Regional Maritime Regime Building: Prospects in Northeast and Southeast Asia

Maritime issues are rising to the forefront of Asian security concerns. But maritime management regimes can constrain conflict and create confidence in co-operation. Such regimes can define the range of permissible state behavior and resolve dilemmas stemming from the sharing of common resources. Regimes originate through imposition, spontaneous processes, or negotiation and are supplied when there is sufficient demand for the functions they perform. Integrative forces that support regime formation are the existence of other international arrangements in the region; ethnic, cultural, or historical interstate relationships; and clear indications of benefits to be gained. Often a shock or crisis enhances regime formation or its robustness. Disintegrative forces include political or territorial differences, competition for leadership, and opposition to regionalism. In regional co-operation on maritime issues, Southeast Asia is clearly more advanced than Northeast Asia. However, the absence of robust multilateral maritime regimes in Asia reflects state perceptions that the costs outweigh the benefits. The primacy of dis-integrative factors argues strongly for an ad hoc, issue-specific, evolutionary process for multilateral maritime regime building in Asia.