Keynote Address by Professor Amitav Acharya to the Symposium on "Looking Forward: International Affairs in the Next Decade", organized by the Journal of International Service, American University, January 30, 2009.
Thank you for inviting me to deliver the keynote address at the Journal of International Service's 2009 Symposium on "Looking Forward: International Affairs in the Next Decade". I will give you more than what you had asked me to do, by commenting on international affairs not just of the next decade, but the next three decades.
What I am going to do today is to address a simple question: what sort of world are you going to live and work in as you consider and embark on a professional career? As you know, SIS is a professional school, it’s supposed to prepare you for a career in international affairs, such as the foreign service, national security establishments, international organizations, and non-governmental groups, etc. But even as a professional school, we give you sufficient grounding in theories in international relations. This is not only because we want at least some of you to pursue academic careers, but also because theory can act as templates or lenses for analyzing real world policy challenges and conceiving pathways to address them.
But I should start with the important caveat that IR scholars have a notoriously bad record when it comes to making predictions. Sometimes, it’s a failure to anticipate what is coming, at other times, it’s the failure of predictions that were actually made in scholarly writings. In the most striking recent example of the former, i.e., failure to anticipate what’s coming, there is no better example than the end of the Cold War. Nobody, realists, liberals or constructivists, had predicted the end of the Cold War. But neo-realism was particularly implicated. Kenneth Waltz, the leading light of neo-realism, had argued famously that bipolar international systems are more stable than multipolar ones. At first, Waltz meant by stability the degree of conflict and cooperation in a given international system. Later he revised the meaning of stability to imply the durability of the system. He was wrong on both counts. The Cold War was not really that stable in the first sense, especially if you are counting the number of conflicts, and the dead and injured in the developing world. He was also wrong about the durability of bipolarity. The Cold War lasted a lot less longer than the multipolar order of European great powers in the 19th century.
What about predictions about what the future holds? To be sure, most IR scholars generally shy away from making outright predictions about the future events. What they more commonly do is to identify and label new ‘moments’ or turning points in history. Hence we have formulations like the late Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’, Francis Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’, and assorted claims about the ‘liberal moment’, the ‘unipolar moment’, and now the onset of Richard Haas’ ‘nonpolarity’, Nial Fergusson’s ‘apolarity’. The Economist Magazines ‘neo-polarity’ and Fareed Zakaria’s ‘post-American World’. But even here, IR theory has a poor record. Liberals and constructivists have been less precise in their predictions, but their analysis of the future world order has also gone awry. [by the way, when Obama was running for President, he was seen with a copy of Fareed Zakaria’s book, entitled “the Post-American World’, and there was a comment from a conservative source: Obama is reading a book by a Muslim who wants the US to be destroyed.)
Anyway, both realism and liberalism gave rather optimistic accounts of the world order to come after the end of the Cold War. The ‘liberal moment’, exemplified in the democratic peace theory, George Bush senior’s New World Order slogan, and in a more extreme fashion, by Francis Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ thesis, has given way to liberal pessimism. Constructivism was associated with the Gorbachev’s ideational revolution, with the emergence of security communities in Western Europe and Southeast Asia where war becomes unthinkable, and the transformative impact of socialization and collective identity building. What we see instead is the resumption of the Russian-West rivalry, and the dark side of collective identity-building which fuels ethnic and religious conflicts.
Reviewing some of the popular and influential ideas about the future of world order since the end of the Cold War, I can only make the following conclusions:
1. The end of history versus clash of civilizations was a false debate. We now know, if any proof was really needed, only too well that civilizations cooperate as well clash. In the war on terror, there has been plenty of empathy and cooperation across civilizations, and plenty of divisions within them. Similarly the simplistic view that the end of the Cold War means a decisive and final triumph of market economics and liberal democracy over all other ideologies and approaches has been overtaken and discredited by a host of developments from the rise of China to the ongoing global financial crisis.
2. Neo-conservatism or the ideology of pursuing democracy promotion with a big stick, and disdaining multilateral cooperation in pursuing strategic goals, was overrated in terms of its durability and impact. The neo-cons are gone, hopefully for good, although not before causing much damage to global order and US credibility and leadership, which now needs to be repaired.
3. A more contentious question: is unipolarity ending and if so, will it have dangerous consequences for international stability? A recent article in National Interest Online (January 2009) by Chicago University Professor Robert Pape and entitled ‘Empire Falls’, argues that the United States is in unprecedented decline. Pape calculates that even before the economic downturn, the average rate of US growth has fallen from nearly 4% during the Clinton years to just over 2% during Bush. The US decline is of course relative, especially that to China. China’s share of world product had grown consistently by over 10%. Between 2000 and 2008, the US share of the World product measured in current US dollars fell by 32%, while that of China rose by 144%. A good deal, or nearly a quarter, of the decline is self-inflicted: spending on the Iraq War, tax cuts, current account deficits, etc. Other factors behind the US relative decline include the rise of China and the diffusion of technology around the world. Overall, Pape concludes, the US has experienced one of the most significant declines of any state since mid-19th century. This has the risk of causing dangerous international instability, as powers undergoing such decline tend to become targets of counterbalancing or even opportunistic aggression by rival powers and coalitions or face defeat from preventive wars initiated by themselves.
Can we accept this thesis, not just of the fact of the US decline, but its strategic consequences? First, even Pape concedes the US decline is stoppable and even reversible, with the right grand strategy. Can Obama administration pursue such a strategy? Here is a clue:
In Barrack Obama’s Dreams for my Father, on page 41, he recounts an incident where his young Barry Obama, after being attacked with a stone, by a class-mate, is taught self-defence by his Indonesian step father, Lolo. While the training goes on in the courtyard, with his mother watching from inside the house, Lolo says to little Barry Obama:
‘Better to be strong. If you can’t be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who is strong. But always be strong yourself.’
I am not sure how much President Barrack Obama’s worldview and foreign policy derives from young Barry Obama’s experience growing up in Indonesia. But what the above tells me is that the US under the Obama administration is not going to sit back and be overtaken by another power or bandwagon with another rising power.
Moreover, as Stephen Walt points out in his blog in the Foreign Policy Magazine, while the US relative power has declined, so have that of most other powers during this period, with the notable and significant exception of China.
And even if one accepts that the US is a declining superpower and that this is a long-term and irreversible phenomenon, what about its strategic consequences? This brings me to the subject of China’s rise, since China is the closest that any nation comes to being the peer-competitor to the United States.
Unlike Germany of the late 19th century, China is a status quo power. China does not seek to alter the existing international order by force. It’s a mistake to use European analogy, as Pape, like many other Western scholars before him have done, to anticipate how the rise of China might affect future international order. Just as Paper and others point to the diffusion of technology as a new factor undermining the relative US dominance, so we can also say that new instruments of regional and international governance, not available during the era of European global dominance, will come into play and some of them may prevent history from repeating itself.
These include the growing density of multilateral institutions. As Iain Johnston points out in his new book, Social States, China is today deeply engaged in the global regional multilateral structures. China is probably the first truly global power to emerge in an era of extensive and cross-cutting multilateral linkages. The entire history of European state-system could claim to have had only one, the European concert system of the early 19th century.
Contrary to the scenario sketched by Pape about the possible strategic consequences of the US decline and the end of unipolarity, let me discuss four key trends about what we might expect in the future:
1. The end of unipolarity will not usher in an era of great power wars, whether caused by opportunistic aggression against decline powers, or through the logic of power transition where a rising power squares off against a declining or status quo power. In fact there is a far greater likelihood of relative peace among the major global powers, including the West, Russia and China.
2. The main security challenges facing the world will be human insecurity challenges, including death and injury from internal conflicts, from hunger and disease, and from social and political consequences of rapid environmental degradation. Many of these dangers will be transnational dangers: they will arrive suddenly and unexpectedly, spread through linkages forged by globalization.
3. There will be no ‘back to the future in Europe’, under conditions of multipolarity, as John Mearsheimer had argued in his 1990 article in International Security in under the same title.
4. In Asia, the rise of China and Japan and India will pose major policy challenges and dilemmas for the US. But Asia will not be ‘Ripe for rivalry’, contrary to the thesis advanced by Aaron Friedberg, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser and professor at Princeton. Nor will Asia be the arena for vindicating Mearsheimer’s ‘Tragedy of Great Power Politics’.
Finally, instead of assessing the prospects for world order mainly in terms of material power, economic and military, we should accept that other factors, such as legitimacy, socialization and identity can also make a big difference. In this respect, something truly extraordinary has happened in this world and it has happened in the United States. The president of the world’s most powerful nation today has a resume and life history that includes a substantial period of his formative years growing up outside the United States. This was in far away Indonesia, where the ‘children of farmers, servants, and low-level bureaucrats’ became his ‘best friends,’ and whose Indonesian step father taught him how to eat dog meat (which he found tough) , snake meat (which he thought was tougher), and roasted grass hoppers (which are described as merely crunchy). I must confess that despite having grown up in a very remote rural corner of India, and having been to Indonesia numerous times, I have never eaten dog meat, snake meat or grasshoppers. In Indonesia, young Barry Obama also experienced first-hand the synthesis between religions and civilizations when introduced to a brand of Islam that made ‘room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths’. And in Indonesia, the future president of the United States had to face on a daily basis the burden of having to make a decision how to choose for giving money between various types of beggars that included ‘men, women, children, in tattered clothing matted with dirt, some without arms, others without feet, victims of scurvy, or polio or leprosy’. Since there would not be enough rupiah to go around, his mother had learned to be selective and devised a formula to ‘calibrate the levels of misery.’ His step father was less sentimental, he advised young Obama to save the money for himself so that he did not ‘end up on the street’ himself’.
I wonder how many Senators, and Congressmen/women, or even leaders of even developing countries can claim such childhood learning? What greater symbolism is there for the United States and its citizens to banish elitism and exceptionalism that sometimes comes with being the leading nation, or bury the clash of civilization thesis. What better time to embrace, multiculturalism, multiracialism, and multilateralism, human security and global governance?
So I end in an optimistic note, cautiously so, but nonetheless disagreeing with an overtly geopolitical zero-sum view of the world. Thank you for your attention.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Asian Conceptions of International Relations and Global Governance
Delivered at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, on 4th December 2008, as part of the S.T. Lee Project on Global Governance. The ideas presented in this paper draw upon a few previous writings by the author, especially “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?”, International Security (Spring 2004); Asia Rising: Who Is Leading? (World Scientific 2007), “Why is There no Non-Western International Relations Theory? Perspectives on and from Asia,” Special issue of International Relations of the Asia Pacific (2007) co-edited by Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan; and Whose Ideas Matter: Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism (Cornell University Press, 2009).
Argument and Caveats
“Has Asia been doing enough in leading the world opinion on how to manage, and in particular not to mismanage, the global challenges we face today, including that of terrorism, violence, and global injustice”, asked Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen at a forum in Bangkok in 2007. Sen was raising a fundamental question about Asia’s role in global governance. Extending his list of challenges to other issues such as climate change and financial volatility, the obvious answer to his question would be that Asia is doing more than before, but this is still far from enough. A key reason for this, I argue in this essay, is that leading Asian powers today are far more concerned with developing and legitimising their national power aspirations (using the traditional notions and means of international relations) than contributing to global or even regional governance. This disjuncture is not entirely surprising, but a debate over how to reconcile national aspirations with collective good is long overdue in Asia, and hopefully, this conference and project will offer some answers and pathways.
At a first glance, Asian conceptions of international relations and global governance are indeed changing in keeping with the region’s ascendancy in the world power structure. The early leaders of modern Asian states were preoccupied with bringing down colonial rule, protesting Western dominance of the international system, asserting their juridical sovereignty, and demanding economic concessions and aid from the West. Hence, their ideas about international relations centred on nationalism and what might be called ‘defensive sovereignty’. But if one takes the shift in world power to Asia as an incontrovertible fact or an irreversible trend, as Kishore Mahbubani has done in his The New Asian Hemisphere, then should not one expect Asian ideas about and approaches to international relations to change as well? One might expect that instead of defensive sovereignty, Asia will harness its economic and political achievements of recent decades to seek out a share of global leadership. This paper is an attempt to understand whether and to what extent such a shift might be taking place and its implications for global governance in the 21st century.
Some initial caveats about this paper are necessary. First, given the diversity of Asia, and differences over where its boundaries lie, it will be highly simplistic to speak of an Asian conception of international relations, world order or global governance. What this essay sets out to investigate instead is a plurality of ideas and approaches that can be found in Asia, both historically and in the contemporary context, and to ascertain both variations and commonalities among them. It is difficult enough to speak of an American conception of world order since the collapse of the American foreign policy consensus in the 1970s, or a European conception, despite the extraordinary recent progress of European integration. The notion of an Asian conception is even more problematic, given sharp contestations that exists over what Asia is and where to draw it regional and subregional boundaries.
Second, while it is more plausible to speak of national conceptions of, and approaches to international relations, they are not always representative of the nation itself. In authoritarian states, any ‘national’ ideas about statecraft and world order promoted by the ruling elite are not necessarily shared by the people. The worldviews of individual leaders, the ruling elite or governments are of course crucial. But perspectives from the society also matter. For example, Western conceptions of international relations theory are dominated by philosophers rather than policymakers. For every Machiavelli, (whose The Prince, one must be reminded, was written after he had been deposed as an official in the Florentine court), Kissinger, or Woodrow Wilson, there are dozens of Thucydides, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Morgenthau and Waltz, who were not members of the policymaking elite.
This leads to a third caveat: the general paucity of conceptual thinking in Asia about modern international relations and world order. To be sure, Asia has a rich classical intellectual heritage from which it can draw ideas about statecraft, and here the ideas from Kautilya, Confucius or religious traditions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam are especially important. But the conceptualization of international relations in the modern era has been especially thin. This can be explained by several factors, beginning with the superimposition of the essentially European (Westphalian) ideas about sovereignty and statecraft (such as balance of power) on Asian leaders and intellectuals as a result of colonialism and decolonisation. This not only had the effect of suppressing indigenous thinking, based on historical ideas about governance, statecraft and interstate relations within the region, but also shaped Asian conceptions of international relations as little more than reactions to, and localization of, Western concepts.
Compounding this state of affairs is the fact that the study and training of international relations in classrooms around Asia discourages and disparages long-term conceptual thinking and theoretical work in favour of policy-oriented research geared to the immediate needs of governments (Acharya and Buzan 2007). At the same time, Western ideas and theories of international relations have acquired a hegemonic status, and West retains an overwhelming dominance in terms of intellectual resources (academics, especially theorists of international relations, journals, publishing houses and venues of free and inclusive debate) that are essential to the creative formulations and dissemination of ideas and concepts of international relations. With very few exceptions, Asians have made a far less conceptual contribution to the study of international relations than Western scholars and analysts to the state of international relations and future of world order.
Indeed, some of the concepts that we associate with Asia and use to explain Asian political and economic dynamics have been coined and conceptualized by Western scholars. For example, the concept that launched the debate over globalisation and global governance in Asia, the so-called ‘East Asian model’ of economic development focusing on the role of the state in creating market-friendly development policies, was largely coined and elaborated by Western scholars.
Finally, national role conceptions and ideas about world order are not a given or constant, but are shaped and reshaped continually by domestic and external developments, including economic growth, war and economic crises. While this holds true anywhere, in a rapidly transforming region like Asia, where the most dramatic shift in the world economic and military power is taking place, change is more regular and perhaps even more fundamental. For example, Chinese, Indian and even Japanese role conceptions of international relations and world order have changed in significant ways since the early post-Second World War period, in keeping with changes in their domestic politics, economic capacity and policy, and the impact of external developments such as the end of the Cold War. India has abandoned its non-alignment concept, and more arguably, moved significantly away from the entire Nehruvian approach. Some analysts describe Indian foreign and security policy today more in tune with the realist approach to international relations. China has moved past the tenets of Maoist socialist internationalism to embrace a worldview that is best described as neo-Westphalianism. The shift occurring in Japan is from post-War pacifism to becoming a “normal state”.
