Nurturing a new order in Northeast Asia

Even under the relatively stable, if often unpleasant, world of the ‘Cold War’ era, the Northeast Asian regional order never seemed quite so immovable or so clear-cut as in Europe. Now, the equilibrium between China, the Soviet Union, Japan and the United States—always more apparent than real—no longer acts as the defining characteristic of the Northeast Asian order. The collapse of Soviet power, in particular, has brought an even more fluid environment to the area. But, as Chinese and the Japanese power grows, the two Koreas edge closer together, and as the Americans undergo economic regeneration, the need for new cooperative structures becomes sharper.