Trade Commerce And Security Challenges In The Asia Pacific Region

The Asia Pacific region is a dynamic but complex area where much of the history of the 21st Century will be scripted. Although the strategic and economic importance of the region continues to grow, challenges of reconciling national interests with regional and global interests continue. Security architectures during the Cold War were based primarily on military alliances. However the need today is to base these architectures on shared values, interests and challenges. We need not only define but believe in these universal values. This book brings out this important aspect of this region and explains them briefly.

​The connections between trade and security are hardly new. Analysts and practitioners have clearly recognized this interrelationship since the mercantilist arguments of the 16th and 17th centuries. Despite wishful economic liberal thinking that might prefer to separate the political from the economic, it is widely recognized that trade and security are fundamentally interconnected in the foreign policy of states. Over time, as new forms of trade policy have come into being and the international security environment has evolved, the nexus of these two spheres has grown more complex and scholars have struggled to understand their interconnection This edited volume addresses linkages between trade and security by examining the influence of security factors in driving trade policy measures and the corresponding implications of different types of trade arrangements for international security. Ultimately, the project shows that several elements—traditional economic factors, traditional security factors, and human security factors—can affect the development of trade agreements and unilateral policies, and that trade policies may have both a direct and an indirect effect on traditional and human security. The project focuses on Asia, a region where economics is increasingly important but many security issues still linger unresolved, as a primary setting to test trade linkage theories. It also provides a comparative perspective through examination of how the EU and US have used their trade policies to achieve non-economic goals and how these policies have influenced their security environment. Case studies in this project cover key trade institutions and agreements including the World Trade Organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN Plus Three, the East Asia Summit, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and bilateral preferential trade agreements.

This edited book examines the contemporary regional security concerns in the Asia-Pacific recognizing the ‘Butterfly effect’, the concept that small causes can have large effects: ‘the flap of a butterfly’s wings can cause a typhoon halfway around the world’. For many Asia-Pacific states, domestic security challenges are at least as important as external security considerations. Recent events (both natural disasters and man-made disasters) have pointed to the inherent physical, economic, social and political vulnerabilities that exist in the region. Both black swan events and persistent threats to security characterize the challenges within the Asia-Pacific region. Transnational security challenges such as global climate change, environmental degradation, pandemics, energy security, supply chain security, resource scarcity, terrorism and organized crime are shaping the security landscape regionally and globally. The significance of emerging transnational security challenges in the Asia-Pacific Region impact globally and conversely, security developments in those other regions affect the Asia-Pacific region.

From the war on terror to the rise of China, this book unlocks the major strategic themes and security challenges of the early twenty-first century. Strategy and Security in the Asia-Pacific provides the analytical frameworks needed to make sense of this complex but exciting strategic universe. Offering a unique mix of global strategic thinking and Asia-Pacific security analysis, this book is for readers from Sydney to Seoul who want to put their own local security challenges in a wider regional and global context. It is also for North American and European readers requiring an understanding of the dynamic security developments in the Asia-Pacific region around which so much of global strategy is increasingly based. The really vital questions facing the international community are dealt with here: Why do governments and groups still use armed force? Has warfare really changed in the information age? Why should we be concerned about non-traditional security challenges such as water shortages and the spread of infectious disease? Is a great clash imminent between the United States and China? What are the prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula and between India and Pakistan? Can Southeast Asia survive the challenges of transnational terrorism? What does security mean for the Pacific island countries and for Australia and New Zealand? With contributions from leading commentators and analysts, Strategy and Security in the Asia-Pacific offers a comprehensive and authoritative introduction to the field.

This comprehensive 2002 book is an overview of security issues in the Asia-Pacific. It is also an argument for a strategy that promises to achieve greater regional stability. It argues that current approaches by policy-makers increase the likelihood of conflict. Instead, it proposes that a strategy of 'convergent security' be adopted to build a more enduring and peaceful regional security framework. A concise survey of key approaches to regional security politics, it presents a vast selection of empirical discussion, both historical and current. Assessing the outlook for the three powers most likely to vie for regional dominance - the United States, China and Japan - the book also reviews the prospects for other secondary powers, including Korea and Taiwan and analyses the role of Australia and the ASEAN nations of Southeast Asia. Unique, accessible, authoritative and broad-ranging survey designed for a wide body of analysts and students of contemporary Asian politics and strategy.

International trade continues to expand robustly in East Asia and elsewhere, but global trade negotiations have collapsed and globalization is widely criticized. In this book, the participants of the thirtieth Pacific Trade and Development Conference—including the then-Director General of the World Trade Organization, and leading government officials, academics and executives from a dozen major Pacific Rim economies—debate whether global negotiations have ended once and for all, or are suffering temporarily from ‘globalization fatigue;’ whether East Asia’s new regional partnerships will advance or undermine the global trading system; and whether the region’s trade tensions with the United States will intensify or subside. They provide new empirical evidence on how trade affects the distribution of income, the location of pollution-intensive industries, the causes of ‘outsourcing,’ the structure of the intellectual property regime, and international security. And they probe the implications of adjustment to globalization: how can countries reap the benefits of trade while controlling the risks faced by the poor and, perhaps more importantly, the politically strong? Challenges to the Global Trading System is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Asia-Pacific studies, international relations and development studies, as well as those with a more general interest in Asian studies.

This volume brings together distinguished scholars to assess the literature on international regimes and to explore the relevance of organizations such as NAFTA, GATT, CSCE, and the EU for the Asia-Pacific region. The contributors also evaluate whether lessons for promoting cooperation in the security field can be drawn from the recent successes in regional economic cooperation. Pacific Cooperation will be essential reading for policymakers, academics, and anyone with an interest in understanding the prospects for promoting stability and prosperity.