Theory and Practice of Security Management for a Highly Dynamic Environment: Challenge and Response in the Northeast Asian System

The theme of this paper is that -- in regional security and security management -- the Northeast Asian system is at a major turning point. Three realist and three liberalist sce-narios are possible. At least initially, the most desirable is the expanded discussion and negotiation forum within a liberalist version of multipolarity. What seems all too plau-sible, and most vital to avoid, is semi-multipolarity on the basis of additional nuclear proliferation. If the emergence of a realist scenario is to be avoided in favor of one of the lib-eralist scenarios, creative leadership will be needed. Some-one will have to promote Gorbachev-like arguments about the necessity of thinking in terms of common security, the virtues of peaceful interaction, and the total unacceptability of major war. This is an appropriate role for the Korean government and Korean analysts. The Roh government as-pired to it but fell far short of the necessary political craft. Such an objective, suitably pursued, would carry the long history of Korean discussions about possible multilateral security arrangements into a searching new investigation of how to turn Northeast Asia into a liberalist international order. Despite progress in this direction in recent decades, numerous suspicions, realist inclinations, and hawkish ten-dencies exist. It is time to push the development of a liberal security order toward a dominant position in Northeast Asia.