The past few decades have witnessed the emergence of a vast array of regional arrangements and institutions dealing with all aspects of ocean management. The level of cooperation ranges from minimal dispute avoidance to relatively comprehensive ocean governance at the regional level. As concrete examples, reasonably successful and comprehensive regional regimes have been created for the Baltic, the North, and the Mediterranean Seas and the South Pacific. And attempts at regional regime building are ongoing in Southeast Asia, the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Although there are broad similarities between the semi-enclosed seas of Western Europe and Northeast Asia, no regional maritime regime has yet been initiated in Northeast Asia. The papers in this volume are authored by leading authorities on not only the maritime affairs of their particular region of focus but on maritime policy in general. They describe and explain existing or incipient regional maritime regimes in an unusually broad comparative context, and extract lessons learned that may be applicable elsewhere including Northeast Asia. The case studies are neatly sandwiched between an introduction to concepts and principles on regional co-operation and concluding chapters on lessons learned and their applicability to Northeast Asia. Moreover, the papers raise and address several questions of relevance to policy. For example, what factors are conducive to maritime regime initiation, expansion and positive evolution, and which constrain regime formation and evolution? Why has maritime regime building been successful in Europe and largely unsuccessful in Asia? And which, if any, lessons learned in the European context areapplicable in Asia? Given the growing interest in regime formation and effectiveness in general and maritime regimes in particular, this book will be of considerable interest to both analysts and policymakers.

islands has emotional content far beyond any material significance because giving way on the island issue to Japan would be considered as once again compromising the sovereignty over the whole Korean peninsula. For Japan, the Dokdo issue may lack the same degree of strategic and economic values and emotional appeal as the other two territorial disputes that Japan has had with Russia and the two Chinas – namely the Northern Territories/Southern Kurile Islands and the Senkaku Islands, respectively. Nevertheless, fishing resources and the maritime boundary issues became highly salient with the introduction of UNCLOS. Also, the legal, political, and economic issues surrounding Dokdo are all intertwined with Japan’s other territorial disputes to the extent that concessions of sovereignty on any of these island disputes could jeopardize claims or negotiations concerning the rest. South Korea and Japan have forged a deeper diplomatic and economic partn- ship over the past decade. A new spirit of partnership after the landmark joint declaration of 1998 culminated in the successful co-hosting of the World Cup 2002. At the end of 2003 the two neighbors began to negotiate an FTA to further strengthen their already close economic ties. South Korea’s decades-long embargo on Japanese cultural products has now been lifted, while a number of South Korean pop stars are currently sweeping across Japan, creating the so-called “Korean Wave” fever. A pragmatic calculation of national interests would thus suggest cooperative behavior.

One of the most creative innovations of the international diplomatic community in the 20th century was its invention of the international regime, a wrote Douglas M. Johnston in his last major work published posthumously (The Historical Foundations of World Order: The Tower and the Arena, Nijhoff, 2008). While regimes often provide order and certainty and a consequent reduction in disputes and misunderstandings, regimes are driven by specific concerns. With diverse disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives, the distinguished contributors to this tribute follow a long tradition of scholarly inquiry into the governance, creation, operation, viability and maintenance of international regimes. Their contributions on ocean and environmental regimes as diverse as fisheries, ocean dumping, maritime security, seafarersa (TM) rights, or enhancement of marine environmental protection attest to the depth to which modern international law and the underlying international relations have been transformed into an international law of structured cooperation. This book includes biographical and bibliographic notes on Douglas M. Johnston