Non-Traditional Security Threats and Multilateral Response in East Asia

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War, East Asia has been hit severely by non-traditional security threats
that are transnational in scope and non-military in nature. Non-traditional security threats can be
considered as cross-border resource depletion, environmental degradation, terrorism, natural
disasters, food shortages, infectious diseases, drug trafficking, human smuggling and other
transnational crimes. The main objective of this study is to explore multi-lateral framework in East
Asia to deal with non-traditional security threats in three areas: infectious diseases, natural
disasters and transnational crime and terrorism. Transnational nature of these challenges in era of
globalization and regionalism, requires multilateral response. The main finding of this study is that
East Asia has become one of the highly integrated region in the world and to deal with the
aforementioned three non-traditional security threats, a variety of multi-lateral frameworks exists
in East Asia: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ASEAN+3 (APT), Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation and ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). The English School of international
relations will be applied as theoretical framework in this study. This study will be divided in five
sections. The first section deals with the theoretical foundation; the second with regionalism in East
Asia; the third section discusses the problem of infectious diseases; the fourth section deals with
natural disasters and the fifth with emergence of transnational crimes and terrorism in East Asia.