The CSCAP Steering Committee met in Seoul in December last year. A sad note at the meeting was the passing of a stalwart of the regional security dialogue processes and of CSCAP: Gerry Segal of European CSCAP. A eulogy was given and adopted by the Steering Committee. Also saddening was the news of the death of another stalwart - Seizaburo Sato of CSCAP Japan. Both will be sorely missed but we can also remember how much we have gained from their experience, their wisdom and their friendship.

Linked with the Seoul meeting was the Second CSCAP General Meeting. It included some interesting presentations which John McFarlane, who was attending, has offered to summarise for the benefit of Committee Members at the next AUS-CSCAP Meeting. The newsletter also demonstrates the considerable activity among the working groups.

The next meeting of the CSCAP Steering Committee will be held in Kuala Lumpur in 2-3 June, prior to the next Asia-Pacific Round Table. Some of you will also be aware of a special CSCAP Meeting on Indonesia being organised by CSCAP Indonesia in March, where among other things it will also take up the issues of membership of PNG and Cambodia.

We regret that due to my absence overseas and Professor Ball's inadvertent non-availability we had to defer the first scheduled AUS-CSCAP meeting for 2000. We will arrange for an AUS-CSCAP meeting to replace it as soon as possible.

The issues in East Timor and Kosovo are beginning to recede into history, except for those still caught up in them.  But there is not much understanding, even in official Canberra quarters, of the factor which underlay both crises, and which may, rather ominously, set a pattern for many future crises, a pattern likely to be particularly awkward for Australian policy-makers.

That factor is a shift in the norms which constrain international behaviour.   There are three sorts of rules in the field of sovereign interaction:  laws, norms and protocol.  All three change from time to time, but it is the normative element in the package of rules which is changing fastest, and very unevenly, at the moment.

The word may not be much used except by lawyers and sociologists, but norms are in fact part of the structure of everyone’s life, every day.  For instance, the norm “thou shalt not kill” is certainly more vital in restraining stray impulses to homicide for most of us, than the laws against murder, which are based upon that norm.  A law not based on a norm is likely to be ineffective:  the law establishing prohibition in the US in the 1920s was ineffective (and very disastrous in its social consequences) because it represented only a moral aspiration held by a minority of the people, not a norm established among the majority.

So if a norm is not exactly a law (though some lawyers think it is) or a moral aspiration (though some moralists think it is) what is it precisely?  The most illuminating definition is “expected or required behaviour” in a particular society.  The word comes from the Latin for a carpenter’s set-square.  The set-square tells the carpenter (or the do-it-yourselfer) what a right-angle is “expected and required” to be.  It is often closer to convention or tradition or “standard operating procedure” than to law or morality.  Thus one could say, for instance “the veiling of women is the norm in some Islamic societies” or “the blood-feud is a norm in some European societies” without any implication of approval or law or moral injunction, though in many other cases of course those overtones are indeed conveyed by the word.

But analysis of why the interventions in East Timor and Kosovo occurred how and when they did also requires taking account of another factor:  regionalism.  Both were regional crises:  both evoked primarily regional responses.  In other areas of equal or even greater humanitarian disaster, like Rwanda or the Sudan or Sri Lanka or Algeria, in which no equally effective action has been taken, regional organisations are or were either non-existent or relatively underdeveloped.  Human rights are deemed universal (at least in UN theory) but the sense of obligation and strategic interest tends to be strongest vis-à-vis those who are geographically or culturally close to us.  NATO is a trans-regional organisation, but its focus is regional:  the security of  Europe.  So it was the obvious candidate to take action over Kosovo, when the United Nations was stymied by the veto. Asia-Pacific trans-regional organisations – APEC, ASEAN and ARF– have nothing like NATO’s military capacity, so if Australia had not had forces and bases nearby, it is not likely that anything much would have been done for the East Timorese.

That brings us to the reason why the current pattern of normative change has some unfortunate implications for Australia.  The pressure for change derives from and is strongest in the Western powers, particularly the US, Europe and Canada.  Australia is culturally part of that club, and neither able nor likely to opt out of its consensus.  But (unlike the others) it is also part of a region whose reaction to Western-driven normative shift is at best a wary irritation, and often a fierce resentment.

One can see this quite clearly in the reactions of our Asian neighbours to Australian activism over East Timor.  As far as Indonesia goes, that reaction has more or less demolished in three months a security and diplomatic relationship that Canberra policy-makers had been working at for more than fifty years (since about 1947, the early days of the Indonesian revolt against the Dutch).  Dr Mahathir has as usual expressed his irritation at us.  China has watered-down the human rights provisions in the UN resolution.

A good deal of the current damage can probably be repaired now the carriage of the operation in East Timor has been handed over to the UN, (late in February), especially if Canberra refrains from seeking any very conspicuous part in the leadership of the next stage.  But it would be a mistake to assume, as some of the American commentators are doing, that East Timor and Kosovo each are just “one-off” kinds of interventions, not much affecting the general conduct of world politics.

On the contrary, there is clear evidence that both were outcomes of normative shift:  a sort of earth-tremor running through the normative foundations of the society of states.  An earth-tremor which has already shaken two sovereign structures (Indonesia and Yugoslavia) and evoked quite a variety of more minor symptoms in world politics.

The oddest of those symptoms is the current spasm of demands for apologies from assorted eminences for long-ago events for which they had no responsibility:  the Pope asked to apologise for the activities of Portuguese missionaries in India five hundred years ago, the Queen asked to apologise for the Boer War.  The reason is that normative shift changes the light in which the landscape of the past is seen.  Sometimes an apology is actually forthcoming, from Tony Blair for the Irish potato famine, for instance, or Bill Clinton for slavery.  (Not from John Howard, a politician less attuned to the zeitgeist.)  All that may seem rather preposterous, but it is an indication that the public mind is surprisingly responsive to normative shift.  And in some cases, like the hauling of General Pinochet (and perhaps in time President Milosovic and even General Wiranto) into court, it may have long-term deterrent effects on future decision-makers.  Up to the time the Law Lords in Britain ruled against Pinochet, it would have been assumed that he and others like him were protected by the old norm of  “sovereign immunity”.  If I had to put the nature of the current changes into a single sentence, I would say the shift has been from the realist nationalist norms characteristic of the Cold War decades to cosmopolitan norms.

Three main areas of governmental decision-making, world-wide, are at present being affected by that shift.  The most familiar are probably the environmental norms:  green-house gases, tropical rainforests, large dams and all that.  The second group of norms affects weaponry:  weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical and biological) and more recently land-mines.  Both those groups of norms present considerably more difficulties for some Asian neighbours than they do for us.  But the real problems arise in the third group, norms affecting the treatment of minorities, self-determination, secession, human rights and sovereignty.  Those are the issues liable to precipitate military interventions.  To summarise a complex evolution, the old norms, especially the “non-intervention” norm (dating from the 17th century) favoured established sovereignties like Yugoslavia and Indonesia in such matters, whereas the new norms (mostly deriving from the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights) tend to favour dissident provinces, like Kosovo and  East Timor.  The outcomes of those two crises will strengthen that tendency, because in normative change, as in law, precedent is very powerful.  Practically every large sovereignty (especially round Asia-Pacific) has dissident provinces, and the eyes of the political activists in those provinces will feast hungrily on the precedents of East Timor and Kosovo.  Like Aceh at the moment:  West Papua coming up?

