Institutionalizing Northeast Asia

"Globalization and China's growing economy have caused different economic growth rates, resulting in constant fluctuations in the balance of power among the nations of Northeast Asia. This publication explores regional institutionalism as a counterweight to the principle of sovereignty. It argues that cooperation through regional institution-building is the best way to deal with the growing intertwinement of global issues and developments and the needs and interests at the regional and national levels. A unified region could also answer the demand for supra-territorial policy responses to such issues as trade, finance, the environment, human rights, and human security"--Publisher's description.

Can regional mechanisms better institutionalize the increasing complexity of economic and security ties among the countries in Northeast Asia? As the international state system undergoes dramatic changes in both security and economic relations in the wake of the end of the Cold War, the Asian financial crisis, and the attack of 9/11, this question is now at the forefront of the minds of both academics and policymakers. Still, little research has been done to integrate the analysis of security and economic analysis of changes in the region within a broader context that will give us theoretically-informed policy insights. Against this backdrop, this book investigates the origins and evolution of Northeast Asia's new institutional architecture in trade, finance, and security from both a theoretical and empirical perspective.

This book offers a detailed analysis of the domestic politics of regionalism in the three major nations of Northeast Asia (China, Japan, and Korea), as well as in the most important external actor, the United States.

Drawing on cutting-edge research from leading scholars, this book investigates state preferences for regime creation and assesses state capacity for executing these preferences in Northeast Asia’s energy domain, defined as the geographical area comprising the following countries: Russia, Mongolia, China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea. It examines questions pertaining to how states perceive the need and necessity for establishing a regime when it comes to the issue of energy and how much commitment they make to the effort in Northeast Asia. The book analyses the factors that shape each country’s fundamental energy interests in the region, how these interests impact their attitudes toward engaging the region on energy security and the way they carry out their regional engagement. Based on countries’ interests in promoting institutionalized regional energy cooperation and their capacity for forging that cooperation, the collection assesses each state’s role in contributing to an energy regime in Northeast Asia. It then concludes with a critique on the decade-plus quest for energy security cooperation in Northeast Asia and suggests ways forward for facilitating regional energy security cooperation. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of environmental policy, energy policy, security studies, Asian studies and international relations.

Defining and conceptualizing Northeast Asia’s security complex poses unique quandaries. The security architecture in Northeast Asia to date has been predominately U.S.-dominated bilateral alliances, weak institutional structures and the current Six Party Talks dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue. There has been a distinct lack of desire among regional countries as well as the U.S. to follow in the footsteps of Europe with its robust set of multilateral institutions. However, since the late 1990s, there has been burgeoning interest among regional states towards forming new multilateral institutions as well as reforming and revitalizing existing mechanisms. Much of this effort has been in the economic and political arenas, with the creation of bodies such as the East Asian Summit, but there have also been important initiatives in the security sphere. This book offers detailed examinations about how this potentially tense region of the world is redefining certain longstanding national interests, and shows how this shift is the result of changing power relations, the desire to protect hard-won economic gains, as well as growing trust in new processes designed to foster regional cooperation over regional conflict. Presenting new and timely research on topics that are vital to the security future of one of the world’s most important geographical regions, this book will be of great value to students and scholars of Asian politics, regionalism, international politics and security studies.

Institutional activities have remarkably transformed East Asia, a region once known for the absence of regionalism and regime-building efforts. Yet the dynamics of this Asian institutionalization have remained an understudied area of research. This book offers one of the first scholarly attempts to clarify what constitutes institutionalization in East Asia and to systematically trace the origins, discern the features, and analyze the prospects of ongoing institutionalization processes in the world’s most dynamic region. Institutionalizing East Asia comprises eight essays, grouped thematically into three sections. Part I considers East and Southeast Asia as focal points of inter-state exchanges and traces the institutionalization of inter-state cooperation first among the Southeast Asian states and then among those of the wider East Asia. Part II examines the institutionalization of regional collaboration in four domains: economy, security, natural disaster relief, and ethnic conflict management. Part III discusses the institutionalization dynamics at the sub-regional and inter-regional levels. The essays in this book offer a useful source of reference for scholars and researchers specializing in East Asia, regional architecture, and institution-building in international relations. They will also be of interest to postgraduate and research students interested in ASEAN, the drivers and limits of international cooperation, as well as the role of regional multilateralism in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Northeast Asian security environment is closely linked to Korea’s growth perspectives for the future. The spectacular rise of the South Korean economy in the past half century, also known as “Miracle on the Han River,” has been duly highlighted as one of the most successful cases of economic development worldwide. However, among the factors curbing South Korea’s growth perspectives has been, from the very beginning of its rise, the coexistence of the difficult neighbour to the North, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. While in the cold war this coexistence has been taken as inevitable, after the end of the cold war there were hopes to overcome this obstacle to further growth either through collapse or enhanced cooperation with the North, neither of which became reality. North Korea’s unprecedented aggressiveness and development of long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear devices, made this threat truly an international question with multilateral talks coming into existence as ad-hoc measures to cope with the nuclear crisis. It was then that the idea of a Northeast Asian Security Community was born. The contributions in this book discuss how a peaceful solution of the security problems could not only enhance stability of Korea’s economy and reduce the defense burden considerably (the so-called peace dividend), but would facilitate regional investments safer and regional solutions for common economic problems. When discussing the possibilities of a security framework or, in an institutionalized form, security community, in Northeast Asia, the authors in this volume are realistic as to not fall into the trap of wishful thinking, which so often has characterized approaches to North Korea resulting in disappointment. The past two years again saw the rising of tensions in Northeast Asia and the masterful way in which even an impoverished and isolated country can play its cards. While it seems a new ice age between the two Koreas is possible, nevertheless and maybe even more than ever the search for a stable security framework for Northeast Asia as a precondition for peaceful economic cooperation and development will go on. The chapters in this volume contribute to the ongoing debate to secure peace and development in Northeast Asia, making this book of interest to both academics and policy-makers alike.

The share of global CO2 emissions from the core Northeast Asian (NEA) countries in 2015 was estimated to be as high as 33.63 percent. Representing 28.21, 3.67, and 1.75 percent of total global emissions, China, Japan, and South Korea were ranked the first, fifth, and seventh largest contributors, respectively. Some parts of China, the Republic of Mongolia, the Russian Far East, and Southeast Asia have long been on serious alert due to accelerated deforestation. With their rapid population growth and economic development, the core countries of Northeast Asia are responsible both directly and indirectly for numerous environmental problems. Urgent individual and collective action is required from the region’s governments. Against the backdrop of debate on how to understand Northeast Asia as a "region," Park focuses on the major regional economies of China, Japan, and South Korea, along with Russia, North Korea, and the Republic of Mongolia, due to both their geopolitical proximity and their significance to the region. The author attempts to answer the questions: "How far has regional environmental cooperation progressed in Northeast Asia?"; and "Why are Northeast Asian countries reluctant to cooperate further on urgent transboundary and regional environmental issues?"