ABSTRACT
Periodic meetings in East Asia of the groupings, either regional, sub-regional or trans-regional, have become a regular feature. They present an alphabet soup of acronyms — indeed a new vocabulary of names of the institutions in the Asia–Pacific region. Multilateralism is being increasingly tried as a norm in dealing with issues of peace and security as also economic cooperation and development. As compared to other regions of the world, East Asia has been relatively late in adopting this form of diplomatic practice. Besides inter-governmental interaction, discourse at track II level has also seen a significant increase. At the same time, however, there is a growing sense of disappointment at poor results or inadequacy of action at such multilateral gatherings. Questions therefore keep coming up. Have these institutions played the role for which they had been established? What is the need for such groupings when inter-governmental mechanisms such as the United Nations (UN) and its agencies have specifically been entrusted with the tasks of handling issues of peace and security, or development? It seems that through such groupings, governments and non-official organisations alike in East Asia are spending a great deal of resources and time in either duplicating the efforts of international organisations or assuming to substitute them. This has created a situation in which there is no lack of institutions for dealing with various issues; in fact, there is a plethora of them. But unlike the UN which has a universally accepted ruled-based structure, they do not have a similar system of accountability.