That does not mean however that any government is about to contemplate setting up an intervention force to redress for instance the wrongs of Chechens or Tibetans.  Two very old norms, dating right back to the “just war” doctrine that began with St Augustine in the 5th century, come into play when the interests of nuclear great powers are concerned:  the norms of prudence and proportionality.  A political ethic must be an ethic of consequences, as Max Weber put it.  But that does not mean diplomatic pressures are precluded.  China already feels (and resists) them on Tibet, and Russia has at least been induced to allow observers from the Organisation for Security Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) into the operations in Chechnya.  And one of its political parties is beginning to move to a critical view of the operation, though it has made the Russian Prime Minister popular.

Because of the number of issues of this kind that exist in the Asia-Pacific area (Taiwan being much the most dangerous) Canberra policy-makers are likely to find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place in quite a few future crises.  We will on the one hand be anxious to stay on good terms with whatever regional power is in the eye of the storm, and yet the government will be pressured by public opinion (as in East Timor) to be, so to speak, part of that storm.

That may seem an excessively pessimistic view, but it is based on clear evidence that the pressures in this field are increasing, and are indeed inseparable from fundamental economic and technological changes currently under way, as well as from the power-structure of the contemporary world.  Globalisation and the communications revolution (both as yet far from their peak strength and universality) are what I have in mind on the economic and technological sides.  On power-structure, unipolarity with the US as paramount power is likely, on my estimate, to last another four decades or so, that being the length of time potential “peer competitors”, in the Pentagon’s jargon (ie prospective economic equals and military rivals) will take to “catch up”.  When you consider the degree of change already apparent in the mere eight years since the beginning of this unipolar phase of diplomatic history (end of 1991), four decades more seems quite likely to universalise the normative shift.  So though there will probably be many uncomfortable moments for Canberra policy-makers along the way, we are on the side of history, co-operating with the inevitable.  What we will need are strategies for damage limitation.

(First published in The Australian Financial Review, 3 December 1999)

There is little doubt that the security situation in Southeast Asia has deteriorated significantly over the past 18 months, primarily because of the Asian economic crisis and widespread political unrest and ethnic conflict in Indonesia.  Both arose with little warning and their repercussions will be felt for several more years.

The violence and bloodshed that followed the August 1999, UN sponsored ballot in East Timor presented Australia with a major, and largely unforseen, strategic dilemma:  how to square Australia’s desire to maintain close relations with Indonesia and support for East Timor’s independence? Ultimately, it proved impossible to reconcile these two competing interests.

The East Timor crisis precipitated a marked downturn in the defence relationship with Indonesia and resulted in the abrogation of the 1995 Australia-Indonesia Security Agreement.  In accepting a leading role in the UN approved International Force for East Timor (INTERFET), Australia made its largest overseas troop deployment since the Vietnam War and faced its greatest foreign policy and defence challenge.
Political instability in Indonesia has not been confined to East Timor. There were serious outbreaks of ethnic and religious violence in Aceh, Kalimantan and Ambon in 1998 and 1999 which, on several occasions, spilled over and affected relations with neighbouring states.

At the same time a number of long standing political and territorial disputes elsewhere in Southeast Asia, particularly at sea, continued to fester.  The most serious of these, the Spratly islands, has the potential to foment armed conflict between the claimant states because of the problematic nature of the sovereignty and resource issues which lie at the heart of the dispute.

Despite these problems, the assertion that Southeast Asia has become an arc of crisis exaggerates the region’s predicament.  Southeast Asia is still relatively conflict free, if judged by the standards of its modern history. Most Southeast Asian states recorded positive economic growth in 1999, and the recovery can be expected to accelerate over the next three years.  The turmoil in Indonesia should not obscure that fact that the region’s largest and most populous state has become a vibrant democracy. The steady retreat of authoritarianism in Indonesia and other key regional states, in conjunction with military reform, augurs well for Southeast Asia’s long-term stability.

The economic crisis has also significantly slowed conventional force modernisation and put to rest fears, for the moment at least, that Southeast Asian states might embark on an arms race. Many acquisition programs have been delayed, suspended, or cancelled reflecting the weakened state of regional economies and the sharp depreciation of local currencies.

Since the mid-1990s, the percentage of GDP spent on defence has decreased in most Southeast Asian countries, although there are significant intra-regional variations. The states most seriously affected by the economic crisis, notably Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, have seen significant cuts to their defence budgets.  Other states, however, have maintained their defence spending at close to pre-crisis levels.

An uncertain future
Over the next 3-5 years, further strategic perturbations are likely and may arise with little warning. The recent rise in separatist sentiment in the province of Aceh, and to a lesser extent Sulawesi and Irian Jaya, suggests that the possibility of Indonesia fracturing along geo-political and ethnic fault lines, although still unlikely, is no longer far-fetched.

The risk of Indonesia disintegrating as a unitary state is greater than at any time since the 1950s, when Jakarta faced powerful secessionist movements in West Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi. The example of Indonesia is a reminder that political and social instability within states poses an equal, if not greater, threat to Southeast Asia’s security than conflict between states a development, moreover, that has wider resonance.  Between 1989 and 1997 only six of the 103 major conflicts recorded globally were interstate.

Conflict in Southeast Asia will continue to have multiple, interconnected causes. Myanmar and Thailand are at loggerheads over drug trafficking, illegal migration and fishing rights while the Malaysian government is worried about the destabilising effects of ‘creeping Islamisation’.  The Philippines has been unable to settle its decades long Muslim insurgency in Mindanao. Malaysia and Singapore are in dispute over water; Cambodia faces serious internal threats to its security from crime, corruption and AIDS.

Several emerging transnational issues will have long-term security implications for Southeast Asia. Population increases and environmental degradation will increase the likelihood of future conflicts over scarce natural resources, such as fish and oil. People smuggling, drug trafficking and poaching by foreign fishing vessels – so called “threats without enemies” - represent a new kind of security problem for the region. The activities and power of transnational organised crime has grown enormously since the end of the Cold War.  Crime has intruded into the strategic domain, blurring the distinction between military and law enforcement issues and changing the way security is conceived.

The likelihood of major interstate conflict remains low because of the absence of direct superpower competition and ASEAN’s success in uniting the ten states of the region under the one institutional roof. However, a once robust and assertive ASEAN has suffered a major loss of credibility and influence since the economic crisis.  Enlargement, the absence of Indonesian leadership, and divisions over the organisation’s future direction and guiding principles have diminished its coherence and reduced its ability to play a stabilising role in the region.

As their economies recover gradual improvements in the military capabilities of Southeast Asian states can be expected, particularly in maritime protection, modern stand-off weapon systems and advanced fighter aircraft. Arms spending will again begin to rise along with the temptation to introduce advanced military technologies many of which are inherently destabilising.