Asian Conceptions of International Relations: Towards Convergence?
International relations theory accommodates a range of perspectives on world order and global governance. The most important of these are realism and liberalism (which incorporates elements of idealism). For Realists, international relations is a highly competitive game driven by considerations of national interest and relative gain and where war remains a constant possibility with genuine international cooperation highly improbable. Liberals take a more optimistic view, believing that conflict can be mitigated through the pacific effects of economic interdependence, international institutions and shared democratic governance.
But these categories, which draw mostly from Western philosophical thinking, and reflect Western historical experience, do not do justice to the ‘maverick’ or eclectic perspectives of many Asian leaders. For example, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru was foremost among those nationalist leaders whose ideas about world order were eminently compatible with Wilsonian liberal internationalism. Burma’s leader Aung San was a self-professed internationalist (“I am an internationalist, but an internationalist who does not all [allow] himself to be swept off the firm Earth”) who championed economic interdependence and regional integration in Asia (“The one fact from which no nation, big or small, can escape is the increasing universal interdependence of nations. A free and independent Burma is quite ready to enter into any arrangement with other nations for common welfare and security etc.”) – a far cry from the self-imposed autarchy and isolationism of the latter military junta. But Nehru’s critics in Asia, such as Carlos Romulo of the Philippines, who accused him of being a ‘starry-eyed idealist’, were not necessarily people who, as a realist might expect, dismissed regional and international cooperation. Romulo was actually an active champion of regional multilateral institutions. Realism, as some academic analysts argue, may well be the dominant mode of thinking among Asia’s policymaking elite, but this has not prevented Asian states from engaging in multilateral cooperation at the global and increasingly, regional levels, as the case of Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, foremost among Asia’s realist statesmen, attests.
Perhaps a better way to look at post-War Asian thinking on international relations is to assess how Asian states related to an international order which was practically an extension of the ‘European international society’ and was overwhelmingly dominated by the West. Here, despite some early rhetoric on Asian unity, there remained significant differences within the region, which I would label as conformist, revisionist, and adaptive.
The classic conformist nation was Japan, the first Asian nation to modernize by imitating the West. Because of its economic accomplishments and military power, Meiji Japan was granted limited entry into the European international society as a ‘civilised’ nation, a status that was denied to the European colonies in Asia, such as India. To be sure, Japan did turn against Western powers when its effort to dominate its own immediate Asian neighbourhood was challenged. But post-war Japan, despite its distinct cultural-political style and a plurality of voices within its academic institutions (Marxism was a strong force there), retained a largely conformist posture in the international system, accepting Western ideas, rules and institutions and becoming a significant financial stakeholder in them. Japan might not have been the ‘yes-man’ of Asia, but it was certainly not, and still not, a ‘Japan that can say no’.
This was especially in contrast to communist China, which occupied the other end of the spectrum as Asia’s leading revisionist power. China under the nationalist regime started out as a conformist nation, but communist China was a different story. “From its birth date,” writes Chinese historian Chen Jian, “Mao's China challenged the Western powers in general and the United States in particular by questioning and, consequently, negating the legitimacy of the ‘norms of international relations’”.
India remained somewhere in between, and its position may be best described as an adaptive one. Jawaharlal Nehru rejected European style power politics and was especially scathing on the realist prescriptions about international order which, as proposed in the 1940s by Nicholas Spykman, Winston Churchill and Walter Lippman, would have divided the world into a series of regional blocs each under a great power’s leadership (including one under India itself). Instead, Nehru would propose what he called a ‘world association’ of states that recognized the essential equality of states. But Nehru never went too far in his critique of Western dominance or in pushing for the creation of an anti-Western bloc in Asia, a fact recognised and appreciated by Britain (but not the US). He kept the tone of the Asian Relations Conference of 1947 (of which he was the chief organizer) or the Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung in 1955 (of which he was a co-sponsor) remarkably moderate. Nehru defended the United Nations, and for all his early championing of Asian unity and shepherding of communist China, disagreed with Chou En-lai at Bandung when the latter proposed a permanent regional association of Asian and African countries to serve China’s need at a time when it was not recognized by the UN. Nehru’s concept of “non-involvement’ (which later fused into the broader doctrine of ‘non-alignment”) was practically an adaptive extension (which I would call ‘localization’ see Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter, 2009) of the Western principle of non-intervention at a time when the two superpowers were violating the doctrine with impunity.
The predicament and position of Southeast Asian nations was closer to India’s than to China’s or Japan’s. They were willing to live within the existing system of international governance which preserved their independence. With the brief revisionist posture of Sukarno in the 1960s when he withdrew Indonesia from the UN and flirted his own ideas about ‘old established forces’ (OLDEFOS) and ‘new emerging forces (NEFOS), and that of communist Vietnam in the 1970s and 80s, Southeast Asian states have generally accepted the rules and norms of the international system, especially non-interference, diplomatic interdependence and sovereignty equality of states. Burma’s Aung San and U Nu exemplified this thinking in the early period, and later, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations spearheaded the emergence of a regional international society based on adaptations of these rules.
The divergent attitudes and responses of Asia’s key nations towards the existing international order meant significant intra-regional differences over how to organize the region and the world at large. Japan’s sense of cultural and political supremacy as Asia’s first modernising nation had underpinned its quest for an East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. But while Japan’s initial military victories over Western powers inspired Asian nationalists, its Japanese idea of an exclusionary regional economic and political bloc did not. Thus, Aung San after flirting for a while with the Japan’s East Asian co-prosperity sphere idea would declare: “a new Asian order…will not and must not be one like the Co-prosperity Sphere of militarist Japan, nor should it be another Asiatic Monroe doctrine, nor imperial preference or currency bloc.”
Wide differences emerged over the philosophy of international economic relations, such as between China and Japan (the undisputed leader of East Asia’s market economies). India’s economic approach had more in common with socialist China than with democratic Japan. One offshoot of the divergent positions of Asia’s three major powers was that none would be able to lead an Asian regional organisation. After World War II doomed Japan’s effort to create an East Asian bloc, Nationalist China and Nehruvian India in a competitive way and India and communist China in a more cooperative manner were central actors in a period from 1947 to 1955 when Asia tried to develop a regional multilateral grouping. But neither would succeed, conceding the ground to ASEAN, which emerged and survived precisely because it was not led by any of the three great Asian powers. This rejection of great power leadership could become a norm of Asian regional governance.
Has matters changed? The end of the Cold War, a common adherence to state-supported capitalist economic development, and the emergence of Asia-wide multilateral regional groupings like the ARF and East Asian Summit has effectively put an end to the conformist-revisionist-adaptive divide. The differences between Japan, China, India, ASEAN countries over concepts and approaches to economic development are hardly fundamental. In foreign policy terms, India by abandoning Nehruvian non-alignment and China similarly ditching Maoism have moved closer to Japan’s position. Globally, all Asian powers, China included, are status quo powers. All have embraced ASEAN-led multilateralism in the region. Ironically, it was the US under the Bush administration which seemed the least conformist power in relation to a world order and governance structure that it had played a central role in creating.
This apparent convergence of worldviews and approaches does not, however, mean Asian powers share a common view of global governance and how to reform it. Realists argue that the simultaneous rise of India and China and their respective moves beyond non-aligned and socialist ideologies may actually mean greater competition, rather than cooperation between them. As C. Raja Mohan argues, India and China have become essentially similar players in the international system, both are aspiring great powers who are equally willing to assert their national interest, increase their power and influence in the world at large, and resort to the use of force in international relations. Realists see distinct prospects for an intensified security dilemma in 21st century Asia not unlike what Europe experienced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Moreover, there remain important areas of diversity in contemporary Asian thinking on the relationship between democracy and regional stability and international order. While Asian leaders have generally accepted the liberal view that economic interdependence is a force for peace and that international (including regional) institutions are useful if not powerful instruments for managing regional order, sharp divisions remain over the role of democracy: whether democracy promotes development (the Lee Kuan Yew versus Fidel Ramos debate in the 1980s), whether democracy is at all a suitable political arrangement for Asia (Lee Kuan Yew versus Kim Dae Jung in Foreign Affairs) and whether democracy is a force of national and regional stability or a prescription for violence and disorder (for a review see: Acharya, Asia Rising)
Against this backdrop, what is prospect for Asian approach to reform of global governance?
Global and Regional Governance in an Era of Rising Asia
It is in China, rather than in Japan or India, that a good deal of conceptual thinking in Asia about the future of international order has taken place, both official and semi-official (academic) levels. This is partly in response to the international community’s doubts and misgivings about China’s global role following its spectacular ascent, doubts that are less pronounced in relation to the role of Japan or India. Unsurprisingly therefore, Chinese thinking on international relations today is to a large extent an attempt to legitimise the rise of China as a fundamentally positive force in international relations.
China’s initial conceptualisation of the post-Cold War order was to view it as a multipolar one. Consider the following statement posted at the Chinese Foreign Ministry Website in 2000:
Since the end of the Cold War, the world has moved towards multi-polarity, and the international situation on the whole has become more relaxed. This is an objective tendency independent of people's will, reflecting the trend of the development of the present era. Multi-polarization on the whole helps weaken and curb hegemonism and power politics, serves to bring about a just and equitable new international political and economic order and contributes to world peace and development.
But the concept of multi-polarization was dampened by the US victory over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 and the advent of the so-called ‘unipolar moment’. This led some Chinese to modify their position by recognising what they called ‘uni-multipolarity’. At the same time, Chinese policy and academic discourse (the two are often inseparable) developed its thesis about China’s ‘peaceful rise’, thereby rejecting the neorealist ideas of power transition or the ‘tragedy of great power politics’ (the title of John Mearsheimer’s well-known book).
In terms global governance, Chinese attitude towards multilateralism has changed. China has moved a fair distance from being a revisionist power to being Zoellick’s ‘responsible stakeholder’ for which its ASEAN neighbours, especially ASEAN, can take some credit. And in Iain Johnston’s words, China is not only a ‘status quo power’ but also a ‘social state’. Johnston finds China despite its initial suspicion of multilateralism, has now embraced it thanks to a socialization process through international and regional institutions. At the regional level, China, once a sceptic of multilateral security through the ARF, has emerged as an active participant. In Chinese academia, efforts are ongoing to develop a ‘Chinese school of international relations’ based partly on the historical features of the old tributary system, and what Fairbank had called the ‘Chinese world order’ (See Qin Yaqin’s article “Why is there no Chinese IR Theory”, in Acharya and Buzan, 2007).
Leadership is a key element of global governance and China retains an ambiguous attitude towards the question of leadership. (See Acharya, Asia Rising, Chapter on ‘Can China Lead?’) Deng Xiaoping’s dictum that “China should not lead” continues to be echoed in China’s recent reluctance to take the lead in allowing its ample financial resources play a direct role in alleviating the impact of the global financial crisis. Hence the argument from President Hun Jintao:
The Chinese economy is increasingly interconnected with the global economy…China’s sound economic growth is in itself a major contribution to global financial stability and economic growth. This is why we must first and foremost run our own affairs well. (Japan Times 11 November 2008)
China has been less reticent in assuming a regional leadership, as exemplified in its promotion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the East Asian Community. But even here China has been a cautious exponent, backtracking in the face of resistance to any real or imagined effort on its past to drive the membership and agenda of the larger East Asian institutions.
No comparable conceptual discourse underpins Japan’s attitude towards global governance today, at least at the official level. One possible exception is the idea ‘normal statehood’ for Japan promoted by Koizumi and elaborated by Japanese scholars such as Takashi Inoguchi. Koizumi’s purpose was strategic, i.e. to use the concept to counter and dilute some of the constitutional limits on Japanese diplomacy and power projection at a time when Japan was under pressure to do more for the US-Japan alliance, than to use it as the basis of redefining Japanese approach to global governance. But as a Japanese ambassador to Canada, comparing normal state with the notion of ‘middle power’, put it, ‘a "normal state" meant a state that is not only interested in its own security and prosperity, but also contributes proactively to international peace, security and prosperity.’ Inoguchi finds links Japan’s normal state quest with its desire and capacity ability to provide leadership in global governance. As he put it, ‘The globalization of governance entails more integrated markets, the global diffusion of military weapons, and the global permeation of public elite culture…Astute, articulate and agile leaders must always be mindful of domestic audiences and yet must act globally – and decisively.” This requires Japan to move beyond its post-war constitutional constraints. Importantly, Inoguchi cites the Japanese naval deployment to the Indian Ocean to support US operations in West Asia as one example of normal statehood, along side regional trade negotiations.
When he was foreign minister, the current Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso spoke of Japan as a “thought leader” of Asian regionalism, hence of regional governance. Another former foreign minister, Taro Nakayama, actually brokered ideas about turning the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conferences into the ASEAN Regional Forum, but he was drawing on ideas already circulating in Asia-Pacific second track dialogues than espousing an entirely original formula. Japanese contribution to concepts of regional governance has been more substantive; Japanese intellectuals such as Professor Kojima were pioneers of the Pacific Community concept in the 1970s and 80s. The 1997 Japanese proposal to develop an Asian Monetary Fund (which some saw as a challenge to the authority of the IMF) might seem to have been an exception, but the Japanese initiative faded quickly in the face of strong US opposition. Japan has actively sought a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, and is willing to collaborate with India (whom it has in the past defeated in a bid for a temporary seat), but its is not clear whether this move reflects a any genuine desire to change the basic rules of the global multilateral system or simply to win itself due recognition for its abundant financial and other contributions to the UN system. Takashi Inoguchi (in Acharya and Buzan, 2007) is right in arguing that Japan has “become one of the major rule makers relinquishing the role of a rule taker in global governance in a number of policy areas.” Among the niche areas he identifies in the academic arena are attempts to reconcile different conceptions of human rights, developing “rules and norms of transnational business transactions”, and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. But none of these represents a fundamental rethinking of the contemporary global governance structure. In short, Japan continues to be a conformist status quo power. And in the current global financial turmoil, while Japan has offered to strengthen the IMF’s coffers, Premier Aso, like the Chinese leadership, has indicated that ‘Japan’s primary responsibility lies in invigorating its own economy…this would be the most immediately effective contribution that Japan can deliver.” (Japan Times, 11 November 2008)
In India’s case, the demise of non-alignment has not been replaced by any broad organising framework, developed at official or academic levels, to describe and guide its international relations. In his Crossing the Rubicon, C. Raja Mohan argued that India under the BJP government might be reverting to a Curzonian view of geopolitics, replacing Nehruvian idealism. The Curzonian approach assumed Indian centrality in Asia, and envisaged a proactive Indian role in staibilizing Asia as a whole. The end of the BJP government might have slowed if not ended that transition, but Indian power projection in both western and eastern Indian Ocean areas is growing. But while India will not revert to non-alignment, even under a Sino-US bipolar system should it materialise, Nehruvian thinking is not entirely dead or out of date in India. I would argue that Nehruvian thinking, if not his approach to China, partly explains why India, while implicitly embracing the role of a ‘regional balancer” vis-à-vis China, avoids any outright containment of China or offers unconditional support to the US strategic framework vis-à-vis China.
Indian conceptions of global governance are likely to reflect its interest in legitimising its relative power position in the international system that comes through respectable growth rates, info-tech power, nuclear weapons capability and space dreams (now a partial reality). Like Japan, India has sought a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, a dream that seems destined to remain unfulfilled for some time. It has done better through the G-20 forum, but even there, there does not seem to be any obvious Indian ideas or imprint that may inspire the reform and restructuring of the global multilateral order.
Within Asia itself, India has returned to the fold of Asian regionalism, but in stark contrast to the Nehru era, India’s role today is that of a follower, rather than as a leader. And its regional involvement is much stronger in its economic dimension than in its political and security one, even though it remains excluded from APEC.
