[asia-apec 374] Alternative Security Conference

[daga]

	Will Today's Asia-Pacific End up like Europe in 1914?

This is one of the concerns that has prompted the Peace Research Institute
of Tokyo's International Christian University, ,Asia Cultural Forum on
Development (ACFOD),Focus on the Global South of Chulalongkorn University's
Social Research Institute, Forum-Asia in Bangkok and Berkeley's Nautilus
Institute for Security and Sustainable Development to sponsor a conference
on Alternative Security Systems in the Asia Pacific Region at YMCA Collins
International House in Bangkok, Thailand, March 27-30, 1997.


o In the aftermath of the November 1996 APEC Summit, the Asia-Pacific region
may look relatively placid, but it is actually a tinderbox of territorial
disputes, resource conflicts, antagonisms inherited from the Cold War, and a
variety of internal struggles with external impacts.

o With the end of the Cold War, hopes were high that the conditions of
lasting peace would be created in the region.  However, prosperity, instead
of spinning off peace, has sparked an arms race, and, despite some tentative
initiatives, a multilateral system to preserve the peace is nowhere in
sight.  Instead, what passes for a regional security 
system is a volatile informal system with three legs:  continuing US
unilateralism, balance-of-power diplomacy, and arms races.  There is,
indeed, a resemblance between the fin-de-siecle Asia-Pacific region and late
19th century Europe, which was entrapped  in what Henry Kissinger called
"the balance-of-power doomsday machine."

o NGO's and people's organizations took the lead in opposing the
nuclearization of the  Pacific during the Cold War.  In the post-Cold War
era, however, aside from the nuclear question, security issues have not had
as much prominence among NGO concerns as environment and development issues.
Indeed, the much-vaunted Southeast Asia Nuclear 
Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ) is largely a government initiative, and there is
little genuine NGO participation in the ASEAN Regional Forum.

Yet civil society throughout the world has been full of rich explorations
into new concepts of security, such as real security or comprehensive
security.  There is also an  increasing recognition by citizens' groups that
multilateral security systems are not enough, and lasting peace can only be
achieved via people-centered security systems  rather than state-centric ones.

o This conference seeks to bring the security question to the top of the
agenda of civil  society in the Asia-Pacific.  A diverse group of activists
and academic experts, citizens and selected representatives of governments
and multilateral organizations from various parts of the region will come
together for a close look at the points of tension and conflict  in the
region and discuss ways to create the new institutions of peace and security
that are so necessary if the region is to avoid the fate of Europe in 1914.

For more information, please contact:

	Alternative Security Conference Secretariat
		Focus on the Global South
          Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute
                Phyathai Road, Bangkok 10330, Thailand

	Tel. 66 2 218 7363    Fax. 66 2 255 9976   
	       Email.  alt-security at ksc9.th.com