Doubts remain about the willingness of Southeast Asian nations to persist with much needed economic and regulatory reform.  Without the establishment of more effective and transparent regulatory regimes, a commitment to sound prudential management and reductions in systemic corruption, strong economic growth will be difficult to achieve and sustain.

Economic progress will also be heavily dependent on the ability of Southeast Asian governments to manage the substantial demographic increases that will occur over the coming decades.  High rates of population growth will add to the stresses on the environment and the region’s fragile and diminishing resource base.

These are among the many security challenges that Australia and Southeast Asia will face in the new millennium.  How they are managed and resolved will determine whether the region moves forward to a better future or returns to the strategic rivalry and internecine conflict of the past.

North Korea’s intention to launch a multi-stage missile prompted the most serious crisis on the Korean peninsula since the nuclear confrontation of 1993. If the test is conducted, the US, Japan and South Korea have threatened unspecified sanctions. If these include a freeze on funding to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation, the future of the ‘Agreed Framework’ which resolved the 1993 nuclear crisis will be at risk. In both Japan and the US an intense debate is raging on whether to continue to offer Pyongyang further inducements in the hope that its behaviour will improve, or whether the time has come to punish a regime that shows no inclination to alter its policy in light of the concerns of its neighbours.

The three powers have agreed the outlines of a ‘package deal’, prepared by former US Defence Secretary William Perry. The details of this package were released after the August round of the ‘4 Party Talks’ (involving the two Koreas, the US, and China). North Korea is being offered new and broader incentives, including full diplomatic relations and the abolition of trade sanctions in exchange for security reassurances and restraint in the development of offensive technologies. In an interim measure, North Korea announced it would suspend its missile tests, in exchange for a relaxation of trade and investment prohibitions. But the Perry package also includes a ‘plan B’ of (unspecified) sanctions and pressures if North Korea continues with its missile program. This paper argues that if a quarantine is placed on North Korea, then any chance of changing its system –the only step that would defuse the Korean issue permanently – will be lost.

Since October 1994 North Korea’s nuclear program has been constrained by the conditions of the ‘Agreed Framework’. Up to that time and in breach of its multi-lateral NPT obligations, North Korea was developing a clandestine weapons capability. This is now frozen under an agreement that has required the United States to establish a multilateral agency – KEDO – to construct two reactors of an international standard inside North Korea. The EU and other countries have donated funds towards the operating costs of KEDO; so far, Australia, in the interests of encouraging regional non-proliferation, has contributed A$11 million. Aside from their much greater safety characteristics, these reactors are regarded as less weapons applicable because they will depend upon imported fuel which can be interdicted if required.

This agreement defused the 1993 crisis but is less than ideal.   North  Korea,  so far,  has  evaded  the obligation of transparency that it owes to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatories. Indeed, it will only be required to comply with full IAEA inspections no earlier than 2003 when the reactors are completed. The deal, however, was thought to be worth the cost at the time, heading off a possible war on the peninsula and helping to create the conditions that allowed the NPT to be extended. The operations of KEDO have been dogged by a series of disputes – from nomenclature of the reactor type to difficulties in raising the US$4.6 billion required – but at present an international team, the bulk of whom are from South Korea, are in residence in the North constructing the reactors. This in itself is an important confidence building initiative. Meanwhile, activity at the indigenous North Korean nuclear facility has been halted, and nuclear fuel there is under international supervision. US suspicions that an underground construction site might be a new clandestine reactor were assuaged earlier this year as a result of an on-site inspection.

North Korea’s missile program is under no comparable restraints. North Korea acquired ‘SCUD B’ technology through collaboration with China and Iran as well as Egypt, in the early 1980s. With the aid of financing from Iran, North Korea extended the missile’s payload and range, producing a very much enhanced model powered by multiple engines – designated the No-dong – test flown in May 1993. This missile, which has an estimated range of 1,350 kms (bringing all of Japan and much of North and East China within its range) may now be deployed. North Korea possesses mobile launchers for these missiles, and may be adapting ‘GOLF’ class submarines, acquired from Russia in 1994, as an alternative launch platform.

The two missile types were then used as the basis for a multi-stage rocket – designated the Taep’o-dong – which was used, according to the North Koreans, to launch a satellite in August 1998. The second stage of the vehicle overflew Japan, splashing down about 1500 kms from the launchsite. At the time, US specialists could find no trace of the alleged satellite; later some reports claimed that a third (solid-fuelled) stage nevertheless traversed much of the Pacific before crashing into waters off Alaska. US specialists maintain that North Korea is developing a longer range ICBM version of the Taep’o-dong which could strike targets in the continental US and much of Asia by around 2003. This missile appears to be a further development of SCUD technology, though according to some sources certain of its features may be copied from the CSS-2 missile type developed by China.

North Korea’s missile program also has an export dimension. It has been claimed that North Korea has exported as many as 400 SCUD type missiles to Iran and Syria. And North Korean expertise seems to have played a part in more recent destabilising missile proliferation in West Asia.   In 1998 both Pakistan and Iran tested missiles that would seem to have been derived, at least in part, from No-Dong technology. In the past three years North Korea has participated in talks on joining the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). However, Pyongyang has claimed that it would lose a significant export market by so doing, and has sought US$500 million as compensation.

What is the connection between the nuclear and missile issues, apart from providing some substance to the claim that North Korea is a ‘rogue state’? At present North Korea's nuclear program is on hold; its missile production and exports though they labour under various export control restrictions are under no such constraint. For the time being even if North Korea has the capacity and materials to build a nuclear weapon, it does not possess the expertise to marry the two technologies.

The United States, Japan and South Korea regard these missile developments as a profound challenge to their security and to their alliances. Japan is threatening to withdraw its more than US$1 billion support for KEDO if North Korea tests further missiles. South Korean domestic opinion is undermining Kim Dae-jung's 'sunshine policy', and Seoul is considering cutting off relief aid, tourism, and reconstruction funds. And the mood in the US Congress and in some leading American think tanks is becoming hostile to what is described as the repeated rewarding by the Clinton administration of Pyongyang's 'bad behaviour'.

Japan may develop its own satellite surveillance technology to counter the North Korean threat, and already South Korea has indicated it may experiment with missiles of its own that exceed the limitations imposed by its alliance with the US. But if these countries go so far as to undermine the Agreed Framework, then the North Koreans may reasonably claim that it was the United States that failed to observe its multilateral undertakings, and that indeed all the regional powers are conspiring to repress it. Without this agreement, North Korea may resume its frozen nuclear program. As a further counter-measure, the US may continue to pursue the introduction of Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) in Northeast Asia. This would be regarded by China as destabilising, yet China’s cooperation is required given its influence in Pyongyang.

It is the intention of Washington to pressure or to induce Pyongyang to join the MTCR. But the MTCR is basically a supply-side anti-proliferation regime. It is unlike the NPT, the CWC and other regimes where restraint upon the part of the members in developing weapons technologies is required. In particular, it is a weapons regime which places no limits on the domestic activities of those who possess the weapons technology. The North Koreans are thus accurate when they point out its partiality. Nor has it been an especially successful regime, even where impartially applied. In other theatres its existence has slowed but not stopped missile proliferation.

