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For forty years, the East Asian regional order has delivered widespread peace and prosperity. That order faces possible upending by an economically and militarily more powerful China and a decreasingly robust and engaged United States. While accepting the possibility that such structural shifts could upend the regional order, this paper contends that three powerful counterweights are working to counter disruptive conflicts and to foster peaceful change, namely strong and rising economic interdependence, expanding institutionalization, and active preservation efforts by number of other Asian states, particularly the region's middle powers. This article analyzes the contribution of these three forces to creating the existing order and to their roles in its continuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing attention to the geopolitical significance of the Korean Peninsula, many scholars have defined Korean unification as a critical condition for promoting East Asian community-building. During the 1990s, members of the Changbi Group, most notably Paik Nak-chung, Choi Won-shik, and Baik Young-Seo, proposed the idea that Korean unification plays such an important role, following Paik's proposal of the Division System Theory. The East Asia Theory espoused by these scholars provides an opportunity to rethink contemporary Korean reality from the perspectives of both an individual state and the context of East Asia as a region. Despite the significance of these intellectual discussions, academia still awaits a detailed study of the analytic/conceptual strengths and limitations of the East Asia Theory as a whole. Another point of contention that may be raised with previous research on the East Asia Theory is the lack of attention given to the theory's practical implications. To fill this lacuna, this article offers a theoretical examination of the Changbi Group's East Asia Theory, with a focus on its practical implications. Finally, this study looks into the limitations of the East Asia Theory and suggests a possible reformulation of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of its past "Look East" and now "Act East" policies, India seeks to increase the radius of its influence beyond South Asia by broadening relations with East Asian actors, including South Korea. New Delhi and Seoul continue to promote economic cooperation and explore ways to deepen their strategic partnership. However, for relations to grow substantively and enduringly, both will have to show greater concern, creativity, and caution—especially bearing in mind their mutual neighbor, China. This article explores how, through harnessing its unique longstanding relations with both Koreas and investing in non‐realist approaches resonant of people‐centered engagement, India as a middle power with major power aspirations can lay its footprint softly in Northeast Asia by playing a more pro‐active role to bolster and sustain inter‐Korean rapprochement and peacebuilding efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]