In the midst of leadership changes and rethinking of the Six-Party Talks, the time is ripe for reassessing how multilateralism can be advanced in Northeast Asia. The earlier stress on economic integration as the engine of regionalism has lost credibility, although the forces of interdependence continue to grow. The tendency to treat security in isolation also may be receding, as the Six-Party Talks and Sino-U.S. relations both reveal the multi-sided nature of building trust. At the same time, the pessimism associated with overemphasis on the history issue between Japan and its neighbors has receded in the face of renewed Sino-Japanese and South Korean-Japanese diplomacy. Yet, finding common ground in strategic thinking about the future of multilateralism demands a new approach that takes into account lessons from recent years.

As the building blocks of a new approach, this presentation will focus on four themes: 1) re-examination of ways to accelerate regionalism, with attention to leadership, energy cooperation, and the role of Russia; 2) development of a more comprehensive outlook on values, with attention to shared modernity, gradualism, and the role of Japan; 3) discussion of the next phase in managing North Korea, attentive to Sino-U.S. accord and the role of South Korea; and 4) evaluation of U.S. priorities and how a new president may view Northeast Asia within an overall agenda.   The objective of this talk will be to stimulate thinking on a region at a crossroads in order to capitalize on recent currents of change.

Gil Rozman attended Princeton's Critical Languages Program, returning to Carleton College as an independent major in Chinese and Russian studies. He received his PhD in sociology at Princeton with a field on Chinese, Japanese, and Russian societies and a plan to concentrate on historical comparisons first and on the domestic roots of international relations later. His books have appeared in clusters, including: four on comparative pre-modern urban development and stages of modernization; three on debates in the Soviet Union, China, and Japan over bilateral relations and changes in socialism; two on regionalism; and four on strategic thinking in Northeast Asia. Although he is still learning about Korea, many recent writings have looked at Korea within a regional context.