Responding to Security Challenges in East Asia: Three Perspectives

This article was external pageoriginallycall_made published by the external pageCentre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)call_made in April 2016.

INTRODUCTION 

East Asia presents a fundamental paradox for international relations scholars.[1] Despite having arguably more sources of interstate tension than any other region of the developing world, there has not been significant interstate conflict in the area since the end of the China-Vietnam war in 1979. How can this paradox be explained? And to what extent have recent developments undermined those factors that have preserved the “long peace” in East Asia over the past half century? This paper will address these central questions. First, however, it will briefly review the sources of the principal security challenges facing East Asian states:

• East Asia has more contested boundaries than any other part of the world. Although attention has focused in recent years on disputed maritime boundaries in the East and South China Seas, many competing claims over land boundaries also remain unresolved. M. Taylor Fravel (2014, 527) estimates that Asia accounts for 40 percent of all active territorial disputes worldwide. Only on rare occasions have parties settled boundary disputes either through bilateral negotiations (for instance, China and Vietnam signed a border delimitation treaty in December 1999) or through international arbitration (for instance, the International Court of Justice determination in 2008 of the Pedra Branca dispute between Malaysia and Singapore). Unresolved disputes often fester for years, providing latent ammunition that populist politicians can exploit at some point.
• The unprecedented economic growth of East Asia has produced more rapid shifts in inter-country power differentials than has occurred elsewhere in the world, generating challenges for existing dominant powers to accommodate newcomers. Theorists of international relations have frequently asserted that the international system is most prone to conflict during periods of power transition (Organski 1958; Gilpin 1981).
• East Asia is arguably the region with the greatest political diversity in the world, ranging from longestablished liberal democracies to thriving new democracies such as Indonesia, to four of the world’s five surviving communist regimes, including the bizarre autocracy of North Korea (the others being China, Laos and Vietnam).
• Military expenditure in East Asia is growing more rapidly than in any other region of the world apart from Africa (whose base expenditure on which the growth figures are calculated was substantially lower than that of East Asia) (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI] 2015). Adjusted for inflation, military spending in East Asia grew by 76 percent in the period from 2005 to 2014. Three of the countries with the highest military expenditures in the world are in East Asia: China, Japan and South Korea. If the broader context in which East Asian security relations are embedded is considered (and here it is important to note the increasing salience of South Asia to East Asian military affairs, in particular with the increasing attention being given to sea lane security), then four more of the top 15 are added: the United States, Russia, India and Australia. Looked at from this broader context, the East Asian security environment includes six of the world’s nine confirmed nuclear powers.

APPROACHES TO EAST ASIAN SECURITY AND CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES

Explanations for the long peace in East Asia are conventionally categorized into three groups: those that emphasize the importance of a balance of power and the role of military alliances; those that focus on the distinctiveness of East Asia and the role of its regional institutions, in particular ASEAN; and those that argue that high levels of economic interdependence make the waging of war prohibitively costly. Over the last 15 years, observers of the region have increasingly acknowledged that these alternative approaches can be complementary, adding to our understanding of the complex interactions that have preserved the long peace in the region. Analytical eclecticism, in the words of Peter J. Katzenstein and Rudra Sil (2004), has been seen as preferable to the inter-paradigmatic squabble that has often characterized academic writing on East Asian security, even if, to paraphrase William Tow (2009, 9), a “potpourri” approach runs the risk of producing a melange of arguments that, even if compatible, are essentially non-refutable.

Hegemony and Balancing in East Asia

The period immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall saw an outpouring of scholarly work predicting that the principal locus of interstate conflict would shift from Europe to Asia: the Asian region, in the words of the title of one widely cited article, was “ripe for rivalry” (Friedberg 1993). In addition to this classic realist argument regarding the inevitability of conflict in a region characterized by disparate political regimes, increasing inequality in development levels and weak institutions, other writers from a realist perspective asserted that regional stability had been and could continue to be sustained by the astute pursuit of balance-of-power politics. Ralf Emmers (2003) noted, for example, that balance-of-power considerations had been prominent even in the regional organization, ASEAN, considered to be the most prominent example of an institution based on cooperative security principles.

Other writers put emphasis on the US-centric alliance network — the so-called “San Francisco system” — as providing the essential foundation for regional stability in Asia (Calder 2004). Ambiguities were always evident in these characterizations, however. The San Francisco system was even less of a balanced alliance than that which linked the United States to Western Europe in the Cold War. Rather than the alliances themselves, it was US hegemony that guaranteed the peace of the Asian region. And, arguably, it did so for a period with considerable success — not only did it discourage Chinese and North Korean adventurism, but also kept the genie of Japanese militarism firmly in the bottle, which ensured that Beijing, if not an enthusiastic supporter, nonetheless found that its interests for much of the last four decades also coincided with the United States playing a hegemonic role.

