Institutionalizing Northeast Asia

With the threat of a nuclear North Korea, constant tensions in the Taiwan Strait, and growing posturing over resource-rich territories, how can lasting peace, order, stability, and prosperity be achieved in Northeast Asia? Globalization and China's galloping economy have caused radically different economic growth rates, resulting in constant fluctuations in the balance of power among the nations of Northeast Asia.

With new emerging threats to security as well as those posed by environmental degradation and disasters, the old concept of sovereign independence no longer offers satisfactory solutions for Northeast Asia.Alternatives are needed that provide more plausible answers to the region's emerging challenges. "Institutionalizing Northeast Asia" advances the notion of regional institutionalism as a counterweight to the principle of sovereignty. The contributors argue that co-operation through regional institution-building is the best way to deal with the growing intertwinement of global issues and developments and the needs and interests at the regional and national levels. A unified regional voice could also answer the demand for supra-territorial policy responses to such issues as trade, finance, the environment, human rights, and human security.

This impressive volume brings together many leading experts to provide a collective portrait of the logic and future of Northeast Asian regional cooperation. The result is a wide-ranging exploration of the ways that the countries in this transforming part of the world are grappling with new forms of governance and order. Compared to Europe, Northeast Asia is not highly institutionalized. But as the authors in this important book show, the region is following a path toward great institutionalizing – and doing so in its own distinctive way.

G. John Ikenberry
Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University

Mario Telò, President of the Institute of European Studies at Free University of Brussels (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Belgium