East Asia is a region deeply affected by conflict. Colonial, ideological, and national wars have left their scars and legacies on regional, international, and national governance. Yet East Asian post-conflict development experiences have been viewed as remarkably successful. The three largest economies of East Asia, Japan, China, and South Korea, have all experienced dramatic growth but immediately prior to their periods of expansion, all experienced the devastating impacts of international conflicts and/or civil upheaval. These post-conflict development ’success’ stories do not, however, tell the whole tale. Other states in East Asia and in particular certain regions within some of these states, while apparently emerging from similar conflictual backgrounds, have experienced far less positive transitions. This volume critically assesses measurements of success in East Asian post-conflict development from a human-centered perspective. This involves a major re-evaluation of accepted accounts of domestic governance and international relations in East Asia from both a comparative and inter-disciplinary viewpoint. Case study rich, this volume provides policy prescriptions for East Asian donors and actors in an effort to provide Asian solutions for Asian problems.

Using a case study based approach, Weissmann analyses the post-Cold War East Asian security setting to demonstrate why there is a paradoxical inter-state peace. He points out processes that have been important for the creation of a continuing relative peace in East Asia, as well as conflict prevention and peacebuilding mechanisms.

"This is a personal story of a multinational research programme that, instead of explaining conflict, has sought to explain peace, and to gauge its quality and sustainability. The Uppsala Conflict Data Programme has shown a dramatic drop in East Asian battle deaths between the 1970s and '80s, just as wars got worse in the rest of the world. Since 1989, East Asia has been exceptionally peaceful. The book recounts heated discussions over how to explain a regional transition to peace. Was it due to a changing power balance? The ASEAN Way? China's 'peaceful development' doctrine? Growing economic interdependence? Or, as the author contends, a series of national priority shifts by powerful Asian leaders who prioritized economic growth and thus needed external and internal stability? The book deals with civil as well as international conflict, and discusses why Thailand, Myanmar and the Philippines have not yet achieved internal peace. The author recounts his debates with colleagues who find it difficult to accept that a region with several unresolved militarized disputes, still ongoing civil wars, rising arms expenditures, massive human rights violations, and high levels of domestic violence can be called 'peaceful'. East Asia, they say, has just a 'negative peace' or relative absence of war. Tønnesson, who holds that a 'negative peace' has tremendous positive value, includes a discussion of how to predict its future - can China keep peace with its neighbours? A rare combination of detached analysis and personal narrative, the book examines developments in the world's most important region while also telling the story of how researchers with different assumptions develop rival theories and predictions" (ed.).

This edited collection explores how East Asia’s painful history continues to haunt the relationships between its countries and peoples. Through a largely social-psychological and constructivist lens, the authors examine the ways in which historical memory and unmet identity needs generates mutual suspicion, xenophobic nationalism and tensions in the bilateral and trilateral relationships within the region. This text not only addresses some of the domestic drivers of Japanese, Chinese and South Korean foreign policy - and the implications of increasingly autocratic rule in all three countries – but also analyses the way in which new security mechanisms and processes advancing trust, confidence and reconciliation can replace those generating mistrust, antagonism and insecurity.

This book presents a rich ethnography of post-conflict social and economic recovery in East Timor following the end of Indonesian military occupation of the territory in 1999. It offers a longer-term analysis of the pathways to rebuilding and restoring local community life, and the budding prosperity that has flowed from participation in spontaneous circular labour migration and the remittance benefits that have followed. Based on extensive comparative literature and field-based empirical research, the book explores the protracted process of cultural and economic revival following a generation-long period of military repression and a sustained struggle for national independence. With a focus on the experiences of Fataluku ethno-linguistic communities in Timor-Leste, the study offers nuanced perspectives on the legacies of conflict and local forms of governance, the revitalisation of customary exchange and ancestral religion. Presenting both an optimistic and alternative narrative in which a traumatised population finds new hope and emergent prosperity, this book highlights a renewed concern with inter-generational well-being and widespread aspirations for prosperity and material benefits following decades of deprivation. It is also an analysis of post-conflict resilience against the odds, illustrating the adaptive possibilities of tradition in the context of globalisation and expectations of modernity. As a major contribution to understanding the emergence and expansion of informal transnational labour migration out of East Timor, this book will be of interest to academics, researchers and policy makers of contemporary Timor-Leste, Southeast Asian Politics, Southeast Asian Culture and Society, Development Studies, Anthropology and Conflict Studies.

The annual number of battle deaths from interstate and intra-state conflicts in East Asia has declined by 95% since 1979. During the past three decades, East Asia has been more peaceful than Europe, the Americas or any continent, in terms of battle deaths per capita. When generating theories on peace and war, studies almost never look at the experiences of East Asia. Yet the region by focusing on a commitment to development, is a social reality that is less paranoid, less militaristic and more cooperative. Since 1979 there has been a commonly accepted rule to keep domestic issues domestic so that external military interference, that often caused the majority of battle deaths, was not needed. Thus the emergence of the long peace of East Asia is historically specific, and cannot be generalized by studying objective, material conditions independent of common perceptions and common interpretations. This does not mean that the East Asian experience is not relevant for other regions in the world, but that generalizations should not be attempted to be drawn from the material conditions, but rather from the lived experience and socially constructed realities of East Asia. Since East Asia is a spectacular case of pacification, and since it has not contributed much to our theories of peace and conflict, The Long Peace of East Asia is an important book for studies on peace and war.

This book is based on discussions from the Asian Regional Consultation on Social Cohesion and Conflict Management that was sponsored by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Participants, speaking in their personal capacity, included representatives from government, civil society, and donor organisations. The papers included in this volume cite a multiplicity of traditional obstacles to social cohesion and integration in the region, ranging from xenophobic nationalism to poverty, socioeconomic disparities, gender inequality, and ethnic, religious, and cultural discrimination.