Introduction

The international security environment in the Asia-Pacific region has many intractable problems but few tested building blocks. While confrontational alliances are being transformed into some sort of collective security system in Europe (Snyder 1996), the shadow of the Cold War still lingers in the Asia-Pacific region. The North Korea nuclear crisis in 1994, the Mischief Reef incident in 1995, and the missile firings in the Taiwan Strait in 1996 remind us that the impulse for territorial conquest is potentially strong in this part of the world. No nation in the Asia-Pacific is immune from territorial disputes with its neighbors, and as Friedberg (1996) contends, for some powers, perceived benefits from military actions still outweigh costs. Culturally diverse, politically heterogeneous, and uneven in economic development, this region is neither endowed with benign conditions nor prepared for regional integration or collective efforts to maintain security.