Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 05/2010

Conflict Prevention in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific

Elsina Wainwright

April 2010

Center on International Cooperation

Abstract

The Asia Pacific has experienced thirty years without interstate conflict, but a number of long-running, low-level internal conflicts continue in Southeast Asia, and several South Pacific states have recent experience of instability. Tensions also remain at the inter-state level, and shifting power dynamics between the US, China, and other Asian states have the potential to foster regional instability. In addition, a raft of transnational threats, such as resource scarcity and climate change, are creating new uncertainty.