Although China, Japan and India are among the biggest players in the global economy today and they are also rapidly developing their military power, Asia continues to offer little leadership in world affairs. The present economic crisis may enable China, India and even Indonesia to assume a greater role in global economic governance through their participation in the G-20. But whether the G-20 will develop concrete institutional capacity or even emerge as a viable and permanent global institution sharing decision-making and agenda-setting powers from the G-7 and the Bretton Woods institutions is far from clear.
Nor is there any natural leader of Asia in managing the region’s own economic and security problems. Legitimacy deficit (sometimes for historical reasons, e,g, pre-war Japanese imperialism, communist Chinese subversion, and Indian diplomatic arrogance) and mutual rivalry, if not resource capacity, prevent Japan, China and India from assuming leadership in dealing with common challenges such as terrorism, climate change, pandemics and internal conflicts.
For example, China, largely out of strategic considerations, has not been supportive of the bids by India and Japan to acquire a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. If Europe can have two members of UNSC, (and a third, Germany, whose membership is not objected to by France and Britain), why not Asia? After all, such a development would be supportive of China’s own ‘multi-polarization’ concept.
Finally, Asian thinking on global governance can not be isolated from the development of Asian regional governance. There is a general sense in Asia that regional institutions here are distinctive from those in Europe, in the sense that they are more informal and non-legalistic. There is general agreement among the Asian participants to keep Asian multilateral institutions loose and sovereignty-bound. But differences exist over membership of regional institutions, especially the East Asian Summit and the idea of an East Asian Community. Japan opposed China’s desire to keep the EAS exclusively East Asian, and in response, China is seeking to develop an East Asian Community out of the ASEAN Plus Three, rather than the broader EAS. While Asian regional groups have performed better in engaging China than their European counterparts in engaging Russia (See author’s keynote speech, ‘Regional Worlds in a Post-Hegemonic Era,’ to the 3rd GARNET Annual Conference, Bordeaux, 17-20 September 2008), there remains significant doubts about their ability to cope with global and transnational challenges without a significant shift to the neo-Westphalian mindset of their leadership.
Conclusion
“China, Japan can help by helping themselves’, ran the headline of a Japan Times commentary by journalist Frank Ching on Chinese and Japanese responses to the latest global financial crisis (Japan Times, 11 November 2008). (Admittedly, why should they go out of their way to correct a crisis caused by America’s folly?) These responses are remarkably revealing. What they tell us is that while Asian conceptions of international relations are no longer a defensive or confrontational reaction to Western dominance, there is a perceptible and growing gap between Asia’s rise in terms of the traditional power indices of international relations and its role in global governance. The gap may be explained partly by resentment against Western resistance to the desire of Asian countries to increase their influence over global institutions commensurate with their rise in the global power structure. But it is a fair guess whether a larger say over global institutions will yield a great willingness on the part of Asian powers to go beyond their ‘helping others by helping themselves” mindset. There is also little question that intra-Asian differences and rivalries stifle Asia’s bid to assume a greater share of the leadership in the global governance structure.
Changing national role conceptions, such as China’s ‘multi-polarization’ and ‘peaceful rise’, Japan’s ‘normal state’, and more questionably, India’s shift from Nehru to Curzon, are not authentic concepts of global governance, but are efforts at redefining the status of these Asian powers in the emerging international order. Such conceptual thinking is closely tied to the power aspirations and policy imperatives of the Asian great powers. The desire for increasing its representation in, and share of leadership of, global institutions is growing in Asia. But with few exceptions, there is no coherent Asian thinking on global governance and the equivalent of the European discourse that redefines EU’s global role as that of a ‘normative power’. For such a role conception to develop, Asia needs to overcome its internal divisions and competition, and engage in greater self-reflection and long-term conceptual debate and thinking. There is no unitary Asian view of international relations and there never will be one. But ideas found in the writings of some of the people at this workshop, such as The New Asian Hemisphere or The Quest for World Order (which outlines Tommy Koh’ ‘pragmatic idealism’), and what might emerge from the ST Lee project may be an excellent step in exploring a more proactive and positive conception of Asia’s role in global governance.
(This is a synopsis only. References to be provided later)
Argument and Caveats
“Has Asia been doing enough in leading the world opinion on how to manage, and in particular not to mismanage, the global challenges we face today, including that of terrorism, violence, and global injustice”, asked Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen at a forum in Bangkok in 2007. Sen was raising a fundamental question about Asia’s role in global governance. Extending his list of challenges to other issues such as climate change and financial volatility, the obvious answer to his question would be that Asia is doing more than before, but this is still far from enough. A key reason for this, I argue in this essay, is that leading Asian powers today are far more concerned with developing and legitimising their national power aspirations (using the traditional notions and means of international relations) than contributing to global or even regional governance. This disjuncture is not entirely surprising, but a debate over how to reconcile national aspirations with collective good is long overdue in Asia, and hopefully, this conference and project will offer some answers and pathways.
At a first glance, Asian conceptions of international relations and global governance are indeed changing in keeping with the region’s ascendancy in the world power structure. The early leaders of modern Asian states were preoccupied with bringing down colonial rule, protesting Western dominance of the international system, asserting their juridical sovereignty, and demanding economic concessions and aid from the West. Hence, their ideas about international relations centred on nationalism and what might be called ‘defensive sovereignty’. But if one takes the shift in world power to Asia as an incontrovertible fact or an irreversible trend, as Kishore Mahbubani has done in his The New Asian Hemisphere, then should not one expect Asian ideas about and approaches to international relations to change as well? One might expect that instead of defensive sovereignty, Asia will harness its economic and political achievements of recent decades to seek out a share of global leadership. This paper is an attempt to understand whether and to what extent such a shift might be taking place and its implications for global governance in the 21st century.
Some initial caveats about this paper are necessary. First, given the diversity of Asia, and differences over where its boundaries lie, it will be highly simplistic to speak of an Asian conception of international relations, world order or global governance. What this essay sets out to investigate instead is a plurality of ideas and approaches that can be found in Asia, both historically and in the contemporary context, and to ascertain both variations and commonalities among them. It is difficult enough to speak of an American conception of world order since the collapse of the American foreign policy consensus in the 1970s, or a European conception, despite the extraordinary recent progress of European integration. The notion of an Asian conception is even more problematic, given sharp contestations that exists over what Asia is and where to draw it regional and subregional boundaries.
Second, while it is more plausible to speak of national conceptions of, and approaches to international relations, they are not always representative of the nation itself. In authoritarian states, any ‘national’ ideas about statecraft and world order promoted by the ruling elite are not necessarily shared by the people. The worldviews of individual leaders, the ruling elite or governments are of course crucial. But perspectives from the society also matter. For example, Western conceptions of international relations theory are dominated by philosophers rather than policymakers. For every Machiavelli, (whose The Prince, one must be reminded, was written after he had been deposed as an official in the Florentine court), Kissinger, or Woodrow Wilson, there are dozens of Thucydides, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Morgenthau and Waltz, who were not members of the policymaking elite.
This leads to a third caveat: the general paucity of conceptual thinking in Asia about modern international relations and world order. To be sure, Asia has a rich classical intellectual heritage from which it can draw ideas about statecraft, and here the ideas from Kautilya, Confucius or religious traditions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam are especially important. But the conceptualization of international relations in the modern era has been especially thin. This can be explained by several factors, beginning with the superimposition of the essentially European (Westphalian) ideas about sovereignty and statecraft (such as balance of power) on Asian leaders and intellectuals as a result of colonialism and decolonisation. This not only had the effect of suppressing indigenous thinking, based on historical ideas about governance, statecraft and interstate relations within the region, but also shaped Asian conceptions of international relations as little more than reactions to, and localization of, Western concepts.
Compounding this state of affairs is the fact that the study and training of international relations in classrooms around Asia discourages and disparages long-term conceptual thinking and theoretical work in favour of policy-oriented research geared to the immediate needs of governments (Acharya and Buzan 2007). At the same time, Western ideas and theories of international relations have acquired a hegemonic status, and West retains an overwhelming dominance in terms of intellectual resources (academics, especially theorists of international relations, journals, publishing houses and venues of free and inclusive debate) that are essential to the creative formulations and dissemination of ideas and concepts of international relations. With very few exceptions, Asians have made a far less conceptual contribution to the study of international relations than Western scholars and analysts to the state of international relations and future of world order.
Indeed, some of the concepts that we associate with Asia and use to explain Asian political and economic dynamics have been coined and conceptualized by Western scholars. For example, the concept that launched the debate over globalisation and global governance in Asia, the so-called ‘East Asian model’ of economic development focusing on the role of the state in creating market-friendly development policies, was largely coined and elaborated by Western scholars.
Finally, national role conceptions and ideas about world order are not a given or constant, but are shaped and reshaped continually by domestic and external developments, including economic growth, war and economic crises. While this holds true anywhere, in a rapidly transforming region like Asia, where the most dramatic shift in the world economic and military power is taking place, change is more regular and perhaps even more fundamental. For example, Chinese, Indian and even Japanese role conceptions of international relations and world order have changed in significant ways since the early post-Second World War period, in keeping with changes in their domestic politics, economic capacity and policy, and the impact of external developments such as the end of the Cold War. India has abandoned its non-alignment concept, and more arguably, moved significantly away from the entire Nehruvian approach. Some analysts describe Indian foreign and security policy today more in tune with the realist approach to international relations. China has moved past the tenets of Maoist socialist internationalism to embrace a worldview that is best described as neo-Westphalianism. The shift occurring in Japan is from post-War pacifism to becoming a “normal state”.
Asian Conceptions of International Relations: Towards Convergence?
International relations theory accommodates a range of perspectives on world order and global governance. The most important of these are realism and liberalism (which incorporates elements of idealism). For Realists, international relations is a highly competitive game driven by considerations of national interest and relative gain and where war remains a constant possibility with genuine international cooperation highly improbable. Liberals take a more optimistic view, believing that conflict can be mitigated through the pacific effects of economic interdependence, international institutions and shared democratic governance.
But these categories, which draw mostly from Western philosophical thinking, and reflect Western historical experience, do not do justice to the ‘maverick’ or eclectic perspectives of many Asian leaders. For example, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru was foremost among those nationalist leaders whose ideas about world order were eminently compatible with Wilsonian liberal internationalism. Burma’s leader Aung San was a self-professed internationalist (“I am an internationalist, but an internationalist who does not all [allow] himself to be swept off the firm Earth”) who championed economic interdependence and regional integration in Asia (“The one fact from which no nation, big or small, can escape is the increasing universal interdependence of nations. A free and independent Burma is quite ready to enter into any arrangement with other nations for common welfare and security etc.”) – a far cry from the self-imposed autarchy and isolationism of the latter military junta. But Nehru’s critics in Asia, such as Carlos Romulo of the Philippines, who accused him of being a ‘starry-eyed idealist’, were not necessarily people who, as a realist might expect, dismissed regional and international cooperation. Romulo was actually an active champion of regional multilateral institutions. Realism, as some academic analysts argue, may well be the dominant mode of thinking among Asia’s policymaking elite, but this has not prevented Asian states from engaging in multilateral cooperation at the global and increasingly, regional levels, as the case of Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, foremost among Asia’s realist statesmen, attests.
Perhaps a better way to look at post-War Asian thinking on international relations is to assess how Asian states related to an international order which was practically an extension of the ‘European international society’ and was overwhelmingly dominated by the West. Here, despite some early rhetoric on Asian unity, there remained significant differences within the region, which I would label as conformist, revisionist, and adaptive.
The classic conformist nation was Japan, the first Asian nation to modernize by imitating the West. Because of its economic accomplishments and military power, Meiji Japan was granted limited entry into the European international society as a ‘civilised’ nation, a status that was denied to the European colonies in Asia, such as India. To be sure, Japan did turn against Western powers when its effort to dominate its own immediate Asian neighbourhood was challenged. But post-war Japan, despite its distinct cultural-political style and a plurality of voices within its academic institutions (Marxism was a strong force there), retained a largely conformist posture in the international system, accepting Western ideas, rules and institutions and becoming a significant financial stakeholder in them. Japan might not have been the ‘yes-man’ of Asia, but it was certainly not, and still not, a ‘Japan that can say no’.
This was especially in contrast to communist China, which occupied the other end of the spectrum as Asia’s leading revisionist power. China under the nationalist regime started out as a conformist nation, but communist China was a different story. “From its birth date,” writes Chinese historian Chen Jian, “Mao's China challenged the Western powers in general and the United States in particular by questioning and, consequently, negating the legitimacy of the ‘norms of international relations’”.
India remained somewhere in between, and its position may be best described as an adaptive one. Jawaharlal Nehru rejected European style power politics and was especially scathing on the realist prescriptions about international order which, as proposed in the 1940s by Nicholas Spykman, Winston Churchill and Walter Lippman, would have divided the world into a series of regional blocs each under a great power’s leadership (including one under India itself). Instead, Nehru would propose what he called a ‘world association’ of states that recognized the essential equality of states. But Nehru never went too far in his critique of Western dominance or in pushing for the creation of an anti-Western bloc in Asia, a fact recognised and appreciated by Britain (but not the US). He kept the tone of the Asian Relations Conference of 1947 (of which he was the chief organizer) or the Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung in 1955 (of which he was a co-sponsor) remarkably moderate. Nehru defended the United Nations, and for all his early championing of Asian unity and shepherding of communist China, disagreed with Chou En-lai at Bandung when the latter proposed a permanent regional association of Asian and African countries to serve China’s need at a time when it was not recognized by the UN. Nehru’s concept of “non-involvement’ (which later fused into the broader doctrine of ‘non-alignment”) was practically an adaptive extension (which I would call ‘localization’ see Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter, 2009) of the Western principle of non-intervention at a time when the two superpowers were violating the doctrine with impunity.
The predicament and position of Southeast Asian nations was closer to India’s than to China’s or Japan’s. They were willing to live within the existing system of international governance which preserved their independence. With the brief revisionist posture of Sukarno in the 1960s when he withdrew Indonesia from the UN and flirted his own ideas about ‘old established forces’ (OLDEFOS) and ‘new emerging forces (NEFOS), and that of communist Vietnam in the 1970s and 80s, Southeast Asian states have generally accepted the rules and norms of the international system, especially non-interference, diplomatic interdependence and sovereignty equality of states. Burma’s Aung San and U Nu exemplified this thinking in the early period, and later, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations spearheaded the emergence of a regional international society based on adaptations of these rules.
The divergent attitudes and responses of Asia’s key nations towards the existing international order meant significant intra-regional differences over how to organize the region and the world at large. Japan’s sense of cultural and political supremacy as Asia’s first modernising nation had underpinned its quest for an East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. But while Japan’s initial military victories over Western powers inspired Asian nationalists, its Japanese idea of an exclusionary regional economic and political bloc did not. Thus, Aung San after flirting for a while with the Japan’s East Asian co-prosperity sphere idea would declare: “a new Asian order…will not and must not be one like the Co-prosperity Sphere of militarist Japan, nor should it be another Asiatic Monroe doctrine, nor imperial preference or currency bloc.”
Wide differences emerged over the philosophy of international economic relations, such as between China and Japan (the undisputed leader of East Asia’s market economies). India’s economic approach had more in common with socialist China than with democratic Japan. One offshoot of the divergent positions of Asia’s three major powers was that none would be able to lead an Asian regional organisation. After World War II doomed Japan’s effort to create an East Asian bloc, Nationalist China and Nehruvian India in a competitive way and India and communist China in a more cooperative manner were central actors in a period from 1947 to 1955 when Asia tried to develop a regional multilateral grouping. But neither would succeed, conceding the ground to ASEAN, which emerged and survived precisely because it was not led by any of the three great Asian powers. This rejection of great power leadership could become a norm of Asian regional governance.
