Developing credible and long-standing international institutions is a tall order in any area, but institution formation in the security area is, without doubt, the most challenging. Security, after all, is an area premised on the anxiety among powers. Building security institutions in the Northeast Asian region is made even more difficult because of the following circumstances:

1. Only a decade ago, Japan was the dominant economic power in Northeast Asia; now few would not acknowledge that China is the rising power, and Japan, although still the largest economy in the region seems like an ailing old man. The location of the regional capital is shifting from Tokyo to Beijing. And there is the question: how can we build credible institutions when there is a significant shift in the distribution of power, raising new forms of anxieties?

2. Sino-Japanese relations have been marred by contending views in the past, seriously harming present relations. This is no longer simply an issue of governmental education and propaganda: popular right wing movements in Japan are challenging national history textbooks as distorting the past, while public protests on the history issue in China are now addressed not only to Japan but to their own government.

The history issue is now intermingled with the role of domestic public opinion in East Asian relations, where contending memories over the past merge with other areas of contestation, such as territorial issues. How, then, can we tackle this combination of historical interpretation and public outburst, that burst out to take place with disturbing regularity?

3. The tensions of the Cold War may well have relaxed in Asia, but the region still exhibits a variety of regime types, including de facto one-party rules both in Communist states (China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos) and in capitalist states (Myanmar, Singapore, Mongolia, Brunei), and regimes with formal democratic political procedures. The degree of actual openness of these regimes varies wildly.

As a region with mixed political regimes, we cannot expect peace among democracies, as seen in Europe. Democracy and human rights, moreover, may be used for political purposes: when the Chinese mention history, the Japanese will raise democracy and human rights, each trying to build a loose coalition of governments that favor their political needs.

The question, then, is: how can we form a credible basis for regional institutions that crosscuts political diversity and heterogeneity in political reqimes?

The six-party talks on the North Korean crisis are the first multilateral security dialogue in Northeast Asia, and that alone is a major achievement. Just 15 years ago, Russia and China could not agree with the US, ROK, or Japan on nuclear disarmament and the DPRK; today, five nations agree on that precondition. Whether the six-party talks will offer a prototype for security architecture is, however, a totally different question, the answer to which will very heavily depend on possible responses to three questions:

1. Is North Korea ready to make significant concessions?

North Korea appears interested in remaining in the six-party talks, but its plans so far have been limited both in scope and implementation. This pattern goes back to the days of Sunshine policy, when South Korean initiatives invited constructive reactions from the North. These raised expectations but in the end with limited effects. If the future of six-party talks depends on significant concessions from the DPRK, the past record does not bode well at this point. And if the Six-Party Talks are the starting point for multilateral security architecture, the progress toward such architecture may be too slow.

2. Can we link the six-party structure to other regional bodies? Northeast Asia is not a region with a strong record of active intergovernmental-regional engagement; that credit should go to Southeast Asia, where ASEAN became a basis for other spin-off bodies such as ARF, ASEAN + 3, or the East Asian Summit.

It is not too much to say, in fact, that ASEAN is the only effective regional institution in Asia, and that all other successful bodies were formed with ASEAN as the core element. The six-party talks, however, are geographically limited to Northeast Asia, and it is highly unlikely that the six-party structure will gain much from regional bodies that include ASEAN. At the same time, if Southeast Asia is left out of the multilateral security architecture, we cannot properly utilize the institutional resources that have been developed in the region.

3. How far can we go? The six-party framework is strictly for the purpose of managing the North Korean crisis, and although proposals have been made to start a Northeast Asian ministerial meeting, the agenda for the proposed meeting is as yet unclear. So long as the six-party framework is limited to solving the North Korean issue, few nations aside from DPRK will have to make major concessions. If we intend to develop this six-party structure into a comprehensive regional security arrangement, we immediately face a myriad of problems.

Can the issue of Taiwan’s international status be discussed in this framework? Should this body take up territorial conflicts between ROK, PRC, and Japan? Will any power aside from the DPRK be seriously interested in nuclear arms control? Can the six-party framework be so arranged as to manage a potential growth of the security predicament in the region?

So far I have noted some of the challenges that lie ahead. This does not, and should not, mean that building on multilateral security architecture is doomed: just the opposite.

For one thing, all nations, whether limited to negotiations among six actors or expanded southward, are powers that are eager to keep the status quo, and their geopolitical intentions are more defensive than aggressive, even in the case of North Korea.

This most certainly was not a given in the past: Japan after 1937 is a clear example of aggressive strategy, and China in early 1960s, or the DPRK in the 1970s were also inclined to challenging the status quo each in their own time. For powers that prefer the status quo over aggression, the possibility of diplomatic accords is considerably higher.

The role of the United States has also been accepted in a positive light, compared to the past. Compare China’s attitude to the US in early 1960s, and you see a different world. That North Korea is willing to participate in a lengthy negotiation with the United States shows how relations between the two have progressed in the past two decades. The United States, in fact, is seen in a much favorable light in East and Southeast Asia than in South Asia or the Middle East. This is a great plus, for the United States can play the role of an honest broker without inviting suspicion or anxiety, unlike in other regions in the world.

These positive elements have yet to translate into forces that resolve the thorny agenda that I have listed above.
With a new administration in Washington, however, we see an opening of new opportunities. And those new opportunities provide a circumstance, I believe, in which the chance of building a more robust Asia Pacific security architecture are perhaps higher than they have been for some time.