On the other hand, there has been a general acceptance of a United States' presence in the region by countries in the region, including China. While most Southeast Asian countries were worried of the United States' great power policy and the Cold War, they did not wish to see any new power emerging within the region to take up any power vacuum, be it China, Japan or even Indonesia.
The United States' engagement policy vis-a-vis China also contributed to the stability of the region, as former US defense secretary William Perry recently pointed out. It helped to integrate China gradually into the world's community despite ideological differences and past hostility.
3. ASEAN Solidarity
Southeast Asia has historically been a region with diverse ethnic, culture and religious subgroups. Different colonial occupation and dominance during the not- so-distant colonial past further complicated the diversity of the region. By the end of the Cold War, there have not been much sharing of common experience and interests among the Southeast Asian states. In fact, there was a brief period of confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia and Singapore. Certain regional identity and common interest emerged under the ASEAN umbrella. While all states have a stake in the sub-regional solidarity, especially vis-a-vis non-ASEAN countries, Indonesia did, to a certain extent, play an important facilitating and anchoring role in the loose alliance.
4. Emergence of Dialogue Mechanisms： APEC and PECC, ARF and CSCAP
With the leadership of Japan and Australia, a regional economic forum PECC was established at the wake of the Post-Cold War Era. This is a tripartite forum for academics, officials and private sectors to table and discuss regional economic matters. After a period of consensus building, Governments agreed to form APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) as an intergovemmental forum in 1989. As Hadi Soesastro aptly pointed out, "APEC clearly has a security role. There is a growing awareness in the region of the linkage between economics and security.... (but) The more recently established ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum) process is the appropriate forum for ... security dialogues in the region." In support of the official effort of ARF, ASEAN-ISIS, together with Pacific Forum/CSIS, JILA and the Seoul Forum developed the non-official forum of CSCAP (Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific). All these economic and security forums, both official and non-official, help to build consensus and trust among the diverse members of the post-Cold War Asia Pacific community.