Against all this, four points need to be kept in mind:
First, North Korea’s nuclear program cannot be compared with those of Israel, India or Pakistan. All three have benefited from United States assistance, training, supplies and prototypes. North Korean reactors are based on 1950s technology. If North Korea does possess fissile material, it is a very small amount, enough perhaps to make two or three nuclear devices as compared to two hundred or more in the case of Israel. At the moment, the biggest threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear activities relates to its capability to deal with spills and accidents.

Second, North Korea’s missile technology is thirty years old. Information sharing with other states may improve North Korea’s missiles further, but the capabilities of the SCUD type that North Korea has extended and improved have just about reached their limit. The one real innovation in the 1998 Taep'o-dong launching was the fact that the final stage was solid fuelled, but this apparently did not function. Moreover, the reliability of North Korea’s missile effort is evidently not good. Around half of the missile tests conducted from 1984 have failed; some reports have claimed that as many as eight of the SCUD missiles exported to Iran for use against Iraq exploded on launch.

Third, even if it succeeds in assembling a nuclear weapon, North Korea could never employ such a weapon for offensive purposes. So long as the US remains engaged in Korea, its actual use would result in the abandonment of any restraint on the part of Washington, and the swift demise of the North Korean state. North Korean nuclear weapons are therefore for deterrent purposes. They may also be a bargaining chip: if the indigenous program really has been frozen as is required by the Agreed Framework, then it is a chip that has already been cashed.

Fourth, North Korea does not need missiles to attack South Korea or Japan, or US installations in the region. North Korea possesses aircraft that are more effective and accurate means of delivering a larger payload. Missiles of this type are principally psychological and political weapons. Even if North Korea was to develop an ICBM, any use of it would spell the immediate end of the regime.

If North Korea is punished and quarantined, the partiality of such action would be patent. The moral would be drawn that proliferators (except US allies) must assemble and test their weapons in order to be taken seriously. And if the 'Agreed Framework' were scuttled in the process, the North Koreans could reasonably claim that it was the US that failed to honour its commitments. Further, if North Korea cannot be induced to join the MTCR, the deficiencies in that regime must be held partly to blame. Nor should any action be taken without securing China’s acquiescence. These issues are therefore of very serious regional concern. Possible action by the US and its allies may also impact upon international weapons control regimes.

To defuse this crisis, the author suggests two principles that should guide policy towards North Korea.

1. This state has as much practical claim to be a state as many others in existence. It should therefore be treated as such. The clearest consequence of treating it as a pariah is to feed the paranoia of its leadership. Recognising North Korea as a state would generate no more costs to the international community than are borne at present. In particular, the US and Japan should begin to negotiate the official recognition of Pyongyang.

2. Policy should be framed in order to encourage internal change. Here the focus should not be the present regime – which is incorrigible – but the social and economic dynamics of the country. As the result of famine and the decay of the former socialist economy, sizeable tracts of the country are being left to their own devices. The proto-market relations that are developing there should be encouraged by aid programs provided in the name of multi-lateral agencies. North Korea will depend for some time to come on international relief and food supplies. At the very least, these should be delivered in such a way as to foster local civil society and individual enterprise. An international quarantine, apart from imposing extraordinary suffering on the ordinary people, would obstruct the exercise of such leverage.

The grounds for offering the Perry package are therefore sound. But Congressional criticism of the proposed measures is a reminder that its political base will probably last only as long as the Clinton administration.

The responses
These problems complicate the security challenges facing the region in a post-Cold War world. Many commentators have observed that regional conceptions of security have always identified economic development, political stability and social welfare as important as, or even more important than military power in preventing violent conflict. We can now add environmental viability and resource security to this list as common and human security problems.

There has been a growing attention to environmental degradation at a national and regional level in security fora such as the ARF and CSCAP and in institutions such as ASEAN. Despite this, environmental scarcity continues in many cases to worsen although the reasons offered to explain this continued decline vary from the institutional to the normative. The most comprehensive system of confidence building measures, preventive diplomacy and dispute resolution mechanisms focused on more traditional security concerns can only go so far in dealing with the likely insecurity consequences of environmental scarcity. Resolving the environmental security dilemma also requires the implementation of policies that will address and overcome environmental degradation. Early prevention rather than later intervention is crucial. I identify here four components of a regional environmental security policy which will move us from confidence building to resolving environmental (in)security problems. These responses proceed from those which are most familiar from a confidence and security building perspective to those which may require ‘fundamental attitudinal change’, as Thai Deputy Foreign Minister Sukhumband pointed out in his plenary address to the 13th Asia Pacific Round Table.

First, the security problems of environmental scarcity should be firmly integrated into regional security architecture, recognising also that environmental cooperation can more generally promote cooperation, build confidence and enhance regional security. Second, an environmental security policy should, as Richard Matthew suggests, devise an early warning system and spell out what will be done in those areas deemed vital to national interests where scarcity-related tensions are evident and likely to worsen. Third, strategies for regional environmental cooperation need to be strengthened and implemented for both security and environmental reasons. This requires political will, overcoming issues of sovereignty, substantial resources, better flow of information, the adoption and transfer of environmentally sound technologies, legal structures to implement regional agreements, commonly accepted environmental standards and immediate response capacity for environmental emergencies, Finally, policies on resource and environmental management must recognise the role of civil society and take account of the human security dimensions of environmental scarcity, mindful of the fact that, as Jean-Marc Metivier observed in his plenary address, ‘governance is a security strategy’. Such policies must address the social and economic drivers of environmental decline, and facilitate an equitable sharing of rights to and responsibilities for habitat and resources, ensuring that local communities are included in environmental decisionmaking and implementation.

Conclusion
The difficulties of addressing these problems should not be understated but unless and until they are addressed, the potential for environmental scarcity to undermine regional security to the point of acute sub-national or inter-state conflict runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The first meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) Intersessional Group on Confidence Building Measures (ISG on CBMs) for the intersessional year 1999-2000 was held in Tokyo on 13-14 November 1999.  The meeting was co-chaired by Nobuaki Tanaka, Deputy Director-General of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Bilahari Kausikan, Deputy Secretary of the Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  A second ISG will be held in Singapore in April.  The ISG is the main working-level body of the ASEAN Regional Forum.  It reports to the ARF Senior Officials Meeting in May and the ARF Ministerial Meeting in July.

Preventive Diplomacy
Discussions on preventive diplomacy focused on directives from the ASEAN Regional Forum Ministerial Meeting in July 1999 to "further explore the overlap between CBMs and preventive diplomacy, focusing, inter alia, on development of the concept and principles of preventive diplomacy".  These overlaps include proposals for an enhanced role for the ARF Chair and development of an ARF register of experts, a CBM and a potential resource pool for preventive diplomacy.

A draft ASEAN paper on the concept and principles of preventive diplomacy was tabled for discussion.  It identified eight key principles for preventive diplomacy, drawn from a CSCAP working group that met in Bangkok last March. A leading issue, and one that has emerged in both the ARF and in CSCAP, is the complexity of devising preventive diplomacy mechanisms that put timeliness ahead of, or at least on a par with, the strong preference that several members have for consensus and extensive consultations.

