In the turbulent decade since the ending of the Cold War in Europe, a new element of the international relations of Asia and the Pacific has been the emergence of multilateral security dialogues. Both in governmental arenas such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and numerous "track two" channels including the Council for Security Co-operation in Asia-Pacific, it has been a decade of creative interaction and new thinking. The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon identifies the key phrases and ideas that have been the foundation of these dialogues, looking at their origins in international diplomacy and tracing their specific adaptation and modification to the conditions of a trans-Pacific setting. Of interest to both theoreticians and practitioners, the Lexicon is at once a handbook for regional diplomacy and an assessment of the factors that have shaped regional discussions.

The ending of the Cold War opened a new debate across the Pacific about the meaning of security and the new regional multilateral institutions that were beginning to emerge. The first edition of the The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon, published in 2002, identified and defined the key concepts and ideas central to security discourse in the region. This second edition updates all of the entries and examines the origins and meanings of some of the new terms in common usage in a different historical setting, among them "e;terrorism"e;, "e;pre-emption"e;, "e;preventive war"e;, "e;a la carte multilateralism"e;, "e;coalition of the willing"e;, and China's "e;peaceful rise"e;. And it looks at how concepts such as "e;human security"e; and "e;non-traditional security"e; have evolved and found new adherents. Both a diplomatic handbook and theoretical exploration, the Lexicon is based on the analysis of more than 3,000 books, articles, conference reports, and speeches. It does not aim to resolve the disagreements about how words are used. Rather, it makes their evolution clearer for academics and practitioners seeking consensual knowledge.

"Focuses on the vocabulary of Asia-Pacific security, mainly as it developed in the creative decade of the 1990s. The goal is to dissect thirty-four ideas and concepts that have been at the core of debates about multilateral security co-operation. The study of multilateral institution building in the Asia-Pacific has usually focused on material determinants, especially the relationship between the balance of power and regional institutions. By contrast, the focus here is on ideas."--Introduction.

This study addresses the dearth of critical and/or post-positivist perspectives in security studies of and about the Asia-Pacific region. It demonstrates how regional communities of security specialists and intellectuals, including knowledge communities such as ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN-ISIS) and the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP) have contributed to just such a state-centric, political imaginary at the expense of alternative ideas while promoting and legitimizing their own identities as authorities on regional security.

More than a decade has passed since the end of the Cold War, but Asia still faces serious security challenges. These include the current security environment in the Korean peninsula, across the Taiwan Strait, and over Kashmir, the danger of nuclear and missile proliferation, and the concern with the rising power of China and with American dominance. Indeed, some experts see Asia as a dangerous and unstable place. Alagappa disagrees, maintaining that Asia is a far more stable, predictable, and prosperous region than it was in the postindependence period. This volume also takes account of the changed security environment in Asia since September 11, 2001. Unlike many areas-studies approaches, Alagappa’s work makes a strong case for taking regional politics and security dynamics seriously from both theoretical and empirical approaches. The first part of this volume develops an analytical framework for the study of order; the salience of the different pathways to order is examined in the second part; the third investigates the management of specific security issues; and the final part discusses the nature of security order in Asia.

This new Major Work is fully indexed and includes a comprehensive index, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is destined to be valued by scholars, students and researchers.

Especially since the Cold War, research relating to international relations is Asia has grown expoentially and, to make sense of what is now a vast and unweidly corpus of literature, this collection from the Critical Issues in Modern Politics series brings together the best and most influential work in the field.

Northeast Asia stands at a turning point in its history. The key economies of China, Japan, and South Korea are growing increasingly interdependent, and the movement toward regionalism is gaining momentum. Yet interdependency, often set in a global context, also spurs nationalism in all three countries, and elsewhere in East Asia. Northeast Asia today feels the presence of all three complex forces--national, regional, and global--connecting, competing, and colliding in myriad ways. The authors of this book assess current interactions of national and regional forces in Northeast Asia, in the context of U.S. presence in the region. These seemingly contradictory forces must be considered together; the sparks they generate have important policy implications for the United States and for the region as a whole. Constructive reformulation of these interactions is one of Northeast Asia's most pressing contemporary challenges.