But this was largely a unilaterally maintained order. Much consequently depended on attitudes in Washington — and when the United States was preoccupied with developments in other parts of the world, as was the case in the first decade of the twenty-first century, Asia suffered from less-than-benign neglect. Moreover, as Michael Mastanduno (2003, 143) notes, what the United States was able and willing to achieve was limited: “although US officials have helped to defuse regional crises, they have failed to foster any fundamental resolution of these crises or their underlying causes.”

Furthermore, the San Francisco system, as a network of bilateral alliances, had the consequence — intended or not — of inhibiting the development of region-wide security institutions. Washington, Mastanduno (2003, 152) comments, has always regarded multilateral initiatives in Asia as supplements to rather than substitutes for its network of bilateral alliances. The regional institutions with a security focus that did develop — the ASEAN Regional Forum (established in 1994) and the East Asia Summit (established in 2005) — have frequently been criticized as being little more than talking shops in which well-rehearsed positions are repeatedly restated (Dibb 2002).

In the last decade, there have been increasing doubts regarding the capacity of a balance-of-power approach, as practised in Asia over the last half century, to continue to sustain a durable peace. Various developments have indicated that the region may be heading for the instability that authors in the realist tradition predicted at the end of the Cold War.

In criticizing the approaches that suggested that Asia would be prone to conflict in the post-Cold War era, David C. Kang (2003a, 62) identified a number of predictions in the literature that had not been realized: “the growing possibility of Japanese rearmament; increased Chinese adventurism spurred by China’s rising power and ostensibly revisionist intentions; conflict or war over the status of Taiwan; terrorist or missile attacks from a rogue North Korea against South Korea, Japan, or even the United States; and arms racing or even conflict in Southeast Asia, prompted in part by unresolved territorial disputes.” This assessment now seems premature. In July 2015, the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe pushed through legislation in the House of Representatives that revised the interpretation of the “pacifist” Article 9 of the constitution, permitting the deployment of Japanese military forces overseas if Japan or a close ally is attacked. In the last few years, the share of military expenditure in Japan’s GDP and budget has expanded. Japan’s moves are, in part, in response to the new assertiveness of China, especially in regard to the disputed Senkaku islands and its territorial claims in the South China Sea (SCS). China appears to have changed course after years in which it often appeared to go out of its way to assure countries in the region of its cooperative approach through proclaiming that it was following a path of “peaceful development,” and through what was characterized as a “charm offensive” (Kurlantzick 2007). The country’s newly assertive foreign policy and the nationalist stance adopted by the government of Xi Jinping have unnerved its neighbours. To be sure, the Taiwan issue has been quiescent during the period of Kuomintang rule in Taipei. However, the other realist predictions from a quarter of a century ago have contemporary resonance. The North Korean regime continues to develop its missile and nuclear technologies and shows little interest in the Six Party Talks. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, governments are investing unprecedented amounts in modernizing their armed forces and, in particular, in acquiring new force projection and offensive capabilities. Some countries have acquired submarine fleets for the first time (in January 2014, Vietnam took delivery of the first of six Kiloclass diesel-electric submarines purchased from Russia; Thailand and the Philippines have plans to purchase two and three submarines respectively; Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia have substantially strengthened their existing capabilities).

This context has ensured that the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” (subsequently retitled a “rebalancing” of US foreign policy) has been welcomed in many parts of the region. America’s traditional allies — the Philippines, Singapore and Australia — have all entered into agreements allowing US forces enhanced access to local bases. And in May 2015, Tokyo and Washington signed new Guidelines for US-Japan Defense Cooperation that permit Japanese forces to act when the United States or countries the United States is defending are attacked. In the same month, the United States sent a surveillance plane to challenge China’s assertiveness in the SCS amid reports that it planned to establish an air defence identification zone similar to the one that Beijing had proclaimed in the East China Sea. While the increased US presence has reassured some allies, it has caused concerns for others: South Korea, for instance, expressed alarm at the proposed expansion of Japan’s military role. Some commentators worry that the new US stance will reinforce divisions within the region, undermining attempts at cooperative security, and that by failing to accommodate China’s rise, will ultimately lead to a situation where countries are forced to choose between China and the United States (White 2012). Moreover, doubts remain on the sustainability of the US commitment beyond a Democrat presidency, given the isolationist sentiments of many Republican presidential contenders and a public opposed to the costs of US foreign engagement, and indeed the limits to US capacity to preserve a traditional balance of power and shape regional outcomes as China increasingly challenges its preponderance (Campbell, Patel, and Singh 2008).

