a politics of economic cooperation. Economic cooperation was defined by Rourke (2002:484) as “a process whereby sovereign states, cooperate with one another bilaterally or multilaterally through international governmental organizations or process”. It is a form of cooperation that could be found amongst state and non-state actors across the regions and continents of the globe. It means a close intertwining through a process of formal agreement or informal circumstances, in which the countries involved begin to surrender some degree of their national sovereignty and act as an economic unit. It connotes a “sense of community” amongst its population (Deutsh, 1968). The idea of economic cooperation is closely related to the idea of “economic integration” (Bela, 1961). Asogwa (1999; 109) wrote that “economic integration can be viewed as a process or condition which encompasses measures to abolish discrimination between economic units belonging to different national states and a condition in which various forms of discrimination between national economies are absent. As such economic integration can take various forms, from free trade area to customs union, to common market, to economic union, to complete economic integration”. Feld (1979) wrote that economic integration is divided into five different stages ranging from “a free trade area to a custom union, a common market, an economic union and finally a monetary union”. Asogwa (2009:102) argued that economic cooperation was a product of the “world community” concept or what Burton (1972) called ‘world society’ that emanated after the World War II. El-Agraa (1997) wrote that since the end of the World War II, “for all the far reaching economic cooperative effort at the global level, the degree of activity and economic cooperation and integration at the regional level is even more advanced”.