Come November, when the East Asia nations commemorate the 10th anniversary of their awakening, they will be thinking of adding defence and security aspects to their long existing cooperation. If they achieve that, it would be a new benchmark.

Strange as it may seem, East Asian countries in general are no longer shying away from discussing sensitive defence and security issues. They want to take part in building peace and stability in the region. After nearly four decades of existence, Asean held its first defence ministerial meeting last May - a clear attempt to build up the Asean Security Community, which could serve as an anchor for broader security cooperation with other Asian countries.

One could get confused when the term East Asia in used these days. There are two concentric circles making up East Asia. The inner circle is the so-called the Asean Plus Three process involving China, Japan and Korea. This will form the foundation of community-building in East Asia in decades to come. The larger circle is the two-year-old East Asian Summit (EAS), which includes Australia, India and New Zealand and is a strategic forum. At the moment, Asean's focus is on the first circle.

Two years after the leaders of Asean Plus Three met in 1997, they were able to articulate what kinds of enhanced interaction they preferred. In their first joint statement on cooperation, economic and social fields were the main focus. They wanted to promote trade, investment, technology transfer, financial cooperation, and social and human resources development.

With the emergence of new challenges and opportunities in the new millennium, these leaders now realise that such collaborations were inadequate - above all, they have to be underpinned by defence and security cooperation. Back then, though they understood the importance of dialogue on security issues, the regional environment still was not conducive to such an undertaking.

Improved China-Japan relations now have created an enabling atmosphere for all concerned parties to concretise cooperation in non-traditional security issues involving terrorism, piracy, trafficking and cooperation for disaster relief. In fact, both China and Japan are enthusiastic to strengthen these kinds of cooperation, especially emergency relief operations.

In different ways, both have learned valuable lessons from the relief operation in Phuket and Aceh after the 2004 tsunami. Japan (and the US) successfully mobilised numerous support ships and helicopters to provide quick search-and-rescue operations, followed by massive humanitarian efforts in both Thailand and Indonesia. China was unable to take part in such a rapid and large-scale mobilisation of humanitarian assistance in foreign countries.

It is interesting to note that as far as natural disaster response and preparedness are concerned, Beijing's capacity is still limited to local operations. China needs further hands-on training and experience. In contrast, Singapore's relief teams were rapidly deployed and were among the first to reach Aceh.

Asean officials are hopeful that this type of mobilisation of humanitarian operations, using military hardware in non-threatening ways, will attract the Chinese. Beijing, which used to be recalcitrant in discussing security issues, has of late become more proactive and engaging in terms of follow-up activities and taking initiatives within the Asean Regional Forum (ARF), the region-wide security discussion group. In 2004, China proposed establishing a conference at deputy defence minister level to discuss security policies under the ARF framework.

As such, Asean Plus Three's security cooperation will allow its 13 members to build up trust and confidence as well as understand each other's security perceptions and defence culture. This is still a new concept in the region.

Security challenges have been discussed by Asean Plus Three members ever since the 9/11 attacks without tangible results. It was only in October last year that Asean was able to close ranks on terrorism by concluding in the Asean Convention on Counter Terrorism that more concrete action should take place. Negotiations are currently on to come up with an Asean extradition treaty before the Singapore Summit in November. Last week, Singapore and Indonesia, after some bitter stand-offs, signed the much-awaited treaty on extradition and defence cooperation. This has already provided fresh impetus for other Asean countries to follow suit and accelerate negotiations for the grouping as a whole.

When the Second Joint Statement on East Asia Cooperation comes out in November, it will be the first time since the end of World War II that East Asia will be discussing security issues without US participation. Since 1994, Washington has taken part in the annual ARF meetings with key Asia-Pacific nations. Inevitably, the Asean Plus Three initiative will put a damper on the long-existing US-led plan to gradually add a security dimension to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. Washington could see it as an attempt to dilute the ongoing anti-terrorism campaign, but Asian members do not want to add security issues to what is essentially an economic forum.

However, within the EAS, non-traditional security issues have been taken up as well during its first and second meetings. At the Cebu meeting in January, EAS leaders agreed to include poverty eradication and energy security-related issues, further expanding their strategic cooperation. At this juncture, EAS and Asean Plus Three processes must try to avoid overlap on their cooperative efforts.

Kavi Chongkittavorn