European Cooperation as a Questionable Model for Security in the Pacific Region

Abstract

In the 1992, revised edition of Across the Pacific, Akira Iriye referred three times to cooperation in Europe as an example for East Asia. In the context of international security Iriye mentioned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). For economic cooperation he pointed to the European Community. Iriye especially liked the CSCE, which he saw as “a setting for discussion of security, trade, and other issues of concern to most Western nations.” Iriye lamented that after the U.S.-Chinese detente and the American withdrawal from Southeast Asia in the 1970s, no new framework for regional order had been developed, and contrasted it with the positive developments in Europe.