Designing a Mechanism for Multilateral Security Cooperation in Northeast Asia

Abstract

The current Six Party Talks on North Korean nuclear programs provide an opportunity to build new and unprecedented multilateral arrangements to enhance strategic stability and security in Northeast Asia, historically one of most volatile regions in world. This article, inspired by working with colleagues on linkage between historical reconciliation and cooperative security over past several years, tries to pull together ideas about possible component parts for such a multilateral security institution in Northeast Asia. Key words: multilateral security - East Asia, Northeast Asia, North Korea Introduction Designing a multilateral security mechanism for Northeast Asia will inevitably be a complicated process because it involves four most powerful states in world (the United States, China, Japan, and Russia), all of which have core interests in region, and two states (the Republic of Korea and Democratic People's Republic of Korea) in a nation divided by war for more than sixty years. A further complication is that relationships among six parties are asymmetrical: None of six is equal to any other in material and ideational power. Nonetheless, such a security mechanism does not require, nor should it expect, altruistic commitments from any of six governments. On contrary, it must be designed to meet national requirements of all parties. Arrangements among six must obviously be focused on building trust among them, but mechanism need not depend initially on nation-tonation trust (e.g., between United States and DPRK, North Korea). Instead, it should be designed to produce a shared trust that arrangements being put in place are in national interest of each, so that they prompt a trust in process. Whether or not one believes that DPRK will ever give up nuclear weapons that it already possesses, establishment of a multilateral security mechanism in Northeast Asia could provide an operational setting for dealing with any future crisis in region. The Six Party Talks (6PT) may never be successful in achieving a complete denuclearization of DPRK, but talks to date have demonstrated need to build institutional arrangements for key parties to meet together. I begin with a concept of cooperative security and then turn to an examination of some of literature on why and how people cooperate with each other. A Concept of Cooperative Security This article is about how states could cooperate more effectively to their mutual benefit, why they should, and how a successful security arrangement among six states in Northeast Asia could produce public good of greater strategic stability in region that would be enjoyed by all.2 Inevitably, this requires a critique of realism, dominant paradigm in field of strategic studies, and an argument in support of advantages of an alternative approach, namely cooperative security. The brief comparison presented here inevitably oversimplifies theoretical nuances of two quite different understandings of our political world, but not so as to make comparison invalid. The understanding of national security begins with assumption that anarchy predominates in world affairs, and that states, as most important actors, are confronted with a Darwinian struggle to survive. State leaders find that self-help is only reliable strategy for survival, and that a logic of zerosum games is most likely to define relations with other states. Cooperation with other states on any basis other than the enemy of my enemy is my friend is difficult for typical realist to comprehend. But this insistence that when national security is at issue, governments will inevitably think in terms of selfhelp and assume that threats will appear largely as zero-sum games, is becoming anomalous in today's world. …