Background

The end of the Cold War marked the beginning of a new international world order. Among the changes was the shift from a bi-polar world of a capitalist West and a communist East to a world in which the United States is the sole superpower. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, new states rapidly emerged. For example, the glue that had long held Yugoslavia together was its fear of the Soviet Union evoking the Brezhnev Doctrine should internal strife become untenable in the eyes of the Soviets. Consequently, with the disintegration of the USSR, new states within Yugoslavia, a nation that was glued together by the Treaty of Versailles following World War I, have come into being through internal conflict that eventually brought about foreign intervention. With the fall of the USSR, capitalism spread throughout the world and globalisation and interdependency became the new buzzwords. Globalisation made possible the uncovering and potential development of new ‘growth areas’. Among these growth areas is the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), a part of which lies in Thailand. This growth area, like the EU, hopes to encourage economic co-operation and aims to reduce trade an