Of particular interest has been the activity of the current Chair, Thailand, in beginning liaison on behalf of the ARF with other organisations such as the United Nations and the Organisation of American States and in preparing the first ARF first track security outlook.  There is also wide support in the ARF for the Chair to establish contact with the Organisation for Security Cooperation in Europe and for inviting observers from other organisations to ARF meetings.

CBMs
The discussion of CBMs was constructive.  There was widespread agreement that the ARF should focus more on consolidating its existing CBM agenda rather than expanding it.  For example, a CBM that proved especially worthwhile might become a regular event.   Brunei plans to host, with the United States, an ARF officials' professional development program; China proposed to host the next meeting of heads of defence colleges; and Australia reported on the progress toward a seminar on the Law Of Armed Conflict.  Although this seminar had already received support from the ARF, it was noteworthy that on this occasion several members gave it particular praise, identifying it as the sort of CBM that deserved to be repeated, especially bearing in mind the cooperative role of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Regional Security
An exchange of perceptions on regional security issues took up a significant part of the agenda.  Wide acknowledgment of the centrality of developments in the US-China relationship for regional security was followed by discussion of the current security environment, which was described as being largely stable and peaceful.  There was a general feeling that an economic recovery was restoring confidence within the region, and that this was a positive factor in fostering greater regional stability.  Economic reforms were identified as a key to a sustained recovery.

East Timor was discussed during the meeting.  Discussion was largely constructive, focusing mainly on the challenges that lay ahead.  We highlighted multinational efforts in restoring security to East Timor and in facilitating its transition, the importance of having obtained the consent of the Indonesian Government for the Interfet operation, and the speed and effectiveness with which a regional coalition had come together.  The overall tone of the discussion was encouraging and supportive.

Recent positive developments on the Korean Peninsula received some attention, particularly the DPRK's tentative moratorium on missile launching, efforts to improve relations with the United States and other countries, and attendance at UNGA by the DPRK Foreign Minister and his bilateral meetings with 18 countries, including Australia.  Several countries expressed support for gradual moves towards possible normalisation of relations if the DPRK continued to make a serious attempt to respond to the concerns of the international community.  We outlined the emerging Australia-DPRK bilateral dialogue. The South China Sea was another leading point of discussion, and an issue that many felt was tailor-made for the ARF.  Matters discussed included the current situation in the South China Sea, the proposed Code of Conduct, the possibility of escalating tensions and mechanisms to cope with this, and possible new approaches.

Discussions on a number of salient arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation themes indicated a growing awareness among members of their importance to regional security.  The Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) received much attention, with several countries, including Australia, expressing disappointment over the US Senate's refusal to ratify it.  The US delegation underlined the Administration's  support for the Treaty.  Australia highlighted the priority we attach to the  conclusion of a Verification Protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) before the 2001 review conference.

          Introduction

The theme of this meeting was the Asian economic crisis and its implications for security cooperation in the region. This was the second meeting of this Working Group that addressed this theme. The meeting was co-chaired by Ambassador Shi Chunlai (CSCAP-China) and Dr David Dickens (CSCAP-New Zealand). The first meeting hosted by CSCAP New Zealand in July 1998 concluded that while the economic crisis had inflicted deep damage on regional economies, the basic structure of regional relations would remain consistent even though the tempo of regional cooperation would slow. This meeting was characterised also by a deep sense of uncertainty. No one was prepared to forecast an end to the crisis or to permit themselves the luxury of optimism. Many participants, and especially those in the cross benches, predicted that the crisis would deepen and evolve.

So what were the main themes of this meeting? In what ways did the tone of this meeting parallel or depart from that of July 1998? This meeting was characterised by an element of weariness. All the papers given at Beijing were excellent - well argued (almost effortlessly), well researched, and considered. Each was thought through. This contrasted with the papers given in Wellington a little less than a year ago. The papers were good - but each exhibited the hesitancy and qualification of people broaching new ground. The self-assurance of each of the discussants and presenters was, at this meeting, in contrast, much more confident - and the themes and judgements familiar.

What was also different about this meeting was that it assembled together both economic specialists and ‘traditional’ security specialists. Many participants remarked that this was a new experience for them. The meeting was characterised by two discourses. The first considered the economic crisis in terms of security relations and stability within states and between states. The second discourse looked at the issue in terms of the mechanics of economic relations within and between states.

Traditional Discourse
The main themes of this approach were expressed in Rizal Sukma's perceptive analysis of the Asian economic crisis and its implications for security cooperation in the region that focussed on ASEAN. The crisis he observed raised doubts over the ability of ASEAN to maintain its role as a manager of the regional order in the Asia-Pacific through its central role in the ARF. ASEAN states he argued were now internally focused on coping with immediate economic problems, and their flow-on social and political effects. In such a context ASEAN served an important, if underrated role, of preventing the revival of mutual suspicion among member countries. As this paper made clear the economic crisis precipitated grave internal concerns for Indonesia. Attention was drawn to the tremendous challenges for a weakened state of large scale environmental disasters such as forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan and the decreased capacity of the state to deal with internal unrest.

As Ms Koong Pai Ching pointed out, the crisis, and especially the volatility of conditions in Indonesia, stimulated a sense of strategic uncertainty in the region and especially in Southeast Asia. Ironically, as ASEAN member states became increasingly inward looking and perhaps "neighbour centric" the importance of regional equilibrium, which depends on good relations between China, Japan and the United States, became more deeply appreciated.

What was especially interesting about the traditionalist approach was the absence of any suggestion that more energy should be put into the development of new multilateral mechanisms to promote regional order and cooperation. Instead, pessimism was expressed about existing mechanisms, albeit at the subregional level such as ASEAN. Several participants referred to the importance of the US presence and US bilateral security relationships with regional states and to the centrality of bilateral relations in general.

Toshiro Ozawa reminded the meeting that comprehensive security contains a military dimension as well as social, political and economic facets. All needed to be kept in balance. He said, in passages that drew widespread support, that:

the maintenance of peace is a pre-requisite to economic development; and

economic development is conducive to enhancing comprehensive security.

 Economic Approaches
 On the economic side, the country studies could perhaps be characterised by:

guarded confidence in the case of China;

a sense of dependence on China in the case of Mongolia;

a sense that the worst of the crisis had bottomed out for Malaysia, South Korea and Japan - even though the bottoming out period may not be over;

Thailand's guarded optimism;

Indonesian caution; and

a detailed review of why the Philippines had escaped the worst of the crisis through good economic management.

Strengthening Institutional Cooperation and Other Measures
While the traditional security specialists were reluctant to suggest a further institutionalisation of security relationships to shape regional order, there was a broad consensus that more should be done institutionally to respond to the economic crisis. Rizal Sukma argued, for instance, that there was a need for ASEAN to promote economic integration and to increase cooperation. Denis Hew remarked that this was the appropriate time to build and straighten existing institutions that will forge closer economic integration. He recommended the following measures:

1. A stabilisation fund to be set up within ASEAN to fend off currency speculation;
2. The reduction of over-dependence of the US dollar and the use of ASEAN currencies in intra-trade transactions;
3. The establishment of an effective mechanism to monitor short-term capital flows;
4. That ASEAN central banks cooperate to improve the regulation and supervision of the banking system in member states;
5. That poverty be alleviated through regional cooperation; and
6. That the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement be implemented in 2002 to boost intra-regional trade and investment.

