ABSTRACT
The emergence of peace in the 1970s does not therefore logically require that East Asia had adopted a new, successful approach to conflict termination. Exploration of the ratio of conflict termination to conflicts on the basis of the Uppsala conflict-termination data, reveals that there has not been a significant positive change in the record of East Asian conflict termination after 1979. Empirical analysis does, however, show that East Asia's approach to conflict termination changed around the time that the number of East Asian battle deaths collapsed. The two main changes in the East Asian approach to conflict termination were the near disappearance of military victories and the near disappearance of successful peace processes. During the belligerent period East Asian states often sought to humiliate their domestic challengers with a victory. The difficulty of East Asian governments to tackle their disputes head on in explicit peace negotiation is likely to be a problem for East Asian stability.
