Publications

Young Leaders (YL) have added an increasingly valuable element to meetings of the study group on Countering the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Asia Pacific, an international working group of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP). The younger generation of regional security students and specialists is cognizant of the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction and the need to develop innovative ways to address that danger. Pacific Forum CSIS has been fortunate to be able to invite Young Leaders to all the meetings of the WMD study group that it chairs in its capacity as secretariat of the U.S. member committee of CSCAP. Many of our Young Leaders have attended several meetings, helping – as the YL program intends – to build a real community of next generation thinkers who will be better able to work together to tackle shared security concerns in the future.

The sixth meeting of the WMD study group was held in Jakarta in December 2007, and followed the Sixth CSCAP General Conference. Young Leaders attended the General Conference, which highlighted the work of the CSCAP study groups as participants explored thinking about a panoply of regional security issues. When that conference concluded, the WMD study group convened, focusing at this meeting on Southeast Asia’s attempts to support global nonproliferation norms, in particular the role of the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (SEANWFZ) established by the Bangkok Treaty. The individual Young Leader papers included in this collection provide their suggestions about ways CSCAP can support the SEANWFZ and develop the Action Plan that was announced at the ASEAN summit earlier that year.