The Link Between Military Security and Economic Development in the Pacific
H.C. Hank Stackpole
President
Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies
Admiral Blair has set the tone for us relating to the issues on security and the fact that we are beginning to see a world in which there is more and more of a blend. And if you look at the security situation in the Asia-Pacific region in terms of a reverse three-stage contingency, you recognize that it is necessary to have security internal and external in order to have political stability in any country. And you must have political stability then, in order to have economic development.
We have a distinguished panel who will be approaching this subject from many directions. But I would tell you that the traditional views of security: the emphasis on military dimension, the relations to national interest, threats primarily external and state-centered, the focus on war and violent conflict, and the importance of alliances, arms races, and securities dilemmas, while still valid to a certain degree, in this age that was emphasized by Admiral Blair in terms of knowledge and information dominant technology, we are looking at other issues that become our common agenda: issues of transnational relations and movements across boundaries as globalization has a friction with nationalism, trade in goods and services, the migration of people, the flow of financial capital that we have seen in recent years, the diffusion of technology, the movement of information and ideas and other spill-over effects: environment, illegal drugs, organized crime, disease, international terrorism.
All of these things have to be countered by technologies that can be developed in the economic realm. So very often the situation is blurred.
Today we will hear from each of our speakers with about fifteen minutes of presentation and then we'll have an opportunity for question and answer at the end. We hope that there will be provocative questions. I know there will be provocative presentations.