The prospects for an Asian Monetary Fund were debated though no consensus was reached. Heather Smith argued that the economic crisis demonstrated the inadequacies of regional institutional infrastructures to respond to episodes of severe financial and economic distress. Smith said that one important development in the wake of the economic crisis has been an increased focus on macroeconomic and monetary issues, closer linkages between regional banks and other financial institutions, and stronger links between individual governments and regional multilateral organisations. The starting point was the Manila meeting in November 1997, convened by the Philippines, and known as the Manila Framework Group (MFG). This group had focussed its work on developing mechanisms for restoring regional surveillance to complement the global role of the IMF in this area. The role of the APEC process to strengthen policies and institutions and to adapt and reform regulatory regimes was also commented on.

Limitations
A consensus was reached that something had to be done to respond the economic crisis on a regional scale. No consensus was reached, however, on the modality of that response.

Objectives and Principles of Good Oceans Governance
This article provides highlights of the two meetings of the CSCAP Maritime Cooperation Working Group held in 1999. The first meeting was in Hanoi in August with the theme of “Objectives and Principles of Good Oceans Governance”. The second was a Joint Meeting with the CSCAP Transnational Crime Working Group on “Law and Order at Sea and Maritime Crime” in Wollongong in November.

CSCAP Vietnam and the Institute of International Relations hosted the Hanoi meeting. They did a fine job for which the Working Group was most appreciative. Both Co-Chairs of the Working Group, R.M. Sunardi and Sam Bateman, were present at the meeting which was attended by twenty-two participants from fourteen member CSCAPs with one participant from Taiwan and thirteen Vietnamese observers.

Vietnam, China, Canada and New Zealand presented papers in the opening session. China expressed concern that while the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provided opportunities for cooperation, it had also led to disputes with overlapping and conflicting claims to maritime jurisdiction. China’s preference was that these disputes be settled bilaterally. The Canadian paper focused on global issues, including demographic changes and resource pressures. It noted a clear shift of focus from the land to the sea in Asia. Maritime sovereignty was figuring much more prominently as part of statecraft and nation-building. Problems of jurisdiction were overwhelming and states seemed incapable of reaching agreement in the current political climate. Navies were reluctant to undertake a peacekeeping role and become more involved in “soft” security issues as these could divert them from their combat role.

Discussion of these opening papers suggested some urgency and frustration. The regional maritime environment was becoming more complex and therefore more problematic. Some participants expressed concern about any emphasis on bilateral arrangements when oceans issues, especially marine environmental protection, are only amenable to solution by multilateral cooperation. The meeting acknowledged that bilateral arrangements were important but, in some circumstances, such as marine pollution and fisheries conservation, multilateral action was essential.

Papers in the session on Joint Development Zones (JDZs) were presented by South Korea (on the Korea-Japan JDZ), Vietnam (on the Vietnam-Malaysia JDZ) and Indonesia (on the Australia-Indonesia JDZ). Chinese participants pointed out strongly that that the JDZ between Japan and South Korea was prejudicial to the interests of China and that it was legally suspect. The meeting acknowledged JDZs as a practical means of overcoming issues of overlapping jurisdiction and that some potential existed for joint development to go beyond a bilateral basis to trilateral/multilateral agreements and to encompass rights and obligations in addition to the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons.

The Working Group continued its consideration of areas of uncertainty with the implementation of the law of the sea navigational regimes in Asia Pacific. A CSCAP Europe paper examined prospects for a uniform interpretation of certain provisions of UNCLOS, particularly coastal state jurisdiction within archipelagic waters, coastal state enforcement powers over vessels in non-transit passage, coastal state enforcement powers in archipelagic sealanes, and foreign fishing vessels exercising the right of archipelagic sealanes or straits’ transit passage. An Indonesian paper acknowledged the growth of illegal fishing activity and addressed ambiguities with the navigational rights of fishing vessels in innocent passage and through international straits, archipelagic sealanes and archipelagic waters, as well as issues related to traditional fishing rights.

Several participants were sceptical about whether there was a need for uniform interpretation and whether the Working Group could achieve much. Environmental issues, including nuclear or ultra-hazardous cargoes, and requirements for prior notification were cited as areas where there were different interpretations of the law of the sea and where state practice was now developing. The Co-Chairs suggested that there would be merit in holding a sub-group meeting of specialists and other interested parties to explore these issues further.

Vietnam and the Philippines delivered the main papers in the session on “Law and Order at Sea”. The former examined piracy issues of the South China Sea and concluded that there were many prospects for cooperation to combat piracy but most of these were already being pursued by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). The second paper addressed maritime crimes, piracy, terrorism at sea, illegal migration and illicit drug trafficking at sea. It concluded that a range of cooperative efforts were possible such as border control agreements in particular areas and coordinated, reciprocal and/or joint enforcement. The lack of commonality and consistency of legal norms was a problem that could be pursued by the Working Group with a view to developing some common understanding and approaches in the region, including agreement on some basic definitions, and potentially a specific regional anti-piracy convention.

The Hanoi meeting had some difficult and contentious issues on its agenda. The maritime scene in Asia Pacific is more complex and more problematic with the pressures of over fishing, marine environmental degradation, uncertain jurisdiction, increased shipping traffic and new naval weapons systems, including theater missile defence (TMD). The CSCAP Maritime Cooperation Working Group provides a useful forum for the frank discussion of these issues.

Joint meeting with transnational crime working group
The Joint Meeting of the CSCAP Maritime Cooperation and Transnational Crime Working Groups was hosted by the Centre for Maritime Policy at the University of Wollongong. It was attended by approximately forty participants from eleven member CSCAPs with additional participation from Papua New Guinea, Taiwan and the UN High Commission for Human Rights. Topics at the Joint Meeting were topical ones for Australia as during the course of the meeting the Australian media carried stories about a new wave of illegal migration by sea into northern Australia and of a large haul of heroin found secreted in the bottom of a container in Sydney. The Australian Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator Amanda Vanstone, mentioned these issues in her address to the meeting dinner.

Australia, the US and Taiwan provided papers in the session on “Illegal Fishing”. A number of fundamental issues emerged from these papers and the subsequent discussion. The first was the nature of illegal fishing. What was considered “illegal” by one coastal state could well be considered legitimate commercial practice by another. The focus of consideration had been on fish stocks but there was also a requirement to consider the growing population of peoples who had traditionally depended on fish for their protein but who now had reduced access to fish. A second issue was the definition of what constituted traditional fishing practice. In the contemporary world, it was unrealistic to expect traditional fishers not to make use of modern technology that was available at reasonable cost. However, destructive fishing practices such as the use of explosives and cyanide must be avoided, as well as growth in the trade of exotic fish. The third issue was enforcement, including the scope for common boarding, inspection and arrest procedures at a regional level.

