Asian-Pacific Maritime Security: New Possibilities for Naval Cooperation?

For more than half a century, we viewed one another through our gunsights.  Our ships passed each other on the tranquil watersof the world's largest ocean without so much as a sailor's traditional greeting.  Wary and suspicious, it was best to keep fingers on the trigger when warships passed in the night.

Now the Cold War is over.  Greater cooperation is evident not only in Europe, but also among the disparate nations of the Pacific Rim.  Despite widely divergent interests and agendas in this, the home of 60 percent of the world's people, trends are already becoming evident that point toward closer collaboration in a number of political, economic, and cultural endeavors.  The intersection of security interests, particularly at sea, suggests that the timing may be right to examine new forms of military cooperation as well.  While different threat perceptions have long militated against multilateralism in Asia, modest yet concrete steps toward naval cooperation inconceivable before the Cold War's thaw are now possible.