ABSTRACT
It is no exaggeration to say that East Asia is nowadays the most vibrant region in the world. This does not mean, however, that it is an established market in safe hands. Its diverse conditions ironically make it more vivacious and unstable simultaneously. It is also the case that strategic circumstances in East Asia are significantly influenced by changes in United States foreign policy, mainly due to the residual effects of the Cold War in the region. US foreign policy has perhaps been rather more impulsive since President George W. Bush took office for his first term in 2001. The George W. Bush administration recognizes, for example, China as a ‘strategic competitor’, changing from the ‘constructive engagement’ stance that the Clinton administration took from its inauguration in 1993. Moreover, the Bush administration’s attitudes towards North Korea are even more hawkish and uncompromising than the Clinton administration. Most state actors, if not all, in the region are in agreement that the multilateral non-proliferation export control regimes related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD), such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), Australia Group (AG) and the Wassenaar Arrangement (WA), ban the transfer of sensitive dual-use goods and technologies to North Korea. Particularly after September 11 2001, the United States decided to strengthen the postures of export controls, and other countries, more or less, also agreed to do so in some way. The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and the Container Security Initiative (CSI) are cases in point. It will be herein examined whether these initiatives contribute to the bringing about of a de facto regional regime of export controls in East Asia. Japan, one of the major actors in the region, has actively taken part in creating a market-led trading system in this region in the past several decades. Now, questions of whether and how Japan would manage a regional institution-oriented export control regime should also be scrutinized.
