ABSTRACT
A great deal of international diplomatic effort in the early 1990s was devoted to the creation and expansion of institutions and agreements designed to regulate the activities of governments and business organisations. After the ‘end of the Cold War’, there seemed to have been a general notion that one of the major ‘distorting’ factors in world affairs had been eliminated; and that international institutions and agreements could operate on the basis of a ‘universality’ or ‘normality’ which reflected the victory of ‘Western’ values over ‘Communism’. But, even if this assumption was generally accepted, in 1993 the question was how to translate principles into regulatory practice in three key ‘areas’: i) security,
military affairs and arms control; ii) trade and finance; and iii) communications. This needs to be done first on a global scale before looking specifically at the East Asian region.