Institutions and Elite Socialization: An “Asian” Approach to Regional Security

The second group of explanations for Asia’s long peace focus on unique characteristics of the regional security environment, in particular, on the manner in which Asian cultural norms shape diplomatic interactions and on the socializing role of regional institutions, especially ASEAN. In rejecting the pessimism of realist arguments that Asia is doomed to experience the power politics that produced conflict in the European arena, analysts start with the notion that the focus should be on what Barry Buzan and Ole Waever (2003) have termed “regional security complexes,” each of which has unique configurations of drivers of international interactions. Kang (2003b) makes the argument that Asian diplomatic history has been very different from that of the West, with order maintained for many centuries by a largely benign Chinese hegemony. Asian countries, therefore, may not be alarmed by China’s resumption of a dominant role in the region or seek to balance against it. Writers from a constructivist perspective emphasize instead the role that regional institutions have played in institutionalizing cooperation and in socializing elites into cooperative forms of interaction (Acharya 2001; Khong and Nesadurai 2007; Ba 2009).

Regional institutions, however, have not fared well over the last decade. ASEAN’s demand to be “in the driver’s seat” in Asian integration has increasingly come under challenge. It now faces significant competition from other institutions, some of which are based on a broader conception of region than East Asia alone. The East Asia Summit, for instance, which includes India, Russia, the United States and Oceania, has a security remit that overlaps with the ASEAN Regional Forum. Meanwhile, the US-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) divides ASEAN, with only four (Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam) of ASEAN’s 10 member states currently invited to participate in what Washington identifies as the core economic component of its “pivot” to Asia. The TPP competes with ASEAN’s own proposed economic grouping, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which builds on ASEAN relations with its “Plus One” partners (Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand). And, in the face of the “deep integration” promoted by the TPP, the ASEAN Economic Community looks superficial at best.

ASEAN has enjoyed little success in resolving conflicts among its own members or between them and other regional actors. Commentators have frequently noted that ASEAN’s strength has been in conflict avoidance rather than conflict resolution, that is, to distract from disputes in the hope that protagonists will find that the benefits from cooperation in other domains will outweigh anything that can be achieved through interstate conflict. The consequence is that some long-standing territorial disputes between ASEAN members continue to fester. One of the most notable is between Cambodia and Thailand, which brought two ASEAN countries closer to a significant military confrontation with one another than had occurred in the previous three decades. Even one of the best-known enthusiasts for ASEAN, Amitav Acharya (2013, 6), has acknowledged that ASEAN does not currently constitute a security community, that is, a grouping of states among whom war is unthinkable.

ASEAN has been unsuccessful in fashioning a consistent and coherent approach among its members to the most significant location of territorial contestation in the region, the SCS. Complicating matters for ASEAN is that not all of its members are claimants in the SCS, which makes it easier for Beijing to sustain its argument that negotiations should take place on a bilateral basis between it and individual ASEAN states rather than with ASEAN as a collectivity. Cambodia’s support for China’s position when it held the ASEAN chair in 2012 prevented the grouping from issuing a joint declaration on the SCS: in March 2015, the Cambodian prime minister, Hu Sen, explicitly endorsed the Chinese approach that denied a collective role to ASEAN (Sothanarith 2015).

ASEAN, in reality, has suffered a leadership deficit for much of the last two decades, starting from the coincidence of two developments: membership expansion and the Asian financial crisis. Laos and Myanmar became members of ASEAN in July 1997, exactly the time of the onset of the financial crisis (Cambodia joined two years later). Expanded membership exacerbated the diversity of the grouping — both economically, with the three new members being by far the poorest countries among ASEAN members (with per capita incomes only half of that of the Philippines, the next poorest country), and politically. At a time when most of the other countries in the region were moving, albeit at different speeds, toward democratization, expansion brought into the ASEAN fold one communist regime (Laos), a military dictatorship (Myanmar) and a state (Cambodia) headed by a former Khmer Rouge official that regularly records among the worst scores within the region on rule of law indices. The membership of these three regimes has stymied the efforts of the region’s democracies — most notably the Philippines and Indonesia — to have ASEAN take a stronger stance on human rights in its member states. The Asian financial crisis, meanwhile, led to the removal of the Soeharto regime in Indonesia, which had been the principal source of leadership in the grouping over the previous two decades (Smith 1999; The Economist 2012).

Economic Interdependence

For the third school of thought, the explanation for East Asia’s long peace lies in the incentive structure created by the manner of incorporation of East Asian countries into the global economy. Transformations in the character of economic interdependence have had a profound impact on interactions among states in East Asia because they have significantly increased the costs of interstate conflict. How groups conceive of their interests inevitably shapes the strategies that they adopt. In turn, the relationship between interests and ideas is one of multiple feedback loops.

Changes to East Asian economies’ integration in the global economy have both quantitative and qualitative dimensions. Trade became far more important for most East Asian economies over the last half century, but especially in the years between the mid-1980s and the global financial crisis. For a number of countries, the share of trade in GDP has failed to recover to the levels experienced in the first decade of the century — the exceptions being Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam (see Table 1).