Toward a New Security Order

It has almost become a cliché to say that international relations among East Asian countries can be characterized as a balance-of-power system similar to nineteenth-century Europe (Friedberg 1993/1994, 5–33; Kissinger 2001, 25–26). East Asia has had no effective institutional mechanism to provide nation-states with norms, rules, or standards that regulate state behavior and stabilize international relations. In contrast, countries in Europe today enjoy stable international relations with the help of useful international institutions such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the European Union (EU), and the Organization for Security and Co-opera-tion in Europe (OSCE). In the East Asian system of balance of power, states frequently face a so-called security dilemma. The lack of institutions makes a state suspi-cious about the intentions of other states. A state that acts to strengthen its defensive posture tends to be regarded as aggressive by other states, which in turn leads to an escalation in arms competition. Similarly, without an effective institutional mechanism, information flows are much less perfect, and the likelihood of one state overreacting to another increases the pos-sibility of conflict. In East Asia, bilateral alliances balanced by the United States fill the vacuum left by the lack of institutional mechanisms, and these alliances work as the only tool to assure security among nations. The level of danger associated with the security dilemma in East Asia has varied, reflecting changes in the international political situation in the past few decades. In the cold war, the existence of the common enemy, the This chapter reflects the author’s personal opinion and has nothing to do with the official position of the South Korean government