Has matters changed? The end of the Cold War, a common adherence to state-supported capitalist economic development, and the emergence of Asia-wide multilateral regional groupings like the ARF and East Asian Summit has effectively put an end to the conformist-revisionist-adaptive divide. The differences between Japan, China, India, ASEAN countries over concepts and approaches to economic development are hardly fundamental. In foreign policy terms, India by abandoning Nehruvian non-alignment and China similarly ditching Maoism have moved closer to Japan’s position. Globally, all Asian powers, China included, are status quo powers. All have embraced ASEAN-led multilateralism in the region. Ironically, it was the US under the Bush administration which seemed the least conformist power in relation to a world order and governance structure that it had played a central role in creating.
This apparent convergence of worldviews and approaches does not, however, mean Asian powers share a common view of global governance and how to reform it. Realists argue that the simultaneous rise of India and China and their respective moves beyond non-aligned and socialist ideologies may actually mean greater competition, rather than cooperation between them. As C. Raja Mohan argues, India and China have become essentially similar players in the international system, both are aspiring great powers who are equally willing to assert their national interest, increase their power and influence in the world at large, and resort to the use of force in international relations. Realists see distinct prospects for an intensified security dilemma in 21st century Asia not unlike what Europe experienced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Moreover, there remain important areas of diversity in contemporary Asian thinking on the relationship between democracy and regional stability and international order. While Asian leaders have generally accepted the liberal view that economic interdependence is a force for peace and that international (including regional) institutions are useful if not powerful instruments for managing regional order, sharp divisions remain over the role of democracy: whether democracy promotes development (the Lee Kuan Yew versus Fidel Ramos debate in the 1980s), whether democracy is at all a suitable political arrangement for Asia (Lee Kuan Yew versus Kim Dae Jung in Foreign Affairs) and whether democracy is a force of national and regional stability or a prescription for violence and disorder (for a review see: Acharya, Asia Rising)
Against this backdrop, what is prospect for Asian approach to reform of global governance?
Global and Regional Governance in an Era of Rising Asia
It is in China, rather than in Japan or India, that a good deal of conceptual thinking in Asia about the future of international order has taken place, both official and semi-official (academic) levels. This is partly in response to the international community’s doubts and misgivings about China’s global role following its spectacular ascent, doubts that are less pronounced in relation to the role of Japan or India. Unsurprisingly therefore, Chinese thinking on international relations today is to a large extent an attempt to legitimise the rise of China as a fundamentally positive force in international relations.
China’s initial conceptualisation of the post-Cold War order was to view it as a multipolar one. Consider the following statement posted at the Chinese Foreign Ministry Website in 2000:
Since the end of the Cold War, the world has moved towards multi-polarity, and the international situation on the whole has become more relaxed. This is an objective tendency independent of people's will, reflecting the trend of the development of the present era. Multi-polarization on the whole helps weaken and curb hegemonism and power politics, serves to bring about a just and equitable new international political and economic order and contributes to world peace and development.
But the concept of multi-polarization was dampened by the US victory over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 and the advent of the so-called ‘unipolar moment’. This led some Chinese to modify their position by recognising what they called ‘uni-multipolarity’. At the same time, Chinese policy and academic discourse (the two are often inseparable) developed its thesis about China’s ‘peaceful rise’, thereby rejecting the neorealist ideas of power transition or the ‘tragedy of great power politics’ (the title of John Mearsheimer’s well-known book).
In terms global governance, Chinese attitude towards multilateralism has changed. China has moved a fair distance from being a revisionist power to being Zoellick’s ‘responsible stakeholder’ for which its ASEAN neighbours, especially ASEAN, can take some credit. And in Iain Johnston’s words, China is not only a ‘status quo power’ but also a ‘social state’. Johnston finds China despite its initial suspicion of multilateralism, has now embraced it thanks to a socialization process through international and regional institutions. At the regional level, China, once a sceptic of multilateral security through the ARF, has emerged as an active participant. In Chinese academia, efforts are ongoing to develop a ‘Chinese school of international relations’ based partly on the historical features of the old tributary system, and what Fairbank had called the ‘Chinese world order’ (See Qin Yaqin’s article “Why is there no Chinese IR Theory”, in Acharya and Buzan, 2007).
Leadership is a key element of global governance and China retains an ambiguous attitude towards the question of leadership. (See Acharya, Asia Rising, Chapter on ‘Can China Lead?’) Deng Xiaoping’s dictum that “China should not lead” continues to be echoed in China’s recent reluctance to take the lead in allowing its ample financial resources play a direct role in alleviating the impact of the global financial crisis. Hence the argument from President Hun Jintao:
The Chinese economy is increasingly interconnected with the global economy…China’s sound economic growth is in itself a major contribution to global financial stability and economic growth. This is why we must first and foremost run our own affairs well. (Japan Times 11 November 2008)
China has been less reticent in assuming a regional leadership, as exemplified in its promotion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the East Asian Community. But even here China has been a cautious exponent, backtracking in the face of resistance to any real or imagined effort on its past to drive the membership and agenda of the larger East Asian institutions.
No comparable conceptual discourse underpins Japan’s attitude towards global governance today, at least at the official level. One possible exception is the idea ‘normal statehood’ for Japan promoted by Koizumi and elaborated by Japanese scholars such as Takashi Inoguchi. Koizumi’s purpose was strategic, i.e. to use the concept to counter and dilute some of the constitutional limits on Japanese diplomacy and power projection at a time when Japan was under pressure to do more for the US-Japan alliance, than to use it as the basis of redefining Japanese approach to global governance. But as a Japanese ambassador to Canada, comparing normal state with the notion of ‘middle power’, put it, ‘a "normal state" meant a state that is not only interested in its own security and prosperity, but also contributes proactively to international peace, security and prosperity.’ Inoguchi finds links Japan’s normal state quest with its desire and capacity ability to provide leadership in global governance. As he put it, ‘The globalization of governance entails more integrated markets, the global diffusion of military weapons, and the global permeation of public elite culture…Astute, articulate and agile leaders must always be mindful of domestic audiences and yet must act globally – and decisively.” This requires Japan to move beyond its post-war constitutional constraints. Importantly, Inoguchi cites the Japanese naval deployment to the Indian Ocean to support US operations in West Asia as one example of normal statehood, along side regional trade negotiations.
When he was foreign minister, the current Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso spoke of Japan as a “thought leader” of Asian regionalism, hence of regional governance. Another former foreign minister, Taro Nakayama, actually brokered ideas about turning the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conferences into the ASEAN Regional Forum, but he was drawing on ideas already circulating in Asia-Pacific second track dialogues than espousing an entirely original formula. Japanese contribution to concepts of regional governance has been more substantive; Japanese intellectuals such as Professor Kojima were pioneers of the Pacific Community concept in the 1970s and 80s. The 1997 Japanese proposal to develop an Asian Monetary Fund (which some saw as a challenge to the authority of the IMF) might seem to have been an exception, but the Japanese initiative faded quickly in the face of strong US opposition. Japan has actively sought a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, and is willing to collaborate with India (whom it has in the past defeated in a bid for a temporary seat), but its is not clear whether this move reflects a any genuine desire to change the basic rules of the global multilateral system or simply to win itself due recognition for its abundant financial and other contributions to the UN system. Takashi Inoguchi (in Acharya and Buzan, 2007) is right in arguing that Japan has “become one of the major rule makers relinquishing the role of a rule taker in global governance in a number of policy areas.” Among the niche areas he identifies in the academic arena are attempts to reconcile different conceptions of human rights, developing “rules and norms of transnational business transactions”, and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. But none of these represents a fundamental rethinking of the contemporary global governance structure. In short, Japan continues to be a conformist status quo power. And in the current global financial turmoil, while Japan has offered to strengthen the IMF’s coffers, Premier Aso, like the Chinese leadership, has indicated that ‘Japan’s primary responsibility lies in invigorating its own economy…this would be the most immediately effective contribution that Japan can deliver.” (Japan Times, 11 November 2008)
In India’s case, the demise of non-alignment has not been replaced by any broad organising framework, developed at official or academic levels, to describe and guide its international relations. In his Crossing the Rubicon, C. Raja Mohan argued that India under the BJP government might be reverting to a Curzonian view of geopolitics, replacing Nehruvian idealism. The Curzonian approach assumed Indian centrality in Asia, and envisaged a proactive Indian role in staibilizing Asia as a whole. The end of the BJP government might have slowed if not ended that transition, but Indian power projection in both western and eastern Indian Ocean areas is growing. But while India will not revert to non-alignment, even under a Sino-US bipolar system should it materialise, Nehruvian thinking is not entirely dead or out of date in India. I would argue that Nehruvian thinking, if not his approach to China, partly explains why India, while implicitly embracing the role of a ‘regional balancer” vis-à-vis China, avoids any outright containment of China or offers unconditional support to the US strategic framework vis-à-vis China.
Indian conceptions of global governance are likely to reflect its interest in legitimising its relative power position in the international system that comes through respectable growth rates, info-tech power, nuclear weapons capability and space dreams (now a partial reality). Like Japan, India has sought a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, a dream that seems destined to remain unfulfilled for some time. It has done better through the G-20 forum, but even there, there does not seem to be any obvious Indian ideas or imprint that may inspire the reform and restructuring of the global multilateral order.
Within Asia itself, India has returned to the fold of Asian regionalism, but in stark contrast to the Nehru era, India’s role today is that of a follower, rather than as a leader. And its regional involvement is much stronger in its economic dimension than in its political and security one, even though it remains excluded from APEC.
Although China, Japan and India are among the biggest players in the global economy today and they are also rapidly developing their military power, Asia continues to offer little leadership in world affairs. The present economic crisis may enable China, India and even Indonesia to assume a greater role in global economic governance through their participation in the G-20. But whether the G-20 will develop concrete institutional capacity or even emerge as a viable and permanent global institution sharing decision-making and agenda-setting powers from the G-7 and the Bretton Woods institutions is far from clear.
Nor is there any natural leader of Asia in managing the region’s own economic and security problems. Legitimacy deficit (sometimes for historical reasons, e,g, pre-war Japanese imperialism, communist Chinese subversion, and Indian diplomatic arrogance) and mutual rivalry, if not resource capacity, prevent Japan, China and India from assuming leadership in dealing with common challenges such as terrorism, climate change, pandemics and internal conflicts.
For example, China, largely out of strategic considerations, has not been supportive of the bids by India and Japan to acquire a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. If Europe can have two members of UNSC, (and a third, Germany, whose membership is not objected to by France and Britain), why not Asia? After all, such a development would be supportive of China’s own ‘multi-polarization’ concept.
Finally, Asian thinking on global governance can not be isolated from the development of Asian regional governance. There is a general sense in Asia that regional institutions here are distinctive from those in Europe, in the sense that they are more informal and non-legalistic. There is general agreement among the Asian participants to keep Asian multilateral institutions loose and sovereignty-bound. But differences exist over membership of regional institutions, especially the East Asian Summit and the idea of an East Asian Community. Japan opposed China’s desire to keep the EAS exclusively East Asian, and in response, China is seeking to develop an East Asian Community out of the ASEAN Plus Three, rather than the broader EAS. While Asian regional groups have performed better in engaging China than their European counterparts in engaging Russia (See author’s keynote speech, ‘Regional Worlds in a Post-Hegemonic Era,’ to the 3rd GARNET Annual Conference, Bordeaux, 17-20 September 2008), there remains significant doubts about their ability to cope with global and transnational challenges without a significant shift to the neo-Westphalian mindset of their leadership.
Conclusion
“China, Japan can help by helping themselves’, ran the headline of a Japan Times commentary by journalist Frank Ching on Chinese and Japanese responses to the latest global financial crisis (Japan Times, 11 November 2008). (Admittedly, why should they go out of their way to correct a crisis caused by America’s folly?) These responses are remarkably revealing. What they tell us is that while Asian conceptions of international relations are no longer a defensive or confrontational reaction to Western dominance, there is a perceptible and growing gap between Asia’s rise in terms of the traditional power indices of international relations and its role in global governance. The gap may be explained partly by resentment against Western resistance to the desire of Asian countries to increase their influence over global institutions commensurate with their rise in the global power structure. But it is a fair guess whether a larger say over global institutions will yield a great willingness on the part of Asian powers to go beyond their ‘helping others by helping themselves” mindset. There is also little question that intra-Asian differences and rivalries stifle Asia’s bid to assume a greater share of the leadership in the global governance structure.
Changing national role conceptions, such as China’s ‘multi-polarization’ and ‘peaceful rise’, Japan’s ‘normal state’, and more questionably, India’s shift from Nehru to Curzon, are not authentic concepts of global governance, but are efforts at redefining the status of these Asian powers in the emerging international order. Such conceptual thinking is closely tied to the power aspirations and policy imperatives of the Asian great powers. The desire for increasing its representation in, and share of leadership of, global institutions is growing in Asia. But with few exceptions, there is no coherent Asian thinking on global governance and the equivalent of the European discourse that redefines EU’s global role as that of a ‘normative power’. For such a role conception to develop, Asia needs to overcome its internal divisions and competition, and engage in greater self-reflection and long-term conceptual debate and thinking. There is no unitary Asian view of international relations and there never will be one. But ideas found in the writings of some of the people at this workshop, such as The New Asian Hemisphere or The Quest for World Order (which outlines Tommy Koh’ ‘pragmatic idealism’), and what might emerge from the ST Lee project may be an excellent step in exploring a more proactive and positive conception of Asia’s role in global governance.
(This is a synopsis only. References to be provided later)
Monday, May 19, 2008
ASEAN's Responsibility to Protect?
Amitav Acharya
The French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, who co-founded the humanitarian group Doctors without Borders, has stirred controversy by suggesting that the UN should invoke its responsibility to protect principle to force international humanitarian assistance to the victims of Nargis which struck Myanmar on 2 May 2008. Some have argued that the R2P in its “original” formulation does not apply to Myanmar, because its was meant to respond to the kind of ethnic cleansing of the kind that occurred in Somalia, Rwanda and Burundi, Bosnia and Kosovo. It raised the bar of humanitarian intervention high, excluding political reasons (i.e. to effect regime change), or rescuing the civilian nationals of other countries stranded in another in the event of conflict. It does not make humanitarian assistance obligatory when natural disasters strike.
On the other hand, the main source of the R2P doctrine, the report of the International Commission on Humanitarian Intervention and State Sovereignty, did mention the need for international action in the event of “serious and irreparable harm” to human beings by a crisis or large-scale “large-scale” loss of life. A flexible interpretation, as befits a norm which is not a legal doctrine, would certainly justify international action on Myanmar.
ASEAN does not need to quibble about the finer points of the responsibility to protect principle to take serious and decisive action to respond to the tragedy in Myanmar. No one in ASEAN disputes the scale of this human tragedy. No one also disputes (although some ASEAN members may be shy to say so for the fear of offending Myanmar’s government) the fact that the government of Myanmar might have worsened the crisis by refusing to accept humanitarian assistance offered to it by the international community. No reasonable person can doubt that this might have cost thousands of lives and put more at risk. Hence can ASEAN be a bystander?
There are two things AESAN must do collectively and urgently. The first is to do its best to persuade the Myanmar government to accept aid from the international community, including the US, French and India, which have naval forces on the standby ready to move in a matter of hours.
If this fails, ASEAN should offer to act as a conduit of international aid by mobilizing its own capabilities and assets which are not inconsequential. Not so long ago, Thailand had justified its purchase of a helicopter carrier by saying that it would be used for humanitarian aid. And Singapore’s considerable capacity for humanitarian aid was demonstrated in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami.
While ASEAN has a “responsibility to assist”, Myanmar has a “responsibility to accept”. The latter has refused to accept Western aid because of perceived political risks to its regime. But it should have less hesitation from accepting aid from ASEAN, which would never conspire against the regime.
ASEAN may not have a Good Samaritan Law of its own, so failure to act would not bring about punishment of the kind that the Seinfeld foursome (in the finale of the famous American sitcom of the 1990s) received for failing to come to the aid of the victim of a carjacking. But the loss of respect and the ridicule of the international community that its failure to act would bring about would be a more severe punishment for a regional group whose standing has already been challenged by a series of setbacks over Myanmar.
