Overview Report, 2002

This overview report looks at the trends in Track 1 meetings (governmental), Track 2 meetings (nongovernmental, sometimes including government officials in their private capacities), and Track 3 meetings (academic and strictly nongovernmental), as well as dialogue and research activities pertaining to Asia Pacific security and community building for the period of 2002. For a full explanation of the scope and process please refer to the notes.

Overview Report | Track 1 Meetings | Track 2 Meetings
Track 3 Meetings | Reserve | Research Monitor

Overview

The 2002 Dialogue and Research Monitor was the final issue organized by Paul Evans and his staff at the University of British Columbia, Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies. The results of previous issues are available in Paul M. Evans, ed., Studying Asia Pacific Security: The Future of Research, Training and Dialogue Activities (Toronto: Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, 1994), hard copy versions between 1995 and 1998, and, after 1998, in electronic form on the JCIE website.

Trends in 2002

The most obvious observation is that the volume of meetings at the governmental level is fairly consistent with the past three years and that the volume of track two and track three activities continues to expand. There have been significant new additions like the Shangri-la Dialogue process but the framework for these meetings is fairly well developed, involving regularized institutions like ASEAN, the ARF, ASEM, CSCAP (and now PECC and APEC) and ASEAN ISIS and ongoing series organized by numerous institutes around the region. There appear to be very few institutions, series, or networks that have ceased or dissolved in the past five years. The general pattern is thus of more rather than less activity and a gradual thickening of multilateral connections.

While a large number of meetings have an Asia Pacific axis, much of the new activity is taking on new geographical configurations. This includes a substantial increase of meetings within Asia on an East Asian basis, connecting Northeast Asia to Central Asia, connecting East Asia to South Asia, and connecting Asia to Europe. In 1993 almost all multilateral meetings (excluding intra-ASEAN) had American participation; by 2002 there were dozens of multilateral events that did not.

There continues to be a steady number of meetings focusing on military security issues (eg. weapons systems, military doctrine) and specific inter-state conflicts (eg. Korean Peninsula, South China Sea, Taiwan Strait) within Asia Pacific and beyond. What is striking is the substantial increase in meetings on intra-state problems (eg. Aceh and East Timor), trans-national issues related to migration, environment, and human security, human security defined both as broad conceptions of human well being and narrower ones of protection of individuals in situations of violent conflict. It is equally striking that not only are conventional security channels tending to a broader definition of security but that groups and processes not previously interested in security -- among them APEC and PECC at one end of the spectrum and NGO coalitions at the other -- are turning to hard and soft security issues with increasing regularity.

September 11th and the ensuing efforts at counter-terrorism have had a major impact on the agenda and focus of multilateral discussions. This seems to have two strands. The first centers on the immediate issues of the sources and causes of terrorism, methods for expanding cooperation in intelligence exchange, and linkages to transnational economic issues such as strategies for combating terrorism through fiscal measures to stop money laundering. The second strand focuses on implications of terrorism and the related issue of weapons of mass destruction. Subjects include the impact on great power relations, alliances, management of specific conflicts (especially the Korean peninsula and cross-Strait relations), and, from a different perspective, implications of the strategies of combating terrorism for civil rights and democratization.

The focus on terrorism and trans-national crime is not completely new. It had frequently been a part of security discussions well before September 11th. What has changed is that there is not only more of it but that it has blurred the distinction between hard and soft security issues. It has also brought security issues on to the agendas of a much broader universe of experts and institutions. Terrorism in particular has a new saliency that cuts across the mandates and concerns of organizations and networks that were previously never, or at least rarely, connected. Religion, religious extremism, and their social context, for example, were usually at the periphery of most discussions of security and economics in Asia Pacific setting before September 11th. They now are regular topics of discussion and cut across the previous boundaries of different multilateral processes.

Despite the significant increases in "non-traditional security" and "human security" approaches (and there is an increasingly clear understanding of the overlap and differences between the two concepts) at all three levels, traditional or hard security issues and the state as principal actor still dominate at the track one and track two levels.

Observations

In addition to these broad trends, several specific observations on agenda, participants and themes warrant mention.

