On May 4 and 5, 2000, health care leaders, professionals, and academics convened at the Bechtel Conference Center at Stanford University for the Health Care Conference 2000. Sponsored by the Comparative Health Care Policy Research Project at the Asia/Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC), in cooperation with the Center for Health Policy (CHP), the conference was held for the purpose of discussing health care policies and issues facing nations today. With the pressures of rising costs, aging populations in industrialized countries, and rapid technological advancements, the need for an accessible, affordable, and effective health care system is urgent and greater than ever. The first conference of its kind at Shorenstein APARC, the Health Care Conference 2000 established a forum for candid discussion about the past, present, and future of health care. Over sixty participants attended the conference. The panel consisted of speakers from governmental institutions, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, universities, and research institutes. The first day of the conference featured a discussion on the evolution of the health care market in the United States, while the second day focused on the effects of market forces overseas, specifically in England, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland, and Singapore. The 1990s marked an era of major health care reform. For many nations with socialized health care systems, it was a decade to explore alternative systems and to move toward privatization. The implications of such changes were discussed in detail at the conference. The Health Care Conference 2000 was a successful and informative meeting, which opened the doors for future discussions on issues concerning health care around the world. These proceedings present, in edited form, the remarks of all primary conference speakers. Please contact Shorenstein APARC if you have any questions about the conference, or about the Center's work in general.

American military power underpinned the security structure of the Asia Pacific region during the Cold War. Post-Cold War, its role is still vital to peace and stability in the region. The most overt manifestations of American military might are the Japan–America Security Alliance (JASA) and the Korea–America Security Alliance (KASA). These bilateral alliances, together with a modified Australia–New Zealand–United States (ANZUS) treaty relationship, point to the diversity of security interests and perspectives in the region. Even during the height of the Cold War, the region never quite presented the kind of coherence that would have facilitated the creation of a truly multilateral defense framework of the sort exemplified by NATO. In Southeast Asia, the lack of strategic coherence resulted in a patchwork of defense arrangements between local and extraregional states. Dominated by the United States, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was only nominally regional.

During the Cold War, the United States entered into region-wide alliances to “contain” communism. In the post-Cold War period, uncertainties, rather than clearly definable threats, have marked the Asia Pacific’s strategic landscape. While not disen- gaging from the region, the United States is encouraging greater burden-sharing by its friends and allies located there. In consequence, JASA and KASA are undergoing change even as regional states accept their utility and reassurance value. At the same time, region-wide multilateral confidence-building and cooperative security processes, which involve practically all the states on opposite sides of the old Cold War divide, have emerged. China — the object of Cold War containment policies — is being constructively engaged through these multilateral processes. How the existing alliances, which still have their deterrent functions, can be related to these nascent multilateral processes is the focus of this paper. Because the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is the driving force behind the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the only region-wide process seeking a balanced relationship among the external powers in the post-Cold War setting, we explore first the evolving ASEAN perspectives toward KASA and JASA. The paper will then relate the ASEAN-driven frame- work to the security concerns of Northeast Asia.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.