The French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, who co-founded the humanitarian group Doctors without Borders, has stirred controversy by suggesting that the UN should invoke its responsibility to protect principle to force international humanitarian assistance to the victims of Nargis which struck Myanmar on 2 May 2008. Some have argued that the R2P in its “original” formulation does not apply to Myanmar, because its was meant to respond to the kind of ethnic cleansing of the kind that occurred in Somalia, Rwanda and Burundi, Bosnia and Kosovo. It raised the bar of humanitarian intervention high, excluding political reasons (i.e. to effect regime change), or rescuing the civilian nationals of other countries stranded in another in the event of conflict. It does not make humanitarian assistance obligatory when natural disasters strike.
On the other hand, the main source of the R2P doctrine, the report of the International Commission on Humanitarian Intervention and State Sovereignty, did mention the need for international action in the event of “serious and irreparable harm” to human beings by a crisis or large-scale “large-scale” loss of life. A flexible interpretation, as befits a norm which is not a legal doctrine, would certainly justify international action on Myanmar.
ASEAN does not need to quibble about the finer points of the responsibility to protect principle to take serious and decisive action to respond to the tragedy in Myanmar. No one in ASEAN disputes the scale of this human tragedy. No one also disputes (although some ASEAN members may be shy to say so for the fear of offending Myanmar’s government) the fact that the government of Myanmar might have worsened the crisis by refusing to accept humanitarian assistance offered to it by the international community. No reasonable person can doubt that this might have cost thousands of lives and put more at risk. Hence can ASEAN be a bystander?
There are two things AESAN must do collectively and urgently. The first is to do its best to persuade the Myanmar government to accept aid from the international community, including the US, French and India, which have naval forces on the standby ready to move in a matter of hours.
If this fails, ASEAN should offer to act as a conduit of international aid by mobilizing its own capabilities and assets which are not inconsequential. Not so long ago, Thailand had justified its purchase of a helicopter carrier by saying that it would be used for humanitarian aid. And Singapore’s considerable capacity for humanitarian aid was demonstrated in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami.
While ASEAN has a “responsibility to assist”, Myanmar has a “responsibility to accept”. The latter has refused to accept Western aid because of perceived political risks to its regime. But it should have less hesitation from accepting aid from ASEAN, which would never conspire against the regime.
ASEAN may not have a Good Samaritan Law of its own, so failure to act would not bring about punishment of the kind that the Seinfeld foursome (in the finale of the famous American sitcom of the 1990s) received for failing to come to the aid of the victim of a carjacking. But the loss of respect and the ridicule of the international community that its failure to act would bring about would be a more severe punishment for a regional group whose standing has already been challenged by a series of setbacks over Myanmar.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Oration for Dr Surin Pitsuwan
Oration by Dr Amitav Acharya, Professor of Global Governance, at the Conferment Ceremony for the Degree of Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa on ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan by the University of Bristol, Dusit Thani Hotel, Bangkok, 31 March 2008. At the right: Surin Pitsuwan and Mr Chris Harries from Bristol University's Registrar's office.
Mr Vice-Chancellor,
Dr Surin Pitsuwan is one of the most well-known and highly respected voices of emerging Asia.
Born in the southern Thai province of Nakhon Si Thammarat, whose very name (Nagara Sri Dharmaraja in Sanskrit) harks back to a golden era of maritime voyages that linked Southeast Asia with the outside world, including Japan, China, India, and the Arab world, young Surin Pitsuwan was educated at Thammasat University, Claremont Men’s College and Harvard University, where he earned a master and a Ph D. His Harvard education was funded by the Winston S. Churchill Association and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships. Churchill, as some of the audience may know, was the longtime chancellor of the University of Bristol, both before, during and after he was Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Surin Pitsuwan was a Political Science lecturer at Thammasat University from 1978 before joining politics. He was first elected to the Thai Parliament from his home town, Nakhon Si Thammarat, in 1986. He was to be returned to the Thai Parliament 8 times. He became the Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister of Thailand from 1992-1995 and served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1992-2001. As Foreign Minister, he successfully mobilized international support for rescuing Thailand from the severe economic crisis of 1997. He also served as Chair of the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting and the Chair of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1999-2000. In September 1999, while serving as ASEAN Chair, he led the efforts to get Southeast Asian governments, with the support of the United Nations and the international community, to help restore law and order in East Timor.
As a political leader, Surin Pitsuwan has championed the values of democracy and human rights, and innovative solutions to the region’s complex, transnational problems. In 1998, soon after taking over as the foreign minister of Thailand, he challenged ASEAN to look beyond its traditional notion of non-intervention. He came up with the idea of “flexible engagement,” a term that has since become a permanent entry in the lexicon of Asian diplomacy. The idea of flexible engagement was to motivate ASEAN not to shy away from commenting and acting collectively on problems that may arise from within the boundaries of one nation-state, but which may threaten regional and international stability and prosperity. Although some of his colleagues in ASEAN then expressed reservations about such a radical notion, it is a testimony to the deep respect that Dr Surin enjoys in the regional community that he was enthusiastically endorsed by all ASEAN members as the new secretary-general of ASEAN when it was Thailand’s turn to fill the position.
Between the time he was Thai Foreign Minister and his appointment to be the ASEAN Secretary-General, Dr Surin went around the world speaking for Asia, not in the tone of a defensive exceptionalist, like some of the proponents of the “Asian Values” School, but as a cosmopolitan regionalist, subscribing to the universal values of democracy, sustainable development and human security.
During this time, he served in important international bodies, including as a member of the UN Commission on Human Security, chaired by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, and the former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata of Japan. The commission’s report, Human Security Now, was to become the bible of those who believe in security for the people, rather than security for the state alone. He was also a member of the Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, a Member of the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Member of the International Advisory Board of the International Crisis Group (ICG) and a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Asia Foundation. Additionally, he was an adviser to the International Commission on State Sovereignty and Humanitarian Intervention, which came up with the idea of “Responsibility to Protect”, adopted by the UN in 2005.
Dr Surin was one of the Asian contenders to be the next UN Secretary-General of the UN, the post which finally went to South Korean Ban Ki Moon. But it followed that Dr Surin was appointed to be the Secretary General of ASEAN from 2008 to 2013. ASEAN is Asia’s preeminent regional intergovernmental organization. ASEAN and its extensions, such as ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Plus Three, East Asia Summit and Asia-Europe Meeting, bring together the world’s most powerful nations, including the US, China, India, Japan, the European Union, and Russia. These countries hold annual ministerial or summit level meetings with ASEAN.
Dr Surin takes over as ASEAN Secretary-General at a time of momentous changes in the regional and global arena. The rising economic power of Asia, led by Japan, China, and lately India, is fundamentally transforming not only the way the global economy works, but also the political and strategic architecture of world politics. ASEAN is a club of small nations with a unique leadership role in navigating the region’s political and strategic currents. As Secretary-General, it is Dr Surin’s job to maintain ASEAN’s position as a cohesive regional community, infuse it with new ideas and approaches to help tackle complex challenges, and uphold its image as the driver of a new brand of cosmopolitan regionalism.
A Muslim who is widely praised for his efforts to promote a dialogue of civilizations, Dr Surin is precisely the kind of individual that the international community needs at a time when it is seeking ways of dealing with extremism and associated forms of insecurity. In this respect, Dr Surin leads not just with words, but also with deed. For example, he has nurtured closely a school founded sixty six years ago by his grandfather in his home province which has become a model for providing quality integrated education to Muslim students, thereby helping to bridge the gap between Islam and modernity.
Mr Vice-Chancellor, so far, I have described not one, but three Surin Pitsuwans, all rolled into one. First, there is Surin the academician, blessed with a powerful intellect, who has attained the highest level of education in both the east and the west, and who is a man of ideas that are often ahead of their time.
Then there is Surin the people’s man, and here I am deliberately not using the term politician, a man from the ivory tower of Harvard who has his feet firmly on the ground in the poorest and remotest parts of Thailand, and who, unlike leaders of some Asian countries, has actually contested and won many elections conducted freely and fairly
And last but not the least, there is Surin the statesman, from being foreign minister of a crisis-stricken nation desperately mobilizing international help, to being the secretary-general of the developing world’s most successful regional organization, a member and adviser to several of the world’s brain trusts.
The University of Bristol recognizes the substantial accomplishments of Surin the academician, Surin the people’s man and Surin the statesman. It recognizes his potential as ASEAN Secretary General to make a further significant contribution to the well-being of Southeast Asia and the international community.
Mr Vice-Chancellor, I present to you Dr Surin Pitsuwan as eminently worthy of the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa.
From left: Mr Chris Harries, Registrar's office, Bristol University, Professor Amitav Acharya, Orator, Dr Surin Pitsuwan, Professor Eric Thomas, Vice-Chancellor, Bristol University and Professor Suchit Bunbangkorn, presiding officer of the conferement ceremony.After the Ceremony
Dr Surin Pistuwan wearing Bristol University ceremnial robe, gave a luncheon talk outlining his vision for ASEAN following the conferment of an honorary doctorate on him by the University of bristol. The speech was co-organized by the Asian Dialogue Society, The Nation Media Group and the Centre for Governance and International Affairs, University of Bristol.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Four Principles for (President) Obama to Restore American Honour
If Barack Obama wins the American Presidency, how would he go about restoring America’s standing and leadership in world affairs? For an answer, read Samantha Power’s new book, Chasing the Flame, a political biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello – the senior UN official in Iraq killed in a suicide terrorist bombing of his Baghdad hotel in 2003. Power was in Bristol (just 3 days before she resigned as a senior foreign policy advisor to Senator Obama, for calling Senator Hillary Clinton a "monster") to speak about her new book and about Barack Obama’s foreign policy principles at a talk hosted by the Centre for Governance and International Affairs of Bristol University and Festival of Ideas in Bristol. Dublin-born and American educated Samantha Power is an award-winning journalist, a Harvard professor and a foreign policy intellectual, all rolled into one. In her own words, she was a “dreamer” before her journalistic life, and she “got into journalism as a means to try to change the world.” Her 2005 book, A Problem from Hell, described by Harvard Professor Stanley Hoffman as “an admirable mix of erudition and passion”, was about genocide, and America’s failure to prevent it. It not only won her a Pultizer Prize, and a chair at Harvard’s Kennedy School, but also an invitation to meet with a freshman Senator from Illinois, named Barack Obama. For Senator Obama the central message of her book was not just to understand why and when genocide occurs, but also the need to fix American foreign policy. This encounter led directly to her third and possibly most important career: as a foreign policy adviser to the man who could become the next president of the United States, and make her realise her dream of “to try to change the world”.
There are interesting parallels between the central character of her new book and that of her current job. Both de Mello and Senator Obama are people who are ‘comfortable crossing boudnaries’. De Mello was a Brazillian who was educated in Europe and distinguished himself while serving the UN in many of the hotspots of the world, including Bangladesh, East Africa, Cambodia, Kosovo, East Timor, and Iraq. Senator Obama was born in Hawaii to Kenyan and American parents and spent four of his formative years in Indonesia. Indeed, Power recommends four principles from de Mello’s character which could guide Obama’s foreign policy.
Perhaps the most controversial of them is the “talking to the enemy” principle. De Mello was a firm believer dialogue with adversaries, including known evils like Slobodan Milesevich of Serbia and Pol Pot of Khmer Rogue. He would talk to insurgents, warlords and rebels. Candidate Obama has been much criticized by his democratic and republican opponents alike for his willingness to talk to dictators like the leaders of Iran and Cuba. We now know where this idea came from. Power defends the principle vigorously. America has to speak to unsavory regimes without preconditions, but that does not mean throwing principles vital principles out of the window. Even if there is no significant progress, it creates legitimacy for the US by creating the impression that it is not the US which is the problem.
The second principle is “freedom from fear”. “Fear is a bad advisor.” As she sees it, there is too much fear-mongering around in American politics and foreign policy these days. The Bush administration has often played up the fear of terrorism after 9/11 for domestic political advantage. When America is afraid, Power argues, it tends to lurch between the extremes of doing nothing or little (Rwanda, Bosnia) and being overly aggressive (Iraq). The other end of this principle is acting through the UN and other agencies to create institutions, such as elections, rule of law, police and courts to create a culture where there is freedom from fear in conflict-prone areas.
Next is the principle of “embrace humility, understand complexity”. Under Bush, US foreign policy is marked by extreme arrogance and meddling in other people’s affairs. This could grow into a crisis of confidence about international action, a danger of retreat from international engagement, if not outright isolationism. Neither extreme is warranted. The US should recognize the complexity of fixing conflict-ridden societies, but should not be paralyzed by the immensity of the task of nation-building.
The final principle is the “doctrine of dignity”. In the international arena, this means showing respect for the opinions of other states and leaders no matter how different or small they might be. The doctrine of dignity is more important than democracy promotion. Imposing democracy through force does not work because it shows a lack of awareness of the indignity people feel about foreign occupiers. Just ask the people of Iraq.
(The author is professor of Global Governance and Director of the Centre for Governance and International Affairs at the University of Bristol)
Sunday, February 03, 2008
The United States and the East Asian Community
Amitav Acharya
Introduction
The idea of an East Asian Community is a major development in Asia’s regional architecture. Until 1997, regional institutions in Asia were organized either on a sub-regional (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, Shanghai Cooperation Organization) or transpacific (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, ASEAN Regional Forum) basis. ASEAN was established in 1967 with only five Southeast Asian countries: Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore. This was not only because of Cold War divisions within Southeast Asia, but also because these Southeast Asian nations distrusted the leadership role of the larger Asian powers, China and India. As the Cold War ended, the region saw the emergence of Asia-Pacific regional institutions, the first being APEC in 1989, followed by the ARF in 1994. The emergence of the former reflected growing trans-pacific economic interdependence, while the ARF responded to the end of the Cold War and the impact of norms of cooperative security promoted by Canada and Australia. But these institutions, as well as ASEAN itself, were undermined by the 1997 crisis for their failure to deal with its economic and political repercussions. Since then, regionalism on an East Asian basis has come to the fore.
The first to emerge was the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) grouping in 1997, comprising the ASEAN member, China, Japan and South Korea. The latest and perhaps the grandest addition to the growing alphabet soup of regional institutions in Asia is the East Asia Summit (EAS), an annual gathering of the leaders of the ten ASEAN members, plus, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand, which held its inaugural session in December 2005. The ultimate goal of the proponents of East Asian regionalism is the creation of an East Asian Community (EAC), a “bona fide regional community…for peace, prosperity and progress”, as the report of the East Asian Vision Group (EAVG), puts it.
Why has multilateralism occurred in an East Asian framework? One reason had to do with the role of the United States. A 1990 proposal from the then Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammad to create an East Asian Economic Grouping (later renamed as East Asian Economic Caucus) failed because Japan and other East Asian nations refused to endorse it under pressure from Washington. But the idea refused to die away. The 1997 financial crisis helped to revive it in two ways, first by exposing the limitations of APEC and ASEAN, and second by generating resentment towards the US, even among its allies such as Thailand and Japan. The very different responses from Washington to the Baht collapse and the Peso crisis in Mexico fuelled perceptions of America apathy towards the region. Washington’s response to the Peso crisis was prompt and generous, while in the case of Thailand it simply let the IMF take the lead and provided little direct financial aid. This, coupled with abrupt and total manner in which Washington rejected Japan’s proposal for an Asian Monetary Fund, alienated regional opinion-makers.
The crisis spurred the ASEAN-Plus-Three (APT). The APT focused on regional financial cooperation, which had not been undertaken within APEC. At the behest of South Korean leader Kim Dae Jung, APT leaders set up an East Asia Vision Group (EAVG) to consider pathways towards regional cooperation. Its report endorsed the idea of an East Asian Summit, which held its inaugural session in Kuala Lumpur in 2005.
