F. Track-Two Diplomacy

As regional cooperation mechanisms increase in number and in membership and as new functional areas of cooperation open up, the role of non-governmental organizations in the promotion of regional cooperation for peace, security and prosperity is likely to increase. Already recognized by ASEAN, the ARF and APEC, these non-governmental organizations engaged in track-two diplomacy23 have played very crucial roles in thinking through the directions formal mechanisms should take in furthering the cause of peace, security and prosperity in the region. The contribution of the ASEAN Institutes for Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN-ISIS) in ASEAN decision-making has been recognized and encouraged by the ASEAN foreign ministers in their joint statements over the past several years. The role of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Committee (PECC) in APEC has also been invaluable. The newly organized Council for Asia Pacific Security Cooperation (CSCAP), stalled over the manner in which Chinese and Taiwanese individuals and institutions can meaningfully participate in its activities, may finally be recognized by the ARF as its principal track-two partner once Chinese participation as a full member has been effected.

The leading actors in the track-two mode who conduct policy studies that are relevant to the tasks of the formal bodies are the region's think-tanks that have built an extensive network of cooperative activities among themselves and with government officials and institutions over a period of more than a decade. Their work is likely to become even more important in the coming years as Asia enhances its intra- and interregional cooperation within the wider Asia Pacific and other regions of the world.

Prospects for the Future

The post-Cold War Asia Pacific region has been a beneficiary of the benign peace brought by the removal of superpower competition, a development that facilitated the resolution of problems like the Cambodian conflict and enabled the emergence of d�tente between key states in the region. Nevertheless, challenges to regional peace and security resurfaced or emerged with the removal of the Cold War overlay. These come from sources that had little or nothing to do with superpower competition. They are likely to preoccupy the region in the coming years.

The determination of the future prospects of peace and security in the Asia Pacific region requires a clearer answer to many questions. Among them is the key question regarding the future shape and direction that China will take in its capacity as a regional power of great import and in its relations with its neighbours in the region. Others that are crucially important include the following:

1. Will regional reconciliation, which occurred in ASEAN in almost three decades, also occur in North-East Asia, where three great nations, informed by historical rivalries and deep-seated animosities, two still divided across the Taiwan Straits, share a common geographic and strategic reality?

2. Will peace and stability, which underpinned ASEAN economic development, also prevail in North-East Asia?

3. Will China's rise be accompanied by American decline and recession as a Pacific power?

4. Will Japan respond to such an evolving strategic reality with a bid to become China's competitor for regional leadership?

5. What responses will a united Korea take to these developments? 6. What responses will a united South-East Asia adopt?

7. Would Sino-Japanese competition for regional leadership trigger a regional arms race undermining the sustainability of economic growth of the key actors in the race?

8. Will regional states be able to manage the non-conventional challenges to peace and security to assure a peaceful and stable region?

Only when the answers to these questions become clearer and more certain than they are at present can we be more positive about the prospects for peace and security in this region. In the 1990s, a cautious approach to this question appears the wise course to take.

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Notes

1. David Dewitt, "Common, Comprehensive, and Cooperative Security", The Pacific Review 7, no. 1 (1994); and Carolina G. Hernandez, "Linking Development and Security in Southeast Asia: A Concept Paper", in South East Asia: Security and Stability (Manila: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 1995), pp. 34-37.

2. US Department of Defense, Office of International Security Affairs, United States Security Strategy for the East-Asia-Pacific Region (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1995); and Jonathan Pollack, Designing a New American Security Strategy for Asia (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1995), among others.

3. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (Random House, 1988), especially chapters 7 and 8.

4. Among others, see Amitav Acharya, An Arms Race in Post-Cold War South-East Asia: Prospects for Control, Pacific Strategic Papers, No. 8 (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1994); and Bunn Nagara, "The Notion of an Arms Race in the Asia-Pacific", Contemporary Southeast Asia 17, no. 2 (September 1995): 186-206.

5. See Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal, "Rethinking East Asian Security", Survival 36, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 3-21.

6. See for example David Shambaugh, "Growing Strong: China's Challenge to Asian Security", Survival 36, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 43-59.

7. Jing-dong Yuan, for example, argues that China will be constrained in its military power by domestic and external factors, in "China's Defence Modernization: Implications for Asia-Pacific Security", Contemporary Southeast Asia 17, no. 1 (June 1995): 67-84; while Denny Roy has a different perspective in "Hegemon on the Horizon? China's Threat to East Asian Security", International Security 19, no. 1 (Summer 1994): 149-68.

8. On China's approach to the South China Sea issue, see Mark J. Valencia, China and the South China Sea Disputes, Adelphi Paper 298 (London: Oxford University Press and IISS, October 1995); on the issue of oil and the risk of regional conflict see Mamdouh G. Salameh, "China, Oil and the Risk of Regional Conflict", Survival 37, no. 4 (Winter 1995/96): 133-46.

9. See Gerald Segal, China Changes Shape: Regionalism and Foreign Policy, Adelphi Paper 287 (London: Oxford University Press and IISS, March 1994).

10. Buzan and Segal, "Rethinking East Asian Security", pp. 8-11.

11. In 1968-1969, preventive diplomacy was used by ASEAN to avert further deterioration of Philippine-Malaysian relations already marred by the Sabah dispute. See Amitav Acharya, "Preventive Diplomacy: Issues and Institutions in the Asia Pacific Region", in Bunn Nagara and Cheah Siew Ean, editors, Managing Security and Peace in the Asia-Pacific (Kuala Lumpur: ISIS Malaysia, 1996), pp. 249-50.

12. On this issue, see Carolina G. Hernandez, ASEAN Perspectives on Human Rights and Democracy: Divergencies, Commonalities, Problems and Prospects (Quezon City: Center for Integrative and Development Studies, 1995).

13. This is quite apart from crimes that cross national boundaries as a security threat. See Phil Williams, "Transnational Criminal Organisations and International Security", Survival 36, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 96-113.

14. R.N. Kennaway, "Non-conventional Threats to Security in the Asia-Pacific Region: Environment", in Nagara and Ean, editors, Managing Security and Peace in the Asia-Pacific, pp. 437-57.

15. Jorge V. Tigno, "A Changed Neighbourhood: Labour Migration As a Security Issue in the Asia-Pacific Region", in ibid., pp. 471-92. 16. Myo Thant, "The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Asia: A Non-conventional Strategic Threat to the Nation State", in ibid., pp. 493-508.

17. Zainuddin Abdul Bahari, "Non-conventional Threats to Security in the Region", in ibid., pp. 459-70.

18. Hernandez, "Conceptualizing the Linkages between Development and Security".

19. On the linkages between international migration and stability, see Carolina G. Hernandez and Jorge V. Tigno, "ASEAN Labour Migration: Implications for Regional Stability", The Pacific Review 8, no. 3 (1995): 544-57.

20. East Asia Strategic Initiative, April 1990.

21. Douglas T. Stuart and William T. Tow, A U.S. Strategy for the Asia-Pacific, Adelphi Paper 299 (London: Oxford University Press, December 1995), p. 8.

22. See for example Young-sun Song, "Concerns over New U.S.-Japan Security Arrangement", Korea Focus 4, no. 3 (May-June 1996): 5-21.

23. On this issue, see Carolina G. Hernandez, "Complex Interdependence and Track Two Diplomacy in the Asia Pacific in the Post-Cold War Era", in her Track Two Diplomacy, Philippine Foreign Policy and Regional Politics (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press and the Center for Integrative and Development Studies, 1994), pp. 1-38.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 1188