Asia's New Multilateralism: Cooperation, Competition, and the Search for Community

by Michael Green, Bates Gill

Overview

Traditionally, stability in Asia has relied on America's bilateral alliances with Japan, Australia, and the Republic of Korea. Yet in recent years, emergent and more active multilateral forums—such as the Six-Party Talks on North Korea and the East Asia Summit—have taken precedence, engendering both cooperation and competition while reflecting the local concerns of the region.

Some are concerned that this process is moving toward less-inclusive, bloc-based "talking shops" and that the future direction and success of these arrangements, along with their implications for global and regional security and prosperity, remain unclear. The fifteen contributors to this volume, all leading scholars in the field, provide national perspectives on regional institutional architecture and their functional challenges. They illuminate areas of cooperation that will move the region toward substantive collaboration, convergence of norms, and strengthened domestic institutions. They also highlight the degree to which institution building in Asia—a region composed of liberal democracies, authoritarian regimes, and anachronistic dictatorships—has become an arena for competition among major powers and conflicting norms, and assess the future shape of Asian security architecture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231144438
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	02/25/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael J. Green is the Japan Chair and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and an associate professor of international relations at Georgetown University. He has served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council. His publications include Japan's Reluctant Realism and Arming Japan.

Bates Gill is CEO of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He previously held positions as the director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the CSIS Freeman Chair in China Studies and was a senior fellow in foreign policy studies and the inaugural director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. His most recent book is Rising Star: China's New Security Diplomacy.

Table of Contents

Preface
Abbreviations
1. Unbundling Asia's New Multilateralism
Bates Gill and Michael J. Green
Part I National Strategies for Regionalism
2. Evolving U.S. Views on Asia's Future Institutional Architecture
Ralph A. Cossa
3. Chinese Perspectives on Building an East Asian Community in the Twenty-first Century
Wu Xinbo
4. Regional Multilateralism in Asia and the Korean Question
Lim Wonhyuk
5. Japan's Perspective on Asian Regionalism
Akiko Fukushima
6. India and the Asian Security Architecture
C. Raja Mohan
7. Australia's Pragmatic Approach to Asian Regionalism
Greg Sheridan
8. The Strong in the World of the Weak: Southeast Asia in Asia's Regional Architecture
Amitav Acharya
Part II The Functional Challenges
9. Emerging Economic Architecture in Asia: Opening or Insulating the Region?
Amy Searight
10. Norms and Regional Architecture: Multilateral Institution Building in Asia and Its Impact on Governance and Democracy
William Cole and Erik G. Jensen
11. Defense Issues and Asia's Future Security Architecture
Michael E. O'Hanlon
12. Nontraditional Security and Multilateralism in Asia: Reshaping the Contours of Regional Security Architecture
Mely Caballero-Anthony
13. Challenges to Building an Effective Asia-Pacific Security Architecture
Brendan Taylor and William T. Tow
Appendix. Selected List of Principal Regional Institutions in Asia
Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Michael J. Green and Bates Gill have given those of us who think and write about Asia, but are not Asianists, just what we need: a book that puts the bewildering array of multilateral asian institutions into a context we can understand. The individual chapters are grouped into two parts, one providing national perspectives on multiplying multilateral institutions, the other treating the economic, security, and governance issues raised by this peculiar phenomenon. The introductory chapter brilliantly frames and introduces the well-written, lean, and useful pieces contributed by distinguished authors. Most useful is the volume's crisp identification of the tensions involved in Asian multilateralism, from soaring rhetoric to anemic performance, from 'budding Asianization' to an embrace of the Pacific community, and from enthusiasm for institution building to an acceptance of ad hoc 'minilateral' groups. In the end, the book serves as the best available realist's guide to the complex and important political reality that defines Asia today.

Evelyn Goh

This book is that rare item: an edited volume that is coherent, analytical, and informative. It is the best recent book on multilateralism in the region and must be required reading for teachers and students of international relations in the Asia-Pacific.

— Evelyn Goh, University of London

Editorial Reviews

An excellent textbook for students and scholars in international relations, political science, and Asian studies, and even for diplomats and policy makers.

H-US-Japan - Alon Levkowitz

An excellent textbook for students and scholars in international relations, political science, and Asian studies, and even for diplomats and policy makers.

— Alon Levkowitz

H-US-Japan