New Economic and Security Co-operation in the Asia-Pacific:An Introduction

The Asia-Pacific has experienced a period of turbulent change since the mid-1990s. This has mainly centred on two ‘shocks’ to the trans-region,1 the first being the 1997/98 East Asian financial crisis and the second the 11 September 2001 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the United States. Both these shock events had significant catalytic effects upon the international relations of the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, they revealed the extent of economic and security interdependence that connect different communities and states in the trans-region, and consequently demonstrate the imperative to enhance different levels and forms of co-operative activity among them. The economic and political shock waves emanating from the near financial meltdown of Southeast Asia in 1997 and the collapse of New York’s World Trade Centre in 2001 exposed just how connected people and systems within the Asia-Pacific are, yet at the same time illustrate the ‘complex diversity’ of the trans-region. This latter aspect has made endeavours to advance co-operative relations somewhat arduous: with ‘complex diversity’ invariably comes a critical lack of common ground and inherent shared interest required for such relations to develop. Our book contends that it is this tension between the post-shock forces of ‘imperative co-operation’ and the counter-forces of ‘complex diversity’ that is shaping new regional agendas in Asia-Pacific economic and security matters at the fundamental level. It is this relationship between imperative co-operation and complex diversity that forms the first of the book’s three ‘prime dimensions’.