Since the end of 1980s, in retrospect, the leaders of East Asian states supported the idea of multilateral security cooperation very aggressively. In an era of enormous disorder and insecurity originated by the collapse of Cold War system, the proposition of multilateral security cooperation was a fresh and justifiable option for a new world to come. We understand that then Communist Party general-secretary of Soviet Union Mikhail Gorvachov suggested, through his Vladivostok address in July 1986, to establish a Helsinki-type All Asia Security Conference in Northeast Asia for the first time. And there seems to be no specific proposal to form such a mechanism after the time when Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd expressed his hope to develop Six-Party Talks into an organization for security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region. His proposal was made on his way to Washington D.C. on the 31st of March, 2008.
During this span of time, we"ve had a record of about seventy-eight propositions, official and non-official, to establish multilateral security cooperation mechanisms in Northeast Asia. The failure of Six-Party Talks to solve North Korean nuclear problem and stringency of North-South Korean relations during Lee Myung-bak administration may have accounted for sudden cessation or cooling of such a lively mood for multilateral security cooperation since early 2008.
ASEAN Regional Forum, Shangri-La Dialogue, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) will continue to provide formal and informal mechanisms to discuss political and security issues and challenges facing the region. However, there seems to be little possibility for them to produce any tangible results for at least a while.
The upcoming 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit is expected to serve as a solid basis for future international regime to prevent nuclear terrorism. Large number of participating countries, strong support from the U.S., top-down style of summit meeting, etc. are only part of positive elements to accelerate future development of multilateralism.
Meanwhile, there are some restrictive factors to overcome. For example, there is no further planning to sequence biennial, high-level international political summits after the 2014 Netherlands summit. And there should be some creative measures to co-opt so-called failed states into Nuclear Security Summit mechanism because they are the hotbeds of worldwide terrorism. Universal definition of some key concepts like terrorism and terror is also needed to heighten the effectiveness of measures and decisions made by Nuclear Security Summits.