ABSTRACT
The Nakayama Proposal is an initiative of multilateral security dialogue submitted by Japan’s Former Foreign Minister Tarō Nakayama to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on 22 July 1991. It was a significant initial phase that was related to the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1994. The ARF is regarded as a considerable instrument of community security because it was the first forum where highranking representatives from the majority of states in the Asia-Pacific region gathered specifically to discuss political and security cooperation issues following the end of the Cold War in the 1990s. Various scholars such as Midford and Nishihara claimed that the Nakayama Proposal, despite ASEAN’s rejection of it, had contributed positively to the establishment process of the ARF by accelerating and formalising ASEAN’s collaborative capacities for collective actions. This paper authenticates this by analysing ASEAN’s policy characteristics in the process of establishing this regional security forum before and after the submission of the proposal. The paper concludes that the Nakayama Proposal triggered and catalysed the founding process of the ARF.