On military security

• fewer agenda items on Ballistic Missile Defence (TMD and NMD)
• increased discussion of non-proliferation and WMD
• creation of a significant new process, the Shangri-la Dialogue, explicitly focused on defence ministers, their deputies and associated policy experts (see Multilateral-Nongovernmental/Track II Meetings entry 46)

On great power interactions

• frequent attention to a rising China as some combination of threat and opportunity; frequent attention to the US; diminished discussion of Japan; little focus on Russia save in the context of energy cooperation

Asian-Only Processes

• increasing in number, size and level of institutionalization
• key organizations include the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); the ASEAN Plus Three process including the East Asia Vision Group and the East Asia Study Group
• mix of topics including conventional national security and non-traditional and human security

Asia-Europe Activities

• after a decrease in number in the late 1990s, there was an increased level of meetings at both the track one and track two levels with an emphasis on European roles in Asian security and the theme of democratization

Conflict-Specific Dialogues

• increased number of meetings, t1 and t2, on Korean peninsula issues; TCOG appears to be meeting more frequently
• significantly increased number of meetings on intra-state conflicts, mainly focusing on Indonesia (Aceh, East Timor, Irian Jaya); also Myanmar
• increased interest in trans-national and regional implications of intra-state conflict related to piracy, trans-national criminal activity, migration, trafficking in drugs and persons
• while ASEAN and China were able to announce a new Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, the level of t2 activity focusing on SCS issues appears to have declined

Cooperative Security

• the topic of Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) has virtually fallen off the t2 map, replaced by discussions of a range of traditional and human security issues and the preventive diplomacy agenda; CBM's do live on, however, in ARF-organized meetings

Non-Traditional and Human Security

• in quantitative terms both as the title of meetings and an agenda item, the topics of non-traditional and human security have increased noticeably, now a topic in almost half of the events. This trend is less evident in Northeast Asia than Southeast Asia, Central Asia, trans-Pacific and Asia-Europe
• the most common topics are terrorism, migration, trafficking in drugs and people, IT, energy supplies and energy security (more popular in NEA and Central Asia than SEA), and environment (though seemingly at a lower level than in past). Communicable diseases (eg. HIV/AIDS) have rarely been discussed in security-related meetings
• organizers of events appears draw a distinction between NTS and comprehensive security on the one hand and human security on the other, though there is still no universally agreed definition of either set of issues
• from a human security perspective, small arms and light weapons, landmines, and protection of women and children and refugees in conflict situations received some attention. Discussion of sovereignty, humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect is beginning in track two and track three circles but is rarely on the track one agenda
• globalization and its connections to security entered as a frequent topic in the wake of the economic crisis in 1997 and still draws attention, now largely in the context of non-state actors and terrorism
• IT and cyber security has attracted a great deal more attention. More organizations are posting information about meetings and projects on the web. Agenda items suggest that these topics are moving beyond connectivity and digital divide agenda to consider also IT as a threat to states, corporations and civil societies

On Track Three

• the number of meetings that focuses on civil society actors and NGOs are increasing slowly, though are still only a small part of the overall picture. NGOs often describe themselves as civil society, though there are a few instances where other groups including religious organizations and private businesses participate in discussions
• frequent agenda items include root causes of terrorism, human rights, governance, transparency, corruption, access to IT, and non-traditional and human security issues. Rarely are traditional matters of national security explicitly addressed
• the word "forum" takes on a different meaning, frequently referring to a network or affiliation (eg. NGO Forum on Indonesian Development in Indonesia) rather than an actual meeting or gathering
• Chinese and Vietnamese NGOs (sometimes referred to as GONGO's (government led or sponsored NGO's) are beginning to participate in these events
• exiled groups (eg. from Tibet, China or Burma) are part of some of the t3 meetings, especially those organized by European institutions
• while some t2 and t3 activity in Southeast Asia coinciding with formal governmental meetings like ASEAN summits, NGOs rarely organize events to parallel official meetings in Northeast Asia or Central Asia

Sponsorship, Organization and Participation

• the principal initiators of meetings continue to be institutions based in the United States, Japan and Southeast Asia
• the ASEAN ISIS group continues to organize a large number of t2 meetings each year and is pioneering t2-t3 connections through meetings like the ASEAN People's Assembly
• Chinese, South Korean and European institutions have been more active than in past; Canadian and Australian somewhat less so
• two countries that were unusually active in organizing meetings in 2002 are Thailand and Kazakhstan
• organizers tend to be reluctant to divulge funding sources, but organizations that are frequently noted include the Japanese government and foundations (especially Sasakawa), American foundations (especially Ford), the US Department of Defense, the Canadian government (especially CIDA), the Soros Foundation, and the EU plus foundations in individual Euorpean countries (especially the German Stiftungs)