The OSCE Peace‐building Process and its Implications for Regional Security Cooperation in East Asia

While the European states successfully utilized détente between the United States and the Soviet Union for the improvement of European peace and security, as well as consolidating and enlarging the European Union and NATO, East Asian countries made a much more conservative response to the rapidly changing global order. This paper attempts to find out the reasons that caused such differences in the evolution of regional security arrangements in Europe and East Asia and to elaborate on the possibilities of applying the European approaches to the peace‐building process in East Asia. A chronological approach is applied in analyzing the success of the OSCE – the creation of the CSCE and its development to the OSCE. By investigating how the détente and post‐Cold War periods have affected the creation of the CSCE and the subsequent institutionalization, the paper draws some implications to discuss their applicability to the East Asian region. In the end the paper calls for the Six‐Party Talks to play the key role as a permanent channel of talk, whilst the member states maintain their existing bilateral relations with neighbouring states.