Pacific Community for Peace and Governance: Towards a Framework for Peace and Security in the Pacific

Abstract

The chapter outlines that China’s naval strategy in East Asia’s maritime areas has led to rising nationalisms in other countries neighboring the South and East China Sea, a development that amid overlapping territorial claims not only fuels the SCS conflict, but due to the region’s lack of historic reconciliation may help to escalate them into military encounters. Accordingly, Beijing and Washington—the region’s strongest powers—share a responsibility to manage the SCS disputes in a peaceful manner. The chapter argues that it is time to find a sustainable diplomatic solution before a trivial accident might trigger an escalation that cannot be contained. The author therefore proposes to begin regional discussions for creating a ‘Framework for Peace and Security in the Pacific’ that has to tackle important issues like trust and confidence building among neighboring countries, the establishment of new inclusive regional governance structures and the mitigation of historical grievances to meet the peace and governance challenges in Asia-Pacific. The chapter concludes that a sustainable long-term solution to SCS disputes can only be found if regional countries decide to work cooperatively in a peaceful manner, which not only would benefit all countries in an interconnected Asia-Pacific, but would also help to pivotally shape the order of the twenty-first century.