Developments throughout 1998—including the ongoing East Asian economic crisis, nuclear tests in May by India and Pakistan, the August launch of a multistage missile by North Korea, and renewed tensions in October-November between the Philippines and China over Mischief Reef in the South China Sea—underscore the continuing uncertainties in the Asia Pacific security environment and consequent difficulties of constructing a more stable regional security order. These and other events, as well as their near-term implications, are explored in the 1999 edition of the annual Asia Pacific Security Outlook.

The Outlook assesses national perceptions of regional security, key defense issues, and the contributions to regional and global security of seventeen member countries of the ASEAN Regional Forum; the 1999 edition includes India for the first time. Unlike other surveys, the Outlook series draws on the expertise of a multinational team of security specialists, who prepare individual country reports that enable the reader to compare and contrast the views of each state on current trends.

The Outlook is written for general audiences and security experts alike. The regional overview that opens the book distills the contributors’ perceptions of Asia Pacific security issues, as gleaned from their responses to a yearly survey on regional security. The watch list issues discussed in the overview include large power relations, the Korean peninsula, territorial disputes, and weapons procurement. From the 1998 edition, the Asian financial crisis was added to the list. The 1999 edition notes that despite the continuing economic crisis, regional cooperation to deal with it has not emerged to the degree initially anticipated. The major concerns in Asia Pacific today are seen as being on the level of individual countries—such as China, Indonesia, and North Korea—rather than on the level of the region as a whole.