초록/요약

The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic at all levels of Society has demonstrated that the old, state-centric models of security are insufficient to address the contemporary threat environment. Likewise, the roles played by the disease and by government responses to it in generating conflict, reveal that a sustainable peace requires far more than the management of conflict and preventing state from going to war with each other. The focus of the article is on the security and peacebuilding implications for East Asia (including the Northeast and Southeast Asian subregions), which has been considered the most westphalian region in the world (that is to say, the region most wedded to traditional, state-centric conceptualizations of security, threat, and peacebuilding). This article considers first, therefore, the traditional state and sysyem-centric approadches to security and peacebuilding which continue to dominate East Asian peace and security discourese and practice. It identifies the shortcomings of these conceptualizations in the contemporary operating environment, especially with regard to the rise of new security chaalenges, and with a particular focus on the current COVID-19 pandemic. It then offers policy prescription based on critical, reflectivist, and socailly constructed interpretations, and the opportunities. afforded new actors to contribute to the construction of comprehensive security and a sustainable peace in the region.