This is the executive summary of a newly released Pacific Forum study of elite opinion in Asia. The full report can be downloaded from the Pacific Forum website www.csis.org/japan/asianarchitecture. It also draws on Asia’s New Multilateralism: Competition, Cooperation and the Search for Community, edited by Michael Green and Bates Gill (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

Will Asia’s future see increasing economic interdependence and cooperation or growing power rivalry and confrontation? That strategic question will be answered in large measure by the region’s ability to construct effective multilateral institutions for integration and cooperation – what is now being called the new Asian "architecture."