Power and Choice :
Asian Security Futures
Description:... Recent events in the seas off South Korea and Japan emphasise the fragility of Asia's security order and the strains the region's changing power distribution are placing on it. This report analyses the likely security futures for Asia and Australia and recommends steps countries should take to ensure growing regional competition does not lead to conflict. It outlines four regional security futures, the strategic dynamics and political choices that could give rise to each of them, and their implications for the region's bilateral and multilateral security architecture. It then examines four plausible 'shocks' - strategic events which might dramatically tip the region's future in one direction or another - and concludes with a discussion of the need for realistic confidence-building measures to help mitigate the most serious risks of disruptive change. The paper's approach is based on the assumption that power distributions determine strategic orders, which in turn shape the region's structures, processes and institutions.
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