A parallel impetus for the East Asian Community is accelerating East Asian regional economic interdependence. Intra-regional trade in East Asia in 2003 accounted for 54% of the region’s total trade, compared to 35% in 1980. This trade volume is higher than that in the NAFTA region (46%), and “very much comparable to intra-regional trade in the European Union before the 1992 Maastricht treaty.” Although East Asian nations with the notable exception of China rely on investment from outside East Asia, the share of intra-regional foreign direct investment jumped from 24% in the latter half of the 1980s, to 40% in 1995-97.
On the top of economic linkages, the East Asian Community idea has been strengthened by a string of regional crises since the financial meltdown in 1997. The terrorist attacks on Bali and elsewhere in the region since October 2002, the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 have fostered a sense of shared vulnerability of the region to complex transnational disasters, which come with little warning and respect no national boundaries.
What are the implications of the emergence of East Asian regionalism for the US? Some see the EAC as a wedge between the US and East Asia, or as an instrument for Chinese strategic gain at the expense of the US. Thus, Fred Bergsten worries that the EAS might cause a “fundamental split between East Asia and the U.S.” Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State under the first George W. Bush administration, describes East Asian regionalism as “thinly-veiled way to make the point that the US is not totally welcomed in Asia…What worries me about the EAC idea is that it is the beginning of an erosion of the US military alliances in the region. It seems that China is quite willing to be involved in fora that does not include the US.” Such misgivings have led to calls for the US to subvert the East Asian institution-building process. Dana Dillon of the Heritage Foundation believes that “[w]ith artful management of the process by engaged American diplomats, the U.S. can …neutralize EAS into another Asian talk-shop, like the ASEAN Regional Forum.”
But a hostile or manipulative US attitude towards the EAC could backfire. To be sure, there are a number of reasons to be skeptical of the East Asian Community idea, such as a lack of agreement over geographic scope, ASEAN’s weak leadership of the community-building process, and persisting Sino-Japanese rivalry. Yet, there are enough reasons for the idea to remain alive despite these obstacles. The EAC offers a regional framework for engaging China, for facilitating cooperation against regional challenges such as financial crises or pandemics, and most importantly, as an insurance against US policies that are seen as unsympathetic or hostile towards the interests of the regional actors. Hence, America’s time and energy is better served by responding to the East Asian Community idea not by subverting it, but by strengthening its own engagement with regional institutions in which it enjoys membership, such as APEC and ARF and by turning the six-party talks into a sub-regional institution. This could send a powerful signal about its commitment to regional cooperation that would counter any move to turn East Asian regionalism into an exclusionary grouping undercutting US interests in the region.
The Pitfalls and Promises of an East Asian Community
Which East Asia?
Proponents of the East Asian Community idea argue that East Asia is economically more integrated and politically and culturally more coherent than unwieldy Asia-Pacific institutions like ARF and APEC that include the US, Canada and Australia. Yet, the inaugural Kuala Lumpur summit defined East Asia in “political rather than geographical terms”. The broadening of the summit to include India, Australia and New Zealand, at the behest of Japan and Singapore, and justified as a way of underscoring “open” and “inclusive” nature of the grouping, has become a source of considerable controversy. Japan and Singapore supported the broadening of the summit, while Beijing saw it as a Japanese ploy to weaken Chinese influence in East Asia. While Japan and India want the more broad-based summit to be the basis for the development of the East Asia Community, Beijing would prefer to develop such a community through the APT process, which excludes Australia, New Zealand and India.
ASEAN: Leading by Default?
ASEAN has been designated as the “driving force” of the East Asian Community. The APT and EAS are hosted and chaired by an ASEAN member state and held back to back with the annual ASEAN summit. There are several reasons for ASEAN’s leadership role. As Singapore’s Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong states, “ASEAN does not threaten anybody and the big countries in the region will want ASEAN to play that facilitating role.” Moreover, in the words of the former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, “[t]he balance provided by ASEAN in engaging China, Japan and India, is…pivotal in insuring understanding and security in the region.”
But ASEAN is leading the regional community-building process mainly by default, because neither of the region’s two major powers, China and Japan, is in a political position to do so. “Cooperation in East Asia”, argues Japanese scholar Takashi Shiraisi, “cannot work if the prime mover is either or the two countries.” ASEAN’s capacity for leading the EAC is limited by several factors. As a regional organization, ASEAN has been weakened by intra-mural political bickering, such as disputes between Singapore and Malaysia, inability to find a political solution in Myanmar, and domestic political instability in member states such as Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia. Since the downfall of Suharto, ASEAN has lacked an effective leader. The absence of a strong leadership within ASEAN undercuts its ability to lead institutions involving outside powers, including the EAC and the ARF.
Sino-Japanese Distrust
This leads to what is perhaps the most serious challenge to East Asian Community idea: mistrust between China and Japan. Sino-Japanese tensions in the past several years reverse decades of reconciliation which might otherwise have served as the basis for a genuine East Asian Community. In the past, China and Japan complemented each other as benefactors to the region. In the 1980s and 90s, outward Japanese investment contributed to common prosperity in East Asia. In the 1997 crisis, aid offered by Japan was an important factor behind Malaysia's ability to withstand the crisis, while China's pledge not to devalue its currency helped to stave off any further aggravation of the crisis. The SARS crisis moved China closer to the region after Beijing made up for its earlier secrecy over the outbreak by cooperating closely with neighbours in containing the pandemic. And Japan was the largest provider of humanitarian economic aid in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami.
But the political and strategic roles of China and Japan in East Asia have become increasingly competitive. Japan was alarmed by Chinese nuclear tests and military expansion in the 1980s and 1990s. Responding, it strengthened its alliance with the US, which in turn fuelled Chinese perceptions of renewed Japanese militarism. Japan's prolonged economic stagnation at a time of China's meteoric rise fuelled Japanese insecurity. North Korea's missile tests and nuclear programme aggravated Japan’s insecurity and moved Tokyo closer to Washington's strategic agenda.
The Bush administration's war on terror offered an opportune framework for Japan to carry out political and constitutional changes which in reality have their basis in its concerns about the rise of China. These changes, which permit an expansive role for Japan's military are interpreted by neo-nationalist elements in China as a further sign of Japanese militarism. These forces have also exploited anti-Japanese sentiments over the visits to the Yasukuni Shrine by the former Prime Minister Koizumi and the publication of Japanese textbooks that glossed over Japanese war-time atrocities in East Asia. Anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, sometimes tolerated by the authorities in Beijing, produced a nationalist backlash in Japan. As a result, Sino-Japanese competition and mistrust creates a kind of unstable core at the heart of the EAC concept. It remains to be seen whether there would be any genuine improvement under the Abe government.
Despite these obstacles, the East Asian nations, especially ASEAN members, are unlikely to abandon their quest for an East Asian Community. This is because of four advantages of the East Asian framework.
Why East Asian Regionalism Will Not Fade Away
First, for ASEAN, East Asian regionalism provides them with an important additional layer of engagement with the region’s preeminent rising power, China. ASEAN is opposed to a containment approach that some sections in the US policy-making community advocate out of concern that it might provoke a nationalistic and hostile response from Beijing. At the same time, through the EAC, ASEAN seeks to create the possibility of binding China into a regional structure that would induce Beijing’s restraint towards its weaker neighbours in exchange for the latter’s respect for its economic and security interests and leadership. East Asian regionalism may be a better mechanism for binding China this way than either the ARF or APEC, where the presence of the US makes China nervous about making concessions which it fears may be perceived by Washington as a sign of weakness. Indeed, China has in the past seen US policies of engagement through the ARF as a form of “soft containment”.
Second, East Asian regionalism serves as a more appropriate platform for undertaking certain functional tasks or addressing common dangers that other regional groupings are less suited or inclined to perform. Financial cooperation is one of them, and has been already undertaken by the APT. East Asian regionalism has also proven useful in addressing certain types of non-traditional security threats, such as pandemics. The regional response to SARS crisis was undertaken through an East Asian framework and this may prove useful again should there be a massive outbreak of the bird flu. The focus on energy security at the 2nd EAS in Cebu is also noteworthy given the membership in the EAS of both India (not an APEC member) and China, two of the biggest consumers of energy resources.
Third, East Asian regionalism, especially through its Summit, provides a forum for ASEAN to influence the regional balance of power for its own benefit. By including Asia’s two other rising powers: India and Japan, ASEAN ensures not only that the EAC will not be dominated by China. Lee Kuan Yew put it, in an interview with Time Asia published in December 2005, explained the admission of India, Australia and New Zealand into the East Asian summit as a matter of balancing. “India would be a useful balance to China's heft,” while bringing Australia and New Zealand into the Summit would erase any concern that it was a forum of “Asians versus whites” or an anti-American grouping. “It's a neater balance,” he said. (emphasis added)
Finally, the simultaneous engagement of China, Japan and India through the EAS also allows ASEAN a secure a margin of freedom for its own actions and to secure material benefits from each of them. Confronted with the new power structure, ASEAN hopes to be able to secure from the larger Asian powers the benefits of both geopolitical restraint and economic assistance. The region has already seen a degree of competitive bidding by Japan and China for ASEAN’s affection, especially evident in their efforts to develop free trade arrangements with ASEAN and to sign ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia. At the same time, East Asian regionalism offers its participants a potential source of leverage against unsympathetic or arrogant US policies. The very existence of East Asian institutions should require the US to weigh the diplomatic and political costs of such policies in a future regional crisis, for example the kind of response that sparked resentment against the US in the wake of the 1997 financial meltdown.
The US: Victim or Spoiler?
This leads to the question of the US attitude towards the East Asian Community idea. The Bush administration viewed the first East Asian Summit with feigned disinterest. Eric John, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, told a US congressional hearing: “Nobody knows what the East Asia summit is other than leaders coming together.” John described the Summit as too much of a “black box” for Washington to even realize what it is missing out on. “I would hesitate to push for an invitation to an organization we don’t know what it does.”
In reality, Washington has had a history of anxiety about East Asian regionalism. In his memoirs, US Secretary of State James Baker confesses to having done his best to “kill” Mahathir’s 1990 EAEG/C proposal for , “even though in public [he] took a moderate line.” The US sent a demarche to the ASEAN Secretary General in 1993 warning that it would be “concerned about anything that raises questions about United States Commitment to the region and exclusion from the region”. In a September 2005 speech, former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick argued that American and regional concerns about China “will grow if China seeks to maneuver toward a predominance of power [in East Asia],” he urged ASEAN, Japan, Australia, and others to work with the US “for regional security and prosperity through the ASEAN Regional Forum and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.”
Perhaps unwittingly, Zoellick identified an interesting policy choice for the US. If Washington is truly worried about the EAC becoming an instrument of Chinese dominance, shouldn’t it be preempting its emergence by lending greater support and resources to the region’s wider and inclusive regional institutions, such as APEC and ARF, just as Goh and Zoellick urges?
This is all the more because the US cannot realistically expect an invitation to join the East Asian Community. After the inclusion of India, Australia and New Zealand in the EAS, there was some speculation that the US could be next. But even friends of Washington do not this is either necessary or desirable. Hitoshi Tanaka, a former Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister, contend that the US is not “committed to the East Asia community building” and hence should not be regarded as “a member of the East Asian Community.” Singapore’s former prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, argues that “East Asia cannot be extending to countries in the Pacific, for then even the political definitions would get stretched beyond belief.” In Goh’s view, the region’s “engagement with the US could be through the APEC and the ARF.”
Instead, there is a good case to be made the EAC presents the US with a rationale to engage more actively in regional institutions where it is a member. Until now, US policy towards these institutions has been a study of contrasts: relative indifference towards the ARF, the region’s only security forum, and overt attempts at domination of APEC, at least initially. Thus, it opposed Canadian and Australian proposals (also in 1990) for developing a multilateral security forum in Asia akin to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as a “solution in search of a problem” (in the words of the then Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Richard Solomon), fearing that it will undercut the rationale for America’s bilateral alliances in the region. While the Clinton administration later softened its stance on multilateral security and backed the ARF - an offshoot of the Australian and Canadian proposals. But the US has viewed the ARF at best an adjunct to its bilateral alliances in the region. It did not send its Secretary of State to the 2005 ARF meeting in Laos. The tendency to see bilateralism and multilateralism in zero-sum terms has meant that Washington has never seriously engaged the ARF in developing its confidence-building agenda.
By contrast, the US under the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations tried to steer APEC exclusively in the direction of trade liberalization, ignoring its other two missions: trade facilitation and development cooperation. Its insistence on institutionalizing APEC “as a formal body applying strict rules” not only clashed with ASEAN’s preference for informal and non-legalistic approach to multilateralism, along with the selective focus on trade liberalization also made Asian governments “dubious about allowing themselves to be seriously constrained by an organization whose agenda was so overweeningly dominated by the United States.”
This in turn fuelled the move towards an East Asian regional forum culminating in the APT. And Asian resistance to its trade liberalization agenda led Washington to gradually lose interest in APEC. Although successive American presidents have attended the annual APEC summit, APEC’s focus has shifted towards security issues (East Timor in 1999, terrorism in 2001). But even then, the US counter-terrorism cooperation with East Asia has been undertaken primarily on a bilateral basis, with the exception of a joint declaration with ASEAN on counter-terrorism measures such as intelligence sharing and training.
Ultimately, the challenge for the US lies in finding a balance between disinterest on the one hand and dominance on the other. Washington’s approach to Asian multilateralism needs to be serious but not heavy-handed. The affirmation that the EAS would remain “an open, transparent and outward-looking forum” might have assuaged some of Washington’s fear about the Chinese dominance of the EAS. But support for it might grow if Washington’s policy towards the region seem overbearing or unilateralist, or showing aggressive opposition to the EAC idea.
Instead, the US should work towards making existing regional institutions, ASEAN, ARF and APEC, more relevant and effective. US policy-makers should discard the zero-sum view of the relationship between US bilateral alliances and its participation in multilateral institutions is unwarranted. Multilateralism helps Washington to better manage the development of Asia’s future security architecture. For the region’s rising powers, especially China and India, multilateral forums provide a valuable platform to demonstrate their credentials as responsible and constructive members of the international community. For the region’s weaker states, such as the ASEAN members, they provide an invaluable platform of engaging the major powers and moderating their competitive instincts. Indeed, contrary to Washington’s fears, multilateralism may be the best way for the region’s weaker powers to engage both China without courting its dominance. And support for multilateral institutions is a good way for Washington to reassure its Asian friends who have been recently concerned about its arrogance and unilateralism.
The US can play a more active role in Asian multilateral institutions in three ways. The first is to support their greater institutionalization and legalization, which should make them more responsive to the transnational threats that the region faces. Two general features of ASEAN and Asian-style multilateralism need to be reformed: their minimalist approach to institutionalization and legalization, and closely related, their deep attachment to Westphalian sovereignty, especially the principle of non-interference.
This reform process begins with ASEAN. While the US is not formally a member of ASEAN, it is a dialogue partner. ASEAN is the hub of both Asia-Pacific and East Asian regional institutions. The reform of other regional institutions that have the US as a member would not be easy unless ASEAN itself changes its ways. ASEAN is drafting a Charter which would specify the rights and responsibilities of the grouping’s members, consolidating and rationalizing its institutional mechanisms, and giving the organization a legal personality in dealing with the outside world. If realized, the Charter will mark a departure from the “ASEAN Way’ of informalism, which has been blamed for organizational inertia and a lowest-common denominator mindset.
But to be a credible voice in the call for reform of the ASEAN Way, the US would need to sign ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, as ASEAN’s other dialogue partners, China, Japan, India Australia and France, have done. There has been resistance to this move, since the TAC upholds the principle of non-interference rather strictly. But ASEAN is already rethinking this doctrine, especially in relation to Burma. It has publicly expressed unhappiness over the slow pace of political reform in the country. The shift is not very pronounced yet, because several ASEAN members remain wary that criticizing a member regime for its domestic political practices might backfire on them one day. But at least the Burma issue is no longer being swept under the carpet. By signing the TAC, the US would signal its commitment to ASEAN, and become a more credible partner in ASEAN’s reformist agenda.
