Pacific confidence building

Abstract

U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry recently suggested that the Pacific Rim now appears more pacific then ever. Yet no other place on the globe holds such potential for conflict: like great plates on the earth's crust, four of the world's great powers converge alongside numerous other regional and local fault lines. Perhaps nothing better illustrates the tensions bubbling beneath the surface and the region's potential for seismic jolts than the crisis surrounding North Korea's nuclear weapons program during the summer and fall of 1994. Until Jimmy Carter's intervention, the North Korean imbroglio threatened to destabilize the Korean peninsula, and launch a dangerous dynamic of crisis, confrontation, and region‐wide nuclear proliferation.