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

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.

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.