Asia is the primary locus of strategic instability. Serious conflicting interests remain on the Korean peninsula, across the Taiwan Strait, in the South China Sea, in the Indonesian archipelago, and on the Indian subcontinent. The Asian states involved and those out of the area that deal with them, however, seek to avoid war with both policy declarations and force deployments. Therefore, the opportunity for arms control agreements looms large with and among Asian states. A review of conflicting interests in Asia opens a wide array of possible arms control negotiations, some bilateral and some multilateral.
Negotiations are already underway.
Although few have been concluded, the general consensus to avoid armed conflict makes many agreements only a matter of time and effort. In Asia, fertile ground exists. What follows is an analysis of Asian arms control agreements recently completed, in progress, and those that could be on the table in the near future. A harbinger of good news came from Beijing on November 21, when the Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi issued a statement opposing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. 1 Boucher also said that the processing of licenses for commercial space cooperation would resume and extending the 1995 U.S.-China Agreement Regarding International Trade in Commercial Launch Services would be discussed.