Fires Across the Water

The glittering economic success of the New Asia has a dark side of drug trafficking, illegal migration, labor abuses, and pollution. These so-called "transnational problems" are grabbing headlines and forcing themselves onto the diplomatic agenda with increasing frequency, shouldering aside traditional questions of commerce and security. Neither government authorities nor regional institutions are prepared to cope with this new agenda.

What elevates social ills to Asian transnational problems? What stakes does the United States have in solving them? What are the policy options and the obstacles for crafting multilateral solutions? Which problems are most amenable to solution, and which are most intractable? How do these solutions complement--or clash with--the pursuit of broaderU.S. foreign-policy goals in Asia? Six experts tackle these questions in the chapters of this volume: Stephen Flynn of the U.S. Coast Guard on drugs and organized crime; Elizabeth Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations on the environment; Paul J. Smith of Pacific Forum/Center for Strategic and International Studies on labor migration; Sadako Ogata of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on refugee flows; and Sidney R. Jones of Human Rights Watch/Asia on human rights. Two summary chapters by James Shinn weave the experts' discussions into a set of general propositions for dealing with transnational problems in Asia.

A Council on Foreign Relations Book