Can Six-Party Talks Be Institutionalized In Northeast Asia?

"War and Peace" has always been an eternal theme since the advent of human civilization.As the legacy of Cold War,the division and turbulence in Korean Peninsula persists even today and the problem has not been effectively settled.Since 1960s,when North Korea unilaterally resorted to the development of nuclear weapons to resolve security problems concerning nation's survival,the involvement of the nuclear issues have complicated the situation in the Peninsula.On the premise of the previous research conducted by the academia,this thesis demonstrates its significance in that it provides an institution-building scenario which is different from the preexisted one to effectively solve the North Korea nuclear issues in respect of regional institution construction.Firstly,the thesis discusses the geopolitical importance of Northeast Asia:Northeast Asia possesses the highest concentration of military and economic capacities:it has three largest nuclear weapon states in the world,namely U.S.,Russia and China,one semi-nuclear state which is North Korea,two threshold nuclear weapons states,namely South Korea and Japan,three of the five world's largest trading countries(U.S.,Japan and China)and Asia's three largest and most influential economies(China,Japan and South Korea).Northeast Asia is the key to Asia's security and economic development.Then in the literature review part,the author cites the opinion and point of view from the originator of modern International Politics and experts in East Asian study(Morgenthau,Scott Snyder,Samuel S.Kim&David Shambaugh)to expound the possibility and necessity of establishing mature security,politics and economic institution in the post-Cold War period.When defining the regional security institution construction in Northeast Asia,the author cites the opinion from Mark Beeson to distinguish between two similar concepts:regionalism and regicnalization;then the author quotes the expression from Muthiah Alagappa to elucidate the "normative,conceptual feature" of regional security institution.In the following part of the literature review,the author lists different scenarios of regional institution construction in Northeast Asia from scholars coming from home and broad,including the proposal of theories about security and cooperative institution building(Ma Ying,Joseph Nye,Samuel Lee and Tamotsu Nakano);the specific advice on security institution construction(Georgy Toloraya,Min Hyoung Park&Peter Van Ness);analyzing the security situation in Northeast Asia from the perspective of constructivism and liberalism(Chen Minhua).In addition to these,the literature review part also lists the existing political,economic,security institutions in East Asia,whether it be fully-fledged or not.The aforesaid literatures furnish a consolidated historical and theoretical framework for the thesis.In Chapter 2 and 3,the thesis briefly reviews the historical background of North Korea's developing nuclear weapons,some tentative regional security institutions in NEA and the whole process of the SPT which started from its beginning in 2003 to its suspension in 2009.In Chapter 4,the thesis conducts a comprehensive analysis on the change of each party's stance and foreign policy during and after the SPT.In Chapter 5,the thesis explains the reason for the suspension of SPT from the multilateralism perspective.Since April 14th,2009,when North Korea unilaterally withdrew from SPT,eight years have passed and the security situation in Korean Peninsula have deteriorated rapidly with North Korea's increasingly frequent nuclear and missile test,as well as U.S.deployment of THAAD in South Korea.On March 8th,2017,during the press conference for China's 12th NPC and CPPCC,China's minister of Foreign Affairs,Wang Yi pointed out that North Korea's recent nuclear tests and U.S.-ROK super-large-scale joint military exercise is driving Korean Peninsula to a dangerous situation.He compared the two sides to two trains which are charging vis-a-vis at a tremendous speed and suggested that both sides should "flash the red light and to apply brakes on both trains".In the third part of Chapter 5,the thesis innovatively introduces China's rise and the return of the bipolar system in Northeast Asia as a new analytical framework and advances a new attempt on institution-building,i.e.establishing and institutionalizing a new Four-Party Talks which is based on the Sino-U.S.condominium and includes two Koreas to alleviate the ever-escalating security dilemma on the Korean Peninsula.