American military power underpinned the security structure of the Asia Pacific region during the Cold War. Post-Cold War, its role is still vital to peace and stability in the region. The most overt manifestations of American military might are the Japan–America Security Alliance (JASA) and the Korea–America Security Alliance (KASA). These bilateral alliances, together with a modified Australia–New Zealand–United States (ANZUS) treaty relationship, point to the diversity of security interests and perspectives in the region. Even during the height of the Cold War, the region never quite presented the kind of coherence that would have facilitated the creation of a truly multilateral defense framework of the sort exemplified by NATO. In Southeast Asia, the lack of strategic coherence resulted in a patchwork of defense arrangements between local and extraregional states. Dominated by the United States, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was only nominally regional.

During the Cold War, the United States entered into region-wide alliances to “contain” communism. In the post-Cold War period, uncertainties, rather than clearly definable threats, have marked the Asia Pacific’s strategic landscape. While not disen- gaging from the region, the United States is encouraging greater burden-sharing by its friends and allies located there. In consequence, JASA and KASA are undergoing change even as regional states accept their utility and reassurance value. At the same time, region-wide multilateral confidence-building and cooperative security processes, which involve practically all the states on opposite sides of the old Cold War divide, have emerged. China — the object of Cold War containment policies — is being constructively engaged through these multilateral processes. How the existing alliances, which still have their deterrent functions, can be related to these nascent multilateral processes is the focus of this paper. Because the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is the driving force behind the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the only region-wide process seeking a balanced relationship among the external powers in the post-Cold War setting, we explore first the evolving ASEAN perspectives toward KASA and JASA. The paper will then relate the ASEAN-driven frame- work to the security concerns of Northeast Asia.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.

At the height of the Cold War, the dominant Western theories of alliance building in interstate relations argued that alliances tend to be motivated more by an external need to confront a clearly defined common adversary than by the domestic attributes of alliance partners. The newly reinvigorated U.S.-Japan alliance, however, together with the newly expanded NATO, seems to depart from the conventional pattern by emphasizing shared democratic values and by maintaining a high degree of ambiguity regarding the goals and targets of the alliance. Although these new features of American-led military alliances provide an anchor in an other- wise highly fluid situation in the post–Cold War world, many Chinese foreign- and defense- policy analysts believe that U.S. alliances with Asian countries, particularly with Japan, pose a serious, long-term challenge, if not a threat, to China’s national security, national unification, and modernization. The ambiguity of the revised U.S.-Japan security alliance means that it is at best searching for targets and at worst aiming at China.

China’s concerns about the intention, scope, and capability of the alliances are set against a backdrop of several major changes in the region: the end of the Cold War, the simultaneous rise of China and Japan, the post-revolution reforms of Asian communist regimes, and the United States as the sole superpower. China’s uneasiness about the U.S.-led alliances goes far beyond the systemic change in the post–Cold War world, however. Its roots lie in China’s inherent weakness in the games of major powers in East Asia and in relations with other major powers in the first half of the twentieth century.

This paper begins with an overview of the interactions between China and the U.S.-led alliances in East Asia during the Cold War. This is followed by an examination of the post– Cold War period and China’s policies toward the alliances. Finally, policy options are discussed.

The study will review select policy-relevant scholarly publications of the 1990s, when the U.S.-led alliances were perceived to have made significant adaptations to the post–Cold War environment and when China’s perceptions of and policies toward these alliances also changed significantly. The survey also includes some interviews with Chinese analysts.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.

This report and the conference it is based on are motivated by the sharp debate stemming from NATO's decision at Madrid to invite three new members to join its ranks. This debate is not partisan: it cleaves parties. It is profound because it has kindled the first truly geostrategic inquiry among Americans in the post-Cold War era. This inquiry has led Americans to advance from celebrating the end of the Cold War to confronting the design of Eurasia's future security system and America's role in it.

This report is the result of a workshop held in April 1998, when fifty policy experts, government officials and scholars met in Washington, DC. to discuss an issue of great import: the future of the relationship between Ukraine and NATO, This event, the Workshop on Ukraine-NATO Relations, was sponsored by the Harvard University Project on Ukrainian Security and the Stanford-Harvard Preventive Defense Project. The express goal of the workshop was to bring together representatives of Ukraine, NATO, and the United States so that they could collaborate on developing concrete recommendations for short and long-term next steps to broaden and deepen Ukraine-NATO relations.

The conveners of this workshop believed that the relationship developing [at that time] between Ukraine and NATO had the capacity to evolve into an important force for stability and security in Europe and the world, and to serve as a model for other countries in the region. While the NATO-Ukraine Charter and Ukraine's participation in the Partnership for Peace and the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia provided a strong foundation, the longer-term direction of this very important relationship continued to be largely undefined. Further, they strongly believed that the Charter on a Distinctive Partnership signed by Ukraine and NATO in the summer of 1997 was only the first step towards institutionalizing the growing Ukraine-NATO relationship. Ensuring that the Charter was meaningful depended on concrete implementation of the cooperation anticipated in that document. Thus they decided that a concerted effort needed to be made to develop a gameplan for the future.

By almost any criterion of success—be it cost-effectiveness, risk-reward ratio, multiplier
effects, or sheer longevity, the Japan America Security Alliance (JASA) stands out as one of
the most successful alliances in twentieth century history. For the United States, chief
architect of a global network of military relationships, JASA is arguably the most important
of its many bilateral alliances. In terms of historic impact, JASA is comparable to the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a multilateral alliance that restructured the European
security landscape in 1949. For nearly a half-century, JASA and NATO have functioned
as the bedrock on which the Cold War security systems of Asia and Europe have been
constructed.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.

As the debate on NATO expansion moves to the more public and open setting of U.S. Senate hearings this month, we will begin to hear the true motivations behind those for and against extending the alliance to the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. From the right, senators will declare that they favor enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a hedge against a possible Russian threat to Europe in the future. From the left, senators will argue that they oppose NATO expansion because the move eastward will help nationalist forces within Russia and thereby damage U.S.-Russian relations.

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For two years, opponents of NATO expansion have warned that inviting former Warsaw Pact countries into the alliance would bolster Russia's nationalist and Communist opposition forces. In Moscow, however, the extension of invitations to the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to join NATO came and went this month without producing any visible reaction from Russia's opposition.

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The author concludes that strategy posited on the unchanging character of the differences that have separated Russia and the West is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The trouble with a status quo strategy is that it offers no vision of the opportunities available to construct a
security system in which power is constrained not just by countervailing power but by the exercise of democratic control over national decisions. Security in Europe is not just a question of military limitations and reductions. The essence of European security and the key to achieving a stable peace lies in the process of creating an inclusive community of
democratic nations.

The renewed American debate over ballistic missile defenses (BMD) echoes loudly in NATO, in Europe, and in France. This issue will be decisive for the future of European political organization and its security and defense. The issue will also be important for the future of relations between Europe, the United States, and Russia.

Faced with the potential threat of ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads (or biological and chemical payloads) that could strike French and European territories, deterrence is sufficient and offers the greatest cost-effectiveness. In this analysis, the question of the broadening of the French and British deterrent and the political organization of a possible European anti-missile defense system will be discussed. Then, a new transatlantic strategic partnership, the robustness of which lies in counterbalancing the vulnerabilities of its members, will be described.