Participants from the Philippines and the US presented papers on piracy. The Philippines paper noted that many instances of piracy go unreported in the Philippines. It expressed concern about so-called state sponsored piracy and the possible involvement of insurgency movements. The paper identified possible ambiguities in the UNCLOS piracy regime within Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). There was a possible task here for CSCAP in trying to draft cooperative enforcement procedures and clarifying the ambiguities that existed, as well as in developing agreed and relevant definitions. The US paper considered the different types of piratical acts that were occurring in the region and referred to the unreliability of some statistics.

Other topics at the Joint Meeting included “Container Theft and Fraud” and “Marine Pollution”. Containers were vulnerable to being used for smuggling, particularly refrigerated containers that had thick insulation and were rarely searched by Customs officers for fear of damaging the frozen contents. Searching containers on a random basis was an extremely difficult task and it was necessary to rely on profiling ports, shippers, cargo receivers, freight forwarders, etc for evidence of container crime. The problem was particularly acute in Australia where there was a history of crime on the waterfront and high use of refrigerated containers.

Potential cooperative activities to combat marine pollution included the development of common operating and reporting procedures, training for enforcement professionals, increased awareness of legal process and obligations, development of enforcement guidelines and collaborative research to identify high risk areas.

The last sessions at the Joint Meeting considered the general problem of maintaining law and order at sea. An Australian paper reviewed the nature of jurisdiction exercised by a coastal state in its different maritime zones and the types of illegal acts that could be conducted by a ship at sea. A Japanese paper highlighted the concerns in Japan about the incidence of maritime crime in the region, particularly piracy, and that enforcement agencies were ill equipped to deal with crime at sea. The Japanese experience was that ships were extensively used for criminal activities, especially illegal trafficking in drugs and firearms and human smuggling. Ships could be harder to detect than aircraft. Japan experienced illegal migration by sea on an almost daily basis. A New Zealand paper provided a comprehensive overview of state jurisdiction over crimes committed at sea and identified a number of areas of uncertainty including aspects of hot pursuit, the use of force, and constructive presence. It concluded with useful recommendations for possible action including the possible redefinition of some concepts, the clarification of enforcement jurisdiction in areas of conflicting or overlapping maritime claims, the development of confidence building measures, and a regular audit of the application of penal laws to maritime zones.

Papers on “Naval Support for Law Enforcement” by the US and Thailand reviewed domestic arrangements for law enforcement. The US Coast Guard is a law enforcement model that is very efficient at recovering costs from other agencies. It was working much more closely with the US Navy than in the past but would always be a separate organisation. It was a vital part of the ability of the US to participate in maritime cooperative activities in the region.

A Singaporean  participant considered the potential for cooperation with training and exercises in maritime enforcement. This could lead to a common understanding of legal principles and procedures. The paper noted the reference to the training of enforcement professionals in the 1988 Vienna Convention on Drug Trafficking but generally training was not considered in other conventions. The ARF Maritime Specialist Officials Meeting (MSOM) in Honolulu in November 1998 had raised the possibility of cooperative law enforcement training and contact on this issue would be useful between the ARF and CSCAP.

An overview paper from CSCAP China noted the new uncertainties and conflict points at sea in the region and the contribution of the Maritime Cooperation Working Group in producing codes of conduct through the Guidelines for Regional Maritime Cooperation. It reviewed the process of security in the region and the various elements of maritime security (i.e. environmental security, civilian security as in SAR, marine safety, resource security, and nuclear security as in the management of nuclear waste). There was a need to prioritise the scope and areas of cooperation and here, marine safety, law and order at sea and environmental protection appeared important. They also involved starting “at a lower level” and therefore more progress was likely.

In the final session of the Joint Meeting, CSCAP Australia tabled an incomplete draft of a possible CSCAP Memorandum on Cooperation for Law and Order at Sea. This provided a basis for consideration of what might be included in the memorandum, including a straightforward and succinct review of the nature of maritime crime, the enforcement powers of coastal states and some proposals where regional cooperation might be useful. The importance of such a document was highlighted by the complexity of jurisdictional issues arising from numerous overlapping and conflicting claims to offshore islands and reefs, EEZs and continental shelves, as well as uncertainties in the various legal regimes (e.g. piracy).

The Joint Meeting was a useful one that clarified numerous issues associated with the maintenance of law and order at sea. The papers and discussion at the meeting will provide a basis for the proposed CSCAP Memorandum on Law and Order at Sea, which will be developed during 2000.

A Joint Meeting of the CSCAP Working Groups on Transnational Crime and Maritime Cooperation was held at the Boat Harbour Motel and the University of Wollongong, 6-9 November 1999. This was the 6th Meeting of the Transnational Crime Working Group and the 7th Meeting of the Working Group on Maritime Cooperation. The principal themes of the Meeting were:

Keynote Address
The Keynote Address was given by the Australian Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator the Hon. Amanda Vanstone.  Senator Vanstone expressed strong support for CSCAP's contribution to regional confidence building and providing creative suggestions to resolve regional problems.  The Minister noted that (with the exception of Switzerland) all the countries attending the meeting were maritime nations which depend on law and order at sea for their prosperity. She also welcomed the selection of trafficking in humans (particularly in women and children) as being a very relevant theme for regional security and stability.  Finally, the Minister commended the ongoing work of the United Nations Crime Commission in Vienna for its work in developing the new draft Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime.

The Group convened to consider what recent progress has been made by states in the North Pacific on developing confidence-building and other multilateral approaches for regional stability and to review how recent events may facilitate or undermine this process.  Deliberations focused in particular on major power relations in the Northeast Asian sub-region; the Korean Peninsula; Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) proliferation trends and counter-proliferation measures; and economic cooperation/regional governance. Problems of domestic and small state security were also reviewed in order to fill what many delegates felt were ‘conceptual gaps’ in the discussion agenda.

Official participants from 13 countries attended this Meeting, including ‘extra-regional’ delegates from New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.  The Working Group sessions therefore assumed a conspicuous pan-regional identity, relative to the nearly exclusive Northeast Asian composition and content that shaped discussions at the last Workshop that convened in Beijing during November 1998. The North Korean government did not send a formal participant to this Meeting, although an “Editorial Advisor to the People’s Korea” who resides in Japan did attend and participate.

The first session concentrated on major power relations in the sub-region and focused specifically on the comparative advantages of bilateralism and multilateralism for advancing Track I and Track II security agendas.  The Working Group’s Co-Chairs noted that ‘concerted bilateralism’– the structuring of a formal bilateral summit process in which all four major regional powers (the U.S., Russia, China and Japan) interact systematically with each other  – was intensifying. If allowed to expand, this process might contribute to regional stability even in the absence of a fully developed multilateral security framework.

The Australian delegate’s paper on major power relations argued that unless the U.S. was able to modify its growing differences with China confidence-building objectives in Northeast Asia would be seriously impeded. Washington also needed to reconstitute its bilateral security arrangements throughout the Asia-Pacific in ways that make them perceived less as instruments of power balancing and more as interim measures toward achieving comprehensive security arrangements.  The Mongolian delegate submitted a report that was decidedly more upbeat.  Focusing on the end of confrontation between Russia and China, the paper asserted that conditions were now more favourable for cultivating multilateral relations as a means of preventing renewed Sino-Russian strategic competition. All three presentations (the Co-Chairs’ paper, the Australian report and the Mongolian assessment) implied that concerted bilateralism could, if not carefully managed, revert into a rough form of concert diplomacy, with power-balancing supplanting trust-building as the predominant characteristic underlying bilateral strategic collaboration.

