On 12 June, the IISS held a one-day workshop at Arundel House entitled ‘Asia's Security Architecture Revisited’. Organised by Adam Ward, Senior Fellow for East Asian Security and Editor of Strategic Comments, the workshop involved 30 participants, with four major papers presented. Professor Barry Buzan of Westminster University proposed a conceptual framework for understanding the region’s security architecture. Professors Michael Yahuda of the LSE and François Godement of IFRI examined Chinese and US perspectives on the organisation of regional security, respectively. Meanwhile, Professor Rosemary Foot of Oxford University considered the contribution of the UN system.
Taking up many of the themes in the research of former IISS Director of Studies Gerald Segal, the workshop marked an excellent opportunity to draw attention to the Institute’s ongoing Gerald Segal Research Fellowship in Asian Studies Appeal. Papers presented at the workshop are currently being prepared with the intention of publishing them in The Pacific Review, the journal of which Segal was founding editor. The workshop followed May’s inaugural ‘IISS Asia Security Conference: The Shangri-La Dialogue’ in Singapore, itself conceived as a contribution to Asia's security architecture and during which the topic of regional security organization featured prominently.
