Building a military security cooperation regime in Northeast Asia: Feasibility and design (United States, China, Russia, Korea)

This study explores the feasibility and design of a military security cooperation regime in Northeast Asia consisting of the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas.; The study identifies four conditions necessary to the formation of a security regime in Northeast Asia: the evolution of existing security arrangements; regional economic interdependence with spill over security cooperation; transnational threats as a set of commonly perceived threats; and support of key actors for a new security regime.; First, existing security cooperation arrangements, which may serve as the basis for a new regional security regime including ASEAN Regional Forum, the Council for Security Cooperation in Asia-Pacific, the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue, and the Six Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear program, have already made great strides in terms of accumulating the habits of dialogue among regional powers.; Second, the dynamics of economic interdependence have encouraged the states of the Northeast Asia region to integrate and cooperate with one another. Sustained economic development via trade and investment, co-development of Siberia's ail and gas, economic cooperation between the two Koreas, has positively spilled over into regional security cooperation.; Third, transnational threats, which call for cooperative security policies, include terrorism, international crime, infectious diseases, unregulated population movements, natural disasters, and environment degradation, pose greater challenges than do traditional, conventional threats because they cannot be mastered by states acting individually but should be resolved in a multilateral framework.; Finally, in the 1990s the key actors in Northeast Asia tended to perceive multinational security cooperation as detrimental to both regional stability and their national interests. In the post-post Cold War era, however, particularly after the 9.11, a new spirit has arisen in the region in favor of multilateral cooperation to resolve security issues such as terrorism and North Korea's nuclear weapons program.; The findings of the current study indicate that security cooperation is a more effective, less costly solution to regional conflicts in Northeast Asia than either unilateral approach or arms races and bilateral alliances. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...