Mass atrocities were once a common occurrence in East Asia. Yet, over the past three decades, mass atrocities have declined in East Asia to the point of near elimination. This book explains how and why.

• Introduction


• 1: Cataclysms


• 2: Decline


• 3: State Consolidation


• 4: The Developmental Trading State


• 5: Habits of Multilateralism


• 6: Power Politics


• 7: The 'Impossible State': North Korea


• 8: At the Crossroads: Myanmar


• 9: Future Trajectories

Alex J. Bellamy is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, The University of Queensland, Australia. He is also Non-Resident Senior Adviser at the International Peace Institute, New York and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. He recently served as a consultant to the United Nations office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect and as Secretary of the High Level Advisory Panel on the Responsibility to Protect in Southeast Asia, chaired by former ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan. His publications include The Oxford Handbook on the Responsibility to Protect (OUP, 2015), The Responsibility to Protect: A Defense (OUP, 2014), and Massacres and Morality: Mass Atrocities in an Age of Civilian Immunity (OUP, 2012).