Discussion of the papers was extensive and somewhat critical.  The New Zealand delegate, for example, pointed to various ‘gaps’ in all three presentations.  These included: (1) a misplaced emphasis on major power multilateral diplomacy because the world’s smaller countries would resist ceding leadership of this process to the larger powers; (2) a failure to acknowledge the European legacy of multilateralism that could be applicable to Northeast Asia’s current situation; (3) not considering individual ‘human’ and economic security; and (4) infusing more analysis of domestic politics as a factor in major power relations. A Russian participant argued that power balancing would prevail over multilateralism for at least the short-term. The Chinese delegation asserted that economic development remained the major rationale for multilateral cooperation in the sub-region.

The Korean Peninsula was considered in Session Two. A South Korean paper focused on the Perry Report that was submitted to the U.S. Congress in mid-September, arguing that progress in peace negotiations was impeded by the somewhat contradictory policy priorities of the three key players: the United States and the two Koreas.  U.S. policy fits the Korean situation into a larger global strategic framework – i.e. advancing nuclear non-proliferation but lacks a cohesive sub-regional component. The North Korean regime is mainly preoccupied with its own survival while South Korea is primarily concerned with eventually unifying the Peninsula by peaceful means while maintaining its alliance with the U.S. during the interim.  The primary question is whether the three parties can reconcile these diverse objectives and work together toward a mutually advantageous outcome. A second American participant also presented a paper focusing on North Korean negotiation tactics.  He contended that there is a reciprocal tradeoff between regime survival (North Korea’s major objective) and WMD reduction (the primary U.S. objective).  The Perry Report, however, only tacitly acknowledges this.  Its future relevance will depend upon the United States’ continued willingness to stay engaged in negotiations with North Korea on a bipartisan basis.

Various participants questioned some of the perspectives raised, in particular, by the South Korean presentation.  A Japanese participant noted, for example, that there cannot be a permanent Korean peace if an ‘asymmetry of concerns’ still exists within various factions of North Korea’s leadership.  An American participant was concerned that North Korea’s willingness and ability to engage in trade may be overestimated relative to Pyongyang continuing to rely upon brinkmanship tactics to survive. A Russian participant, conversely, insisted outside powers should accept the legitimacy of the current DPRK regime and that it would be more dangerous to isolate the DPRK ‘in retaliation’ of a perceived violation in their missile and weapons production constraint agreements. The North Korean-designated participant indicated that North Korea’s major interest is continuing to talk to the Americans and acknowledged past substantial American humanitarian assistance to North Korea.  The Chinese participant insisted that the current cease-fire arrangements on the Peninsula needed to be replaced by a new peace treaty to which all concerned parties can adhere.

This session was perhaps the best among the four convened. The absence of a genuine North Korean participant may have been less than ideal in terms of guaranteeing full participation of all concerned parties.  But it also may have allowed the Chinese and Japanese participants to speak with greater candour.  The timing of the Perry Report’s release, moreover, provided an important catalyst for establishing the discussion’s overall analytical framework. The third session considered problems of WMD proliferation.  The Canadian delegate presented a comprehensive, data-rich paper setting out the basic policy challenges in a Northeast Asian context.  It was generally pessimistic, however, arguing that the momentum for achieving significant results in Northeast Asian nonproliferation politics was deteriorating.  The U.S. decision to undertake theater missile defence (TMD) research was characterised as potentially destabilising, as were reported North Korean missile transfers.  Nonproliferation measures work best, the paper concluded, when negotiated as part of an integrated package dealing with specific underlying sources of the problem. Sanctions, counter-proliferation measures and other punitive approaches seem to be less successful.

A second short paper on the proliferation issue was prepared by a CSCAP Japan representative.  The major Japanese concern related to the implications of North Korea’s launching of a Taepodong missile over Japan in August 1998 for the credibility of the U.S. extended deterrence guarantee to Japan.  The Japanese delegate argued that his government had concluded it must have a better means to defend itself than relying exclusively upon the traditional American extended deterrent.  TMD allows Japan to do this by introducing a ‘shield without the sword’; deploying defensive missile systems in lieu of developing its own offensive strategic capabilities. It was hoped that the mere prospect of Japan pursuing this option would prompt North Korea and other regional nuclear powers to negotiate a genuine missile disarmament regime.

Most of the subsequent discussion in this session focused on the Japanese presentation.  The Chinese delegate was keen to ‘clarify’ China’s concern over the Japanese position on TMD.  From China’s perspective, Japan already has a lethal ‘sword’ – the American nuclear umbrella.  China would thus intensify its efforts to acquire the high technology needed to defeat any TMD system deployed in the region.  Apart from the TMD issue, however, Sino-Japanese relations were characterised by the Chinese participants as positive.  This would remain the case as long as Japan does not ‘remilitarise’ and remains neutral on the Taiwan issue.

The fourth session emphasised economic cooperation and ‘regional governance’.  Two comprehensive and innovative papers were tabled by Russian and Japanese participants, respectively.  The Russian paper argued that existing regional institutions were sufficiently established and competent to facilitate greater economic interdependence in Northeast Asia.  It recommended that a ‘modular multilateralism’ approach be adopted to secure collective or shared interests that cannot be achieved as well through unilateral or bilateral efforts.  Energy, transportation and the environment were sectors nominated where this approach could be applied effectively. The Japanese paper advocated greater development and use of economic regimes for integrating Northeast Asian countries’ interests more effectively.  Strengthening concerted bilateralism among the major powers would be a particularly useful first step in moving toward sub-regional regime-building.  However, the paper argued, this approach needs to be supplemented by ‘nesting’ sub-regional arrangements into larger trans-regional arrangements (such as the WTO, APEC and IMF) which would provide the ‘common norms and rules’ around which sub-regionalism is forged.

In general, the Meeting raised and considered some interesting concepts and generated some lively interchanges.  This observer was struck, however, by a tendency for some participants to treat this Track II dialogue as a ‘quasi-Track I’ function.  This was the case despite the obvious hard work and preparation undertaken by the Co-Chairs and by the JIIA to make it succeed.  They were too prone to express what they believed their country’s national position on issues might be rather than engage in more exploratory dialogue.  Accordingly, the deliberations tended, at times, to be overly formal and, in some instances, perhaps less conducive to maximising the opportunity to advance creative, albeit controversial, ideas for advancing regional peace and stability.

In spite of the hard work undertaken by the Co-Chairs and by the JIIA to prepare for the meeting a disappointment was the very small number of official observers attending the proceedings. The Canadian Embassy dispatched personnel to nearly all of the Workshop’s sessions and graciously hosted a dinner for its participants. However, most other diplomatic posts in Japan (including Australia’s) were not represented. Given the interest being shown in developing links among North Pacific states, it would be hoped that more diplomatic monitoring would be seen as useful in the future.