ABSTRACT
Security analysts typically assess the dynamics of the Northeast Asian region primarily in military and hard security terms. This book begins from a different premise. It is a shared consensus among the contributors to this volume that relations among the states of Northeast Asia are far more comprehensible when the interactions between economics and security are considered simultaneously. Beyond the simple empirical light that these chapters shed on regional relationships however, they also utilize the experiences of Northeast Asia to shed light on a central puzzle that has ensnared political scientists and policymakers since at least the time of Immanuel Kant and Adam Smith: how do economic and security relations interact? Northeast Asia, we believe, provides a tantalizing laboratory within which to examine the relationships between economics and security primarily because of the complex but sustained interactions between the two within the region. More explicitly stated, this book begins with two related goals: first, to examine the linkages between economics and security in an effort to understand more fully the complex relations among the major states of Northeast Asia; and second, to utilize an empirical examination of those relationships to shed more light on the often studied linkages between economics and security at a general level.
