Book excerpt: This book offers the most comprehensive analysis yet of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which remains the foremost dialogue forum for the promotion of cooperative security in the Asia-Pacific. Contributors focus on the perspectives and roles of the key players in the ARF – ASEAN, the United States, China, Japan, and Australia – and discuss to what extent these participants have shaped the Forum's institutional development and affected its achievements and prospects against the backdrop of the evolving regional security architecture. They also examine in depth how participants have used the Forum to respond to a range of important transnational security issues and challenges, including terrorism and maritime security, as well as disaster relief. This work also explores how, despite the difficulties in reaching a new consensus regarding the collective pursuit of preventive diplomacy, some activist participants have succeeded in bringing about a notable, albeit incipient, 'practical turn' in the ARF’s security cooperation. This book will appeal to students of South-East Asian Politics, Asian Security Studies and International Relations in general.