EANET as an organization is not particularly effective, which is not due to any flaws unique to the organization, but rather to the fact that the international climate of East Asia in general precludes significant cooperation between its member states. Apart from their membership in the organization, each member state of EANET has one other thing in common: they have all been involved in wars with one another within living memory. Another serious problem inhibiting EANET’s group cohesion are the ongoing territorial disputes between its members.
Perhaps the worst problem stems not from which countries are in EANET, but from which countries are NOT in EANET. North Korea, a nuclear power, is not in EANET, nor is it a member of many other international organizations dealing with pollution and climate change. This means that even if EANET’s member states do everything within their power to stop acid rain, there will still be at least one major polluter left over whom EANET has no sway.
Adding to these issues of state power play are the concerns of scientific hegemony, discussed in the accomplishments, which provide a second level of concern with the success of EANET. However, despite these concerns, it is also true that a growing network of standardized data collection, combined with the analysis conducted by the scientists from member countries in the annual conference, is beneficial to understanding acid rain in the region. This model of a loose alliance of nations in non-binding agreements connects closely to Dickens’ analysis of patterns in Asia as a region in his essay “The State is Dead…Long live the State.” He claims that Asian trade agreements tend to be “much looser, less formalized and more open” than their European or American counterparts (10). Although EANET is not a trade agreement, it is loose in the sense that the data collection and integration is conducted at the national level, and only reported to a supernational organization at the discression of the national institution. Likewise, all of the agreements to use this information is non-binding, and the very creation of sites is voluntary. Comparable institutions in Europe tend to be less voluntary. The EU sets environmental standards for air pollution, and has a data integration system that requires the participation of all data collection stations (which were themselves previously established through a directive). Therefore, we conclude that Asian information networks follow the same pattern Dickens introduces for trade agreements.