Second, while supporting ASEAN’s efforts at institutional reform, the US should seek to rejuvenate APEC and the ARF. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Badawi assures that the EAS would not become “confrontational with Apec or other organizations.” In APEC, the US should look beyond trade liberalization and use it as a vehicle for trade facilitation and as a vehicle for mobilizing regional consensus and support for the WTO Doha round talks. The ARF has stalled in recent years, partly because of the lack of interest shown by US policy-makers, as represented by Secretary of State Condolezza Rice’s absence from the 2005 ARF meeting in Laos. The ARF has also made limited progress in its confidence-building agenda, which is restricted to a small number of steps, such as publication of defence white papers, and meetings of national defense college heads. Much more can be done. One important challenge is to develop mechanisms for preventive diplomacy, including provision of early warning, fact-finding and good offices missions to deal with regional crises. The US could also make greater use of the forum in developing cooperation in areas such as maritime security and counter-terrorism.
Third, the US should seek to build a multilateral institution for Northeast Asia based on the Six-Party talks on the Korean peninsula , aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapon program in exchange for multilateral assistance. But until recently, the prospects for this occurring looked slim, especially when the Bush administration in 2006 imposed new sanctions on North Korea, including a ban on US banks from dealing with the Bank of Macau, a major banking partner of North Korea. The US move widened the gulf between Washington and Seoul, which continued to pursue its engagement policy towards Pyongyang. The Chinese, professing a limited clout over North Korea’s decision-making, rejected US sanctions against the regime. The evolving China-Russia strategic relationship, counter-balancing closer Japan-US ties, seemed to be overtaking the momentum toward a multilateral approach to Northeast Asian security. But the accord on North Korea at the six party talks on 13 February 2007 testifies to the usefulness of mutlilateralism for the US. As White House spokesman Tony Snow put it, “there is considerable leverage on the North Koreans by virtue of the fact that...the Chinese, the South Koreans, the Japanese and the Russians are involved here. [the North Koreans] are answerable not merely to the United States, but in fact to their own neighbors who are significant stakeholders in this.”
Conclusion
The emergence of the East Asian Community idea, supported by institutions such as the ASEAN Plus Three and the East Asian Summit, is in large part a response to the growing regional economic interdependence. It was also catalyzed by the 1997 Asian economic crisis in which the US response was seen as indifferent, if not hostile, in organizing the rescue of the Asian countries most affected by the crisis. Since then, the EAC idea has evolved considerably. Although it is beset by problems about its membership, leadership and intra-regional mistrust, the idea is unlikely to fade away, in the same manner as Mahathir Mohammed’s proposal for an East Asian institution remained alive despite Washington’s bitter opposition. East Asian nations, especially the ASEAN members, see East Asian regionalism not only as a way of co-opting with China, but also as an instrument of leverage against the US should it be indifferent or hostile to the interests of East Asian nations especially in a future regional crisis.
The United States has some misgivings about the East Asian Community idea because of the potential for China to play an active, if not dominant role in the grouping. These misgivings remain despite the inclusion of its allies, Australia in particular, in the East Asian Summit. But any US effort to subvert the grouping could backfire. A more prudent policy would be for the US to revitalize its engagement with Asia-Pacific institutions, such as the ARF and APEC and to support the development of a Northeast Asian subregional grouping. While America’s bilateral alliances remain important to its strategic interests in the region, greater resort to multilateral institutions would contribute to improved prospects for regional conflict management and integration. It would also ensure that the proposed East Asian Community would not turn into an anti-American bandwagon.
Introduction
The idea of an East Asian Community is a major development in Asia’s regional architecture. Until 1997, regional institutions in Asia were organized either on a sub-regional (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, Shanghai Cooperation Organization) or transpacific (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, ASEAN Regional Forum) basis. ASEAN was established in 1967 with only five Southeast Asian countries: Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore. This was not only because of Cold War divisions within Southeast Asia, but also because these Southeast Asian nations distrusted the leadership role of the larger Asian powers, China and India. As the Cold War ended, the region saw the emergence of Asia-Pacific regional institutions, the first being APEC in 1989, followed by the ARF in 1994. The emergence of the former reflected growing trans-pacific economic interdependence, while the ARF responded to the end of the Cold War and the impact of norms of cooperative security promoted by Canada and Australia. But these institutions, as well as ASEAN itself, were undermined by the 1997 crisis for their failure to deal with its economic and political repercussions. Since then, regionalism on an East Asian basis has come to the fore.
The first to emerge was the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) grouping in 1997, comprising the ASEAN member, China, Japan and South Korea. The latest and perhaps the grandest addition to the growing alphabet soup of regional institutions in Asia is the East Asia Summit (EAS), an annual gathering of the leaders of the ten ASEAN members, plus, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand, which held its inaugural session in December 2005. The ultimate goal of the proponents of East Asian regionalism is the creation of an East Asian Community (EAC), a “bona fide regional community…for peace, prosperity and progress”, as the report of the East Asian Vision Group (EAVG), puts it.
Why has multilateralism occurred in an East Asian framework? One reason had to do with the role of the United States. A 1990 proposal from the then Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammad to create an East Asian Economic Grouping (later renamed as East Asian Economic Caucus) failed because Japan and other East Asian nations refused to endorse it under pressure from Washington. But the idea refused to die away. The 1997 financial crisis helped to revive it in two ways, first by exposing the limitations of APEC and ASEAN, and second by generating resentment towards the US, even among its allies such as Thailand and Japan. The very different responses from Washington to the Baht collapse and the Peso crisis in Mexico fuelled perceptions of America apathy towards the region. Washington’s response to the Peso crisis was prompt and generous, while in the case of Thailand it simply let the IMF take the lead and provided little direct financial aid. This, coupled with abrupt and total manner in which Washington rejected Japan’s proposal for an Asian Monetary Fund, alienated regional opinion-makers.
The crisis spurred the ASEAN-Plus-Three (APT). The APT focused on regional financial cooperation, which had not been undertaken within APEC. At the behest of South Korean leader Kim Dae Jung, APT leaders set up an East Asia Vision Group (EAVG) to consider pathways towards regional cooperation. Its report endorsed the idea of an East Asian Summit, which held its inaugural session in Kuala Lumpur in 2005.
A parallel impetus for the East Asian Community is accelerating East Asian regional economic interdependence. Intra-regional trade in East Asia in 2003 accounted for 54% of the region’s total trade, compared to 35% in 1980. This trade volume is higher than that in the NAFTA region (46%), and “very much comparable to intra-regional trade in the European Union before the 1992 Maastricht treaty.” Although East Asian nations with the notable exception of China rely on investment from outside East Asia, the share of intra-regional foreign direct investment jumped from 24% in the latter half of the 1980s, to 40% in 1995-97.
On the top of economic linkages, the East Asian Community idea has been strengthened by a string of regional crises since the financial meltdown in 1997. The terrorist attacks on Bali and elsewhere in the region since October 2002, the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 have fostered a sense of shared vulnerability of the region to complex transnational disasters, which come with little warning and respect no national boundaries.
What are the implications of the emergence of East Asian regionalism for the US? Some see the EAC as a wedge between the US and East Asia, or as an instrument for Chinese strategic gain at the expense of the US. Thus, Fred Bergsten worries that the EAS might cause a “fundamental split between East Asia and the U.S.” Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State under the first George W. Bush administration, describes East Asian regionalism as “thinly-veiled way to make the point that the US is not totally welcomed in Asia…What worries me about the EAC idea is that it is the beginning of an erosion of the US military alliances in the region. It seems that China is quite willing to be involved in fora that does not include the US.” Such misgivings have led to calls for the US to subvert the East Asian institution-building process. Dana Dillon of the Heritage Foundation believes that “[w]ith artful management of the process by engaged American diplomats, the U.S. can …neutralize EAS into another Asian talk-shop, like the ASEAN Regional Forum.”
But a hostile or manipulative US attitude towards the EAC could backfire. To be sure, there are a number of reasons to be skeptical of the East Asian Community idea, such as a lack of agreement over geographic scope, ASEAN’s weak leadership of the community-building process, and persisting Sino-Japanese rivalry. Yet, there are enough reasons for the idea to remain alive despite these obstacles. The EAC offers a regional framework for engaging China, for facilitating cooperation against regional challenges such as financial crises or pandemics, and most importantly, as an insurance against US policies that are seen as unsympathetic or hostile towards the interests of the regional actors. Hence, America’s time and energy is better served by responding to the East Asian Community idea not by subverting it, but by strengthening its own engagement with regional institutions in which it enjoys membership, such as APEC and ARF and by turning the six-party talks into a sub-regional institution. This could send a powerful signal about its commitment to regional cooperation that would counter any move to turn East Asian regionalism into an exclusionary grouping undercutting US interests in the region.
The Pitfalls and Promises of an East Asian Community
Which East Asia?
Proponents of the East Asian Community idea argue that East Asia is economically more integrated and politically and culturally more coherent than unwieldy Asia-Pacific institutions like ARF and APEC that include the US, Canada and Australia. Yet, the inaugural Kuala Lumpur summit defined East Asia in “political rather than geographical terms”. The broadening of the summit to include India, Australia and New Zealand, at the behest of Japan and Singapore, and justified as a way of underscoring “open” and “inclusive” nature of the grouping, has become a source of considerable controversy. Japan and Singapore supported the broadening of the summit, while Beijing saw it as a Japanese ploy to weaken Chinese influence in East Asia. While Japan and India want the more broad-based summit to be the basis for the development of the East Asia Community, Beijing would prefer to develop such a community through the APT process, which excludes Australia, New Zealand and India.
ASEAN: Leading by Default?
ASEAN has been designated as the “driving force” of the East Asian Community. The APT and EAS are hosted and chaired by an ASEAN member state and held back to back with the annual ASEAN summit. There are several reasons for ASEAN’s leadership role. As Singapore’s Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong states, “ASEAN does not threaten anybody and the big countries in the region will want ASEAN to play that facilitating role.” Moreover, in the words of the former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, “[t]he balance provided by ASEAN in engaging China, Japan and India, is…pivotal in insuring understanding and security in the region.”
But ASEAN is leading the regional community-building process mainly by default, because neither of the region’s two major powers, China and Japan, is in a political position to do so. “Cooperation in East Asia”, argues Japanese scholar Takashi Shiraisi, “cannot work if the prime mover is either or the two countries.” ASEAN’s capacity for leading the EAC is limited by several factors. As a regional organization, ASEAN has been weakened by intra-mural political bickering, such as disputes between Singapore and Malaysia, inability to find a political solution in Myanmar, and domestic political instability in member states such as Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia. Since the downfall of Suharto, ASEAN has lacked an effective leader. The absence of a strong leadership within ASEAN undercuts its ability to lead institutions involving outside powers, including the EAC and the ARF.
Sino-Japanese Distrust
This leads to what is perhaps the most serious challenge to East Asian Community idea: mistrust between China and Japan. Sino-Japanese tensions in the past several years reverse decades of reconciliation which might otherwise have served as the basis for a genuine East Asian Community. In the past, China and Japan complemented each other as benefactors to the region. In the 1980s and 90s, outward Japanese investment contributed to common prosperity in East Asia. In the 1997 crisis, aid offered by Japan was an important factor behind Malaysia's ability to withstand the crisis, while China's pledge not to devalue its currency helped to stave off any further aggravation of the crisis. The SARS crisis moved China closer to the region after Beijing made up for its earlier secrecy over the outbreak by cooperating closely with neighbours in containing the pandemic. And Japan was the largest provider of humanitarian economic aid in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami.
But the political and strategic roles of China and Japan in East Asia have become increasingly competitive. Japan was alarmed by Chinese nuclear tests and military expansion in the 1980s and 1990s. Responding, it strengthened its alliance with the US, which in turn fuelled Chinese perceptions of renewed Japanese militarism. Japan's prolonged economic stagnation at a time of China's meteoric rise fuelled Japanese insecurity. North Korea's missile tests and nuclear programme aggravated Japan’s insecurity and moved Tokyo closer to Washington's strategic agenda.
The Bush administration's war on terror offered an opportune framework for Japan to carry out political and constitutional changes which in reality have their basis in its concerns about the rise of China. These changes, which permit an expansive role for Japan's military are interpreted by neo-nationalist elements in China as a further sign of Japanese militarism. These forces have also exploited anti-Japanese sentiments over the visits to the Yasukuni Shrine by the former Prime Minister Koizumi and the publication of Japanese textbooks that glossed over Japanese war-time atrocities in East Asia. Anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, sometimes tolerated by the authorities in Beijing, produced a nationalist backlash in Japan. As a result, Sino-Japanese competition and mistrust creates a kind of unstable core at the heart of the EAC concept. It remains to be seen whether there would be any genuine improvement under the Abe government.
Despite these obstacles, the East Asian nations, especially ASEAN members, are unlikely to abandon their quest for an East Asian Community. This is because of four advantages of the East Asian framework.
Why East Asian Regionalism Will Not Fade Away
First, for ASEAN, East Asian regionalism provides them with an important additional layer of engagement with the region’s preeminent rising power, China. ASEAN is opposed to a containment approach that some sections in the US policy-making community advocate out of concern that it might provoke a nationalistic and hostile response from Beijing. At the same time, through the EAC, ASEAN seeks to create the possibility of binding China into a regional structure that would induce Beijing’s restraint towards its weaker neighbours in exchange for the latter’s respect for its economic and security interests and leadership. East Asian regionalism may be a better mechanism for binding China this way than either the ARF or APEC, where the presence of the US makes China nervous about making concessions which it fears may be perceived by Washington as a sign of weakness. Indeed, China has in the past seen US policies of engagement through the ARF as a form of “soft containment”.
Second, East Asian regionalism serves as a more appropriate platform for undertaking certain functional tasks or addressing common dangers that other regional groupings are less suited or inclined to perform. Financial cooperation is one of them, and has been already undertaken by the APT. East Asian regionalism has also proven useful in addressing certain types of non-traditional security threats, such as pandemics. The regional response to SARS crisis was undertaken through an East Asian framework and this may prove useful again should there be a massive outbreak of the bird flu. The focus on energy security at the 2nd EAS in Cebu is also noteworthy given the membership in the EAS of both India (not an APEC member) and China, two of the biggest consumers of energy resources.
Third, East Asian regionalism, especially through its Summit, provides a forum for ASEAN to influence the regional balance of power for its own benefit. By including Asia’s two other rising powers: India and Japan, ASEAN ensures not only that the EAC will not be dominated by China. Lee Kuan Yew put it, in an interview with Time Asia published in December 2005, explained the admission of India, Australia and New Zealand into the East Asian summit as a matter of balancing. “India would be a useful balance to China's heft,” while bringing Australia and New Zealand into the Summit would erase any concern that it was a forum of “Asians versus whites” or an anti-American grouping. “It's a neater balance,” he said. (emphasis added)
Finally, the simultaneous engagement of China, Japan and India through the EAS also allows ASEAN a secure a margin of freedom for its own actions and to secure material benefits from each of them. Confronted with the new power structure, ASEAN hopes to be able to secure from the larger Asian powers the benefits of both geopolitical restraint and economic assistance. The region has already seen a degree of competitive bidding by Japan and China for ASEAN’s affection, especially evident in their efforts to develop free trade arrangements with ASEAN and to sign ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia. At the same time, East Asian regionalism offers its participants a potential source of leverage against unsympathetic or arrogant US policies. The very existence of East Asian institutions should require the US to weigh the diplomatic and political costs of such policies in a future regional crisis, for example the kind of response that sparked resentment against the US in the wake of the 1997 financial meltdown.
The US: Victim or Spoiler?
This leads to the question of the US attitude towards the East Asian Community idea. The Bush administration viewed the first East Asian Summit with feigned disinterest. Eric John, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, told a US congressional hearing: “Nobody knows what the East Asia summit is other than leaders coming together.” John described the Summit as too much of a “black box” for Washington to even realize what it is missing out on. “I would hesitate to push for an invitation to an organization we don’t know what it does.”
In reality, Washington has had a history of anxiety about East Asian regionalism. In his memoirs, US Secretary of State James Baker confesses to having done his best to “kill” Mahathir’s 1990 EAEG/C proposal for , “even though in public [he] took a moderate line.” The US sent a demarche to the ASEAN Secretary General in 1993 warning that it would be “concerned about anything that raises questions about United States Commitment to the region and exclusion from the region”. In a September 2005 speech, former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick argued that American and regional concerns about China “will grow if China seeks to maneuver toward a predominance of power [in East Asia],” he urged ASEAN, Japan, Australia, and others to work with the US “for regional security and prosperity through the ASEAN Regional Forum and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.”
Perhaps unwittingly, Zoellick identified an interesting policy choice for the US. If Washington is truly worried about the EAC becoming an instrument of Chinese dominance, shouldn’t it be preempting its emergence by lending greater support and resources to the region’s wider and inclusive regional institutions, such as APEC and ARF, just as Goh and Zoellick urges?
This is all the more because the US cannot realistically expect an invitation to join the East Asian Community. After the inclusion of India, Australia and New Zealand in the EAS, there was some speculation that the US could be next. But even friends of Washington do not this is either necessary or desirable. Hitoshi Tanaka, a former Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister, contend that the US is not “committed to the East Asia community building” and hence should not be regarded as “a member of the East Asian Community.” Singapore’s former prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, argues that “East Asia cannot be extending to countries in the Pacific, for then even the political definitions would get stretched beyond belief.” In Goh’s view, the region’s “engagement with the US could be through the APEC and the ARF.”
Instead, there is a good case to be made the EAC presents the US with a rationale to engage more actively in regional institutions where it is a member. Until now, US policy towards these institutions has been a study of contrasts: relative indifference towards the ARF, the region’s only security forum, and overt attempts at domination of APEC, at least initially. Thus, it opposed Canadian and Australian proposals (also in 1990) for developing a multilateral security forum in Asia akin to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as a “solution in search of a problem” (in the words of the then Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Richard Solomon), fearing that it will undercut the rationale for America’s bilateral alliances in the region. While the Clinton administration later softened its stance on multilateral security and backed the ARF - an offshoot of the Australian and Canadian proposals. But the US has viewed the ARF at best an adjunct to its bilateral alliances in the region. It did not send its Secretary of State to the 2005 ARF meeting in Laos. The tendency to see bilateralism and multilateralism in zero-sum terms has meant that Washington has never seriously engaged the ARF in developing its confidence-building agenda.
By contrast, the US under the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations tried to steer APEC exclusively in the direction of trade liberalization, ignoring its other two missions: trade facilitation and development cooperation. Its insistence on institutionalizing APEC “as a formal body applying strict rules” not only clashed with ASEAN’s preference for informal and non-legalistic approach to multilateralism, along with the selective focus on trade liberalization also made Asian governments “dubious about allowing themselves to be seriously constrained by an organization whose agenda was so overweeningly dominated by the United States.”
This in turn fuelled the move towards an East Asian regional forum culminating in the APT. And Asian resistance to its trade liberalization agenda led Washington to gradually lose interest in APEC. Although successive American presidents have attended the annual APEC summit, APEC’s focus has shifted towards security issues (East Timor in 1999, terrorism in 2001). But even then, the US counter-terrorism cooperation with East Asia has been undertaken primarily on a bilateral basis, with the exception of a joint declaration with ASEAN on counter-terrorism measures such as intelligence sharing and training.
Ultimately, the challenge for the US lies in finding a balance between disinterest on the one hand and dominance on the other. Washington’s approach to Asian multilateralism needs to be serious but not heavy-handed. The affirmation that the EAS would remain “an open, transparent and outward-looking forum” might have assuaged some of Washington’s fear about the Chinese dominance of the EAS. But support for it might grow if Washington’s policy towards the region seem overbearing or unilateralist, or showing aggressive opposition to the EAC idea.
Instead, the US should work towards making existing regional institutions, ASEAN, ARF and APEC, more relevant and effective. US policy-makers should discard the zero-sum view of the relationship between US bilateral alliances and its participation in multilateral institutions is unwarranted. Multilateralism helps Washington to better manage the development of Asia’s future security architecture. For the region’s rising powers, especially China and India, multilateral forums provide a valuable platform to demonstrate their credentials as responsible and constructive members of the international community. For the region’s weaker states, such as the ASEAN members, they provide an invaluable platform of engaging the major powers and moderating their competitive instincts. Indeed, contrary to Washington’s fears, multilateralism may be the best way for the region’s weaker powers to engage both China without courting its dominance. And support for multilateral institutions is a good way for Washington to reassure its Asian friends who have been recently concerned about its arrogance and unilateralism.
The US can play a more active role in Asian multilateral institutions in three ways. The first is to support their greater institutionalization and legalization, which should make them more responsive to the transnational threats that the region faces. Two general features of ASEAN and Asian-style multilateralism need to be reformed: their minimalist approach to institutionalization and legalization, and closely related, their deep attachment to Westphalian sovereignty, especially the principle of non-interference.
This reform process begins with ASEAN. While the US is not formally a member of ASEAN, it is a dialogue partner. ASEAN is the hub of both Asia-Pacific and East Asian regional institutions. The reform of other regional institutions that have the US as a member would not be easy unless ASEAN itself changes its ways. ASEAN is drafting a Charter which would specify the rights and responsibilities of the grouping’s members, consolidating and rationalizing its institutional mechanisms, and giving the organization a legal personality in dealing with the outside world. If realized, the Charter will mark a departure from the “ASEAN Way’ of informalism, which has been blamed for organizational inertia and a lowest-common denominator mindset.
But to be a credible voice in the call for reform of the ASEAN Way, the US would need to sign ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, as ASEAN’s other dialogue partners, China, Japan, India Australia and France, have done. There has been resistance to this move, since the TAC upholds the principle of non-interference rather strictly. But ASEAN is already rethinking this doctrine, especially in relation to Burma. It has publicly expressed unhappiness over the slow pace of political reform in the country. The shift is not very pronounced yet, because several ASEAN members remain wary that criticizing a member regime for its domestic political practices might backfire on them one day. But at least the Burma issue is no longer being swept under the carpet. By signing the TAC, the US would signal its commitment to ASEAN, and become a more credible partner in ASEAN’s reformist agenda.
Second, while supporting ASEAN’s efforts at institutional reform, the US should seek to rejuvenate APEC and the ARF. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Badawi assures that the EAS would not become “confrontational with Apec or other organizations.” In APEC, the US should look beyond trade liberalization and use it as a vehicle for trade facilitation and as a vehicle for mobilizing regional consensus and support for the WTO Doha round talks. The ARF has stalled in recent years, partly because of the lack of interest shown by US policy-makers, as represented by Secretary of State Condolezza Rice’s absence from the 2005 ARF meeting in Laos. The ARF has also made limited progress in its confidence-building agenda, which is restricted to a small number of steps, such as publication of defence white papers, and meetings of national defense college heads. Much more can be done. One important challenge is to develop mechanisms for preventive diplomacy, including provision of early warning, fact-finding and good offices missions to deal with regional crises. The US could also make greater use of the forum in developing cooperation in areas such as maritime security and counter-terrorism.
Third, the US should seek to build a multilateral institution for Northeast Asia based on the Six-Party talks on the Korean peninsula , aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapon program in exchange for multilateral assistance. But until recently, the prospects for this occurring looked slim, especially when the Bush administration in 2006 imposed new sanctions on North Korea, including a ban on US banks from dealing with the Bank of Macau, a major banking partner of North Korea. The US move widened the gulf between Washington and Seoul, which continued to pursue its engagement policy towards Pyongyang. The Chinese, professing a limited clout over North Korea’s decision-making, rejected US sanctions against the regime. The evolving China-Russia strategic relationship, counter-balancing closer Japan-US ties, seemed to be overtaking the momentum toward a multilateral approach to Northeast Asian security. But the accord on North Korea at the six party talks on 13 February 2007 testifies to the usefulness of mutlilateralism for the US. As White House spokesman Tony Snow put it, “there is considerable leverage on the North Koreans by virtue of the fact that...the Chinese, the South Koreans, the Japanese and the Russians are involved here. [the North Koreans] are answerable not merely to the United States, but in fact to their own neighbors who are significant stakeholders in this.”
Conclusion
The emergence of the East Asian Community idea, supported by institutions such as the ASEAN Plus Three and the East Asian Summit, is in large part a response to the growing regional economic interdependence. It was also catalyzed by the 1997 Asian economic crisis in which the US response was seen as indifferent, if not hostile, in organizing the rescue of the Asian countries most affected by the crisis. Since then, the EAC idea has evolved considerably. Although it is beset by problems about its membership, leadership and intra-regional mistrust, the idea is unlikely to fade away, in the same manner as Mahathir Mohammed’s proposal for an East Asian institution remained alive despite Washington’s bitter opposition. East Asian nations, especially the ASEAN members, see East Asian regionalism not only as a way of co-opting with China, but also as an instrument of leverage against the US should it be indifferent or hostile to the interests of East Asian nations especially in a future regional crisis.
The United States has some misgivings about the East Asian Community idea because of the potential for China to play an active, if not dominant role in the grouping. These misgivings remain despite the inclusion of its allies, Australia in particular, in the East Asian Summit. But any US effort to subvert the grouping could backfire. A more prudent policy would be for the US to revitalize its engagement with Asia-Pacific institutions, such as the ARF and APEC and to support the development of a Northeast Asian subregional grouping. While America’s bilateral alliances remain important to its strategic interests in the region, greater resort to multilateral institutions would contribute to improved prospects for regional conflict management and integration. It would also ensure that the proposed East Asian Community would not turn into an anti-American bandwagon.
Monday, May 21, 2007
GEOPOLITICAL CHALLENGES IN THE ASIA-EURASIAN REGION: SOME THOUGHTS
GEOPOLITICAL CHALLENGES IN THE ASIA-EURASIAN REGION: SOME THOUGHTS
Amitav Acharya
(Keynote Address to the The 12th SPF ISSYK-KUL Forum, "CENTRAL ASIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUSINTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DYNAMICS", Organized by
Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Japan, Asian Dialogue Society, and International Centre, Goa, India, 5-7 November 2006, The International Centre, Goa, India)
1. I would like to thank the Sasakawa Peace Foundation of Japan and the International Centre, Goa, for inviting me to deliver the keynote address of the Conference. I have been asked to reflect on the main geopolitical challenges in the “Asian-Eurasian” region. Since regional definitions are necessarily arbitrary and the “Asian-Eurasia” is an unconventional and uncertain formulation, I will simplify matters by focusing on the geopolitics of Asia, a more familiar regional concept, but at the same time highlighting, where necessary, its implications for the wider Eurasian area. I would identify five issues of central concern in the emerging Asian geopolitics.
2. The first has to do with the strategic implications of the rising powers of Asia today. A major and historic shift is occurring in the Asian power structure which will shape the geopolitics of the 21st century. For the first time in its history, the region is witnessing the simultaneous rise of three major powers: China, India and in a different way, Japan. What are its implications?
3. To begin with, the unipolar moment in post-Cold War period, if it was ever there, is closing fast. And the region’s multipolar power structure of Asia is causing pessimism. According to pessimists, multipolar structures are far less stable than bipolar or unipolar ones. The larger the number of powerful states, the greater the scope for unpredictability in their security relationships and hence mutual misperception.
4. Asia’s emerging multipolarity, with a rising China and India and resurgent Japan and Russia, the latter due to the jump in oil prices, has invited comparisons between East Asia today to Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. Then, the rise of Germany upset the balance of power and its challenge to the prevailing status quo maintained by the other European nations was said to have been a major contributing factor to World War I, despite high levels of economic interdependence among the European nations. I am not a believer in this comparison. There are major differences between Europe’s past and Asia’s future. Today, economic interdependence is much deeper, and there are far more avenues of international cooperation, including institutions, available for mitigating conflict among nations. The destructive potential of major power wars are so much greater as to induce a measure of caution among these power in contemplating waging them. Today’s wars are more likely to be asymmetric and less system-threatening. This is no cause for celebration, but should temper the hyper-pessimism of scholars and analysts who believe that post-Cold War Asia would be a natural candidate for a major conflagration.
5. The rise of China has been a central concern for geopolitical analysts. In conventional geopolitical thinking, China is cast as the revisionist power, which is bound to challenge the status quo maintained by the US favouring its continued hegemony. A related concern here is that China might develop regional “spheres of influence” involving its weaker neighbours, such as the Central Asian republics or the Southeast Asian states. Some American analysts have spoken of a Chinese Monroe Doctrine in Southeast Asia, akin to the US Monroe Doctrine of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which sought to exclude European colonial powers out of Latin America and sanctioned US intervention in the internal affairs of regional countries.
6. But the problem with this line of geopolitical analysis is that China is behaving like a status quo power. In many respects, it is more willing to conform to established principles of international relations than the United States under the current Bush administration. Examples of such behaviour include respect for international law, multilateralism, and non-intervention in the internal affairs of states. China’s growing participation in global and Asian regional institutions is further testimony to the flaws in the “revisionist power” label sometimes attached to it by observers. There is little evidence to suggest that an increasingly globalising China will behave like a revisionist power which would use war to alter the international status quo.
7. Similarly, the prospects for a Chinese Monroe Doctrine in Central and Southeast Asia is flawed, whether one looks at it from a traditional realpolitik thinking or a modern liberal institutionalist perspective. China’s influence in its periphery will grow and will certainly feature countries which are desperate from its assistance due to their political or economic isolation from the outside world, such as Myanmar or Laos. Occasionally, China, like all great powers past and present, will secure allies to secure its strategic interests and advance its power projection capabilities. But even if one assumes that establishing any sphere of influence is a Chinese goal, and there is no proof of this, China also faces significant countervailing power in its neighbourhood such as Russia and the US in Central Asia, and India, Japan and the US in Southeast Asia. As the case of North Korea demonstrated, Beijing’s authority and influence can be defied by its most needy neighbour. And China is neither able nor willing to dominate regional institutions involving its neighbouring states, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
8. On the other side of the coin, some analysts foresee the reemergence Sino-centric Asian regional order which would be based on a benign Chinese hegemony akin to the old tributary system. This is even more far fetched a notion than the idea of Chinese sphere of influence. Once again there are major differences between the geopolitics of the old Tributary system and contemporary Asian security. One has already been alluded. The old tributary system had no challengers comparable to Japan and India today. Second, hierarchy and deference which marked the old tributary system may sound culturally attractive notions of geopolitical behaviour, but today’s world is based on the Westphalian principles of sovereignty equality and non-intervention, principles China itself acutely believes in.
9. In other words history is not an accurate guide to how Asia’s security order will evolve in the 21st century. History can predict both positive and negative outcomes; it’s a source of both optimism and pessimism. But the future geopolitics of Asia will derive mainly from contemporary realities and forces, although the lessons of history should be a guide for all of us in not repeating the mistakes – misunderstanding and miscalculation – that had led to past conflicts.
10. The role of India has received increasing attention from strategic observers and justly so. India is seen as both a future economic powerhouse and a strategic “swing player” in the Asian balance of power. Moreover, its political model of parliamentary democracy has earned it an international respect denied to China with its authoritarian system. But India’s rise cannot be taken for granted, despite its obvious natural and human resource richness and record of political stability. To realise its full potential as a major Asian power and global player, India must overcome problems in its domestic governance, manage if not resolve its myriad internal conflicts, and find the appropriate balance between those societal and political forces who would like to embrace economic reform and globalisation and those who see it as a threat. These are not impossible challenges, but they call for a realism which must be injected into the projection of India’s obvious potential for regional and global leadership.
11. A second challenge to Asian geopolitics comes from the war