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U.S. and Regional Experts Outline Ways to Build Security Cooperation in Northeast Asia

By experts and staff

Published

Northeast Asia’s security environment constitutes a formidable foreign policy challenge for the United States. Issues such as the frozen war on the Korean peninsula, China’s expanding military prowess, growing tensions between the United States and China over a planned $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, the Sino-Japan rivalry, and continued U.S. defense support to South Korea and Japan illustrate the complexities in this region.

The diplomatic framework created to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue—the Six Party Talks—has proven to be an important platform for bringing the countries of Northeast Asia together. Using this dialogue as a basis, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Senior Fellow Sheila A. Smith directed a project on Northeast Asia security architecture with Japanese, South Korean, Chinese, and U.S. experts. The team convened policymakers in each government to organize an agenda for security cooperation.

Workshops were held in Tokyo, Washington, DC, Seoul, and Beijing. The resulting papers conclude that the United States should build deeper relationships in the region to tackle shared security challenges.

The following are the papers of the Northeast Asia security architecture project:

By Sheila A. Smith, senior fellow for Japan Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

By Kim Sung-han, professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Korea University

By Shi Yinhong, director, Center on American Studies, Renmin University of China

By Ralph A. Cossa, president, Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies

By Hitoshi Tanaka,  senior fellow, Japan Center for International Exchange, and Adam P. Liff, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Politics, Princeton University

By Scott Snyder, director, Center for U.S.-Korea Policy, Asia Foundation

By Yoshihide Soeya, director, Institute of East Asian Studies, Keio University

By Suisheng Zhao, director, Center for China-U.S. Cooperation, University of Denver

By Geun Lee, associate professor of international relations, Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University

 

For the complete project, visit: www.cfr.org/project/1352/

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