The Asia Pacific Security Lexicon

In the turbulent decade since the ending of the Cold War in Europe, a new element of the international relations of Asia and the Pacific has been the emergence of multilateral security dialogues. Both in governmental arenas such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and numerous "track two" channels including the Council for Security Co-operation in Asia-Pacific, it has been a decade of creative interaction and new thinking. The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon identifies the key phrases and ideas that have been the foundation of these dialogues, looking at their origins in international diplomacy and tracing their specific adaptation and modification to the conditions of a trans-Pacific setting. Of interest to both theoreticians and practitioners, the Lexicon is at once a handbook for regional diplomacy and an assessment of the factors that have shaped regional discussions.

The ending of the Cold War opened a new debate across the Pacific about the meaning of security and the new regional multilateral institutions that were beginning to emerge. The first edition of the The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon, published in 2002, identified and defined the key concepts and ideas central to security discourse in the region. This second edition updates all of the entries and examines the origins and meanings of some of the new terms in common usage in a different historical setting, among them "e;terrorism"e;, "e;pre-emption"e;, "e;preventive war"e;, "e;a la carte multilateralism"e;, "e;coalition of the willing"e;, and China's "e;peaceful rise"e;. And it looks at how concepts such as "e;human security"e; and "e;non-traditional security"e; have evolved and found new adherents. Both a diplomatic handbook and theoretical exploration, the Lexicon is based on the analysis of more than 3,000 books, articles, conference reports, and speeches. It does not aim to resolve the disagreements about how words are used. Rather, it makes their evolution clearer for academics and practitioners seeking consensual knowledge.

"Focuses on the vocabulary of Asia-Pacific security, mainly as it developed in the creative decade of the 1990s. The goal is to dissect thirty-four ideas and concepts that have been at the core of debates about multilateral security co-operation. The study of multilateral institution building in the Asia-Pacific has usually focused on material determinants, especially the relationship between the balance of power and regional institutions. By contrast, the focus here is on ideas."--Introduction.

New developments in the Asia Pacific are forcing regional officials to rethink the way they manage security issues. The contributors to this work explore why some forms of security cooperation and institutionalisation in the region have proven more feasible than others. This work describes the emergence of the professions in late tsarist Russia and their struggle for autonomy from the aristocratic state. It also examines the ways in which the Russian professions both resembled and differed from their Western counterparts.

This new textbook gathers an international roster of top security studies scholars to provide an overview of Asia-Pacific’s international relations and pressing contemporary security issues. It is a suitable introduction for undergraduate and masters students' use in international relations and security studies courses. Merging a strong theoretical component with rich contemporary and historical empirical examples, Asia-Pacific Security examines the region's key players and challenges as well as a spectrum of proposed solutions for improving regional stability. Major topics include in-depth looks at the United States' relationship with China; Security concerns presented by small and microstates, the region's largest group of nations; threats posed by terrorism and insurgency; the region's accelerating arms race and the potential for an Asian war; the possible roles of multilateralism, security communities, and human security as part of solutions to regional problems.

"Since September 11, 2001, our newspapers have been filled with the ""war on terror""; our governments have mobilized their resources for ""homeland security""; and people everywhere are braced for more terrorist attacks. Yet while the new threat is genuine, w"