Publications

For over a decade, the Asia Pacific Security Forum has provided a unique opportunity for scholars and policy experts from Taiwan, the United States, Southeast Asia, and Europe to discuss regional security issues. This year’s meeting focused on the impact of elections on regional developments and there were quite a number of elections to consider: ballots have been held in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, and Russia, with the U.S. election looming.

Implicit in the discussion – although the wrap-up session tried to dig out this point – was an assumption about the role of democracy in Asia. This issue has taken on growing importance in the wake of the democracy promotion agenda of U.S. President George W. Bush and the readiness of other governments, such as that in Japan, to put democracy at the heart of their own foreign policies. Other governments are not comfortable with that approach: they see it as an attempt to draw lines through the region, as a precursor to a new "containment" policy, or as an unworkable approach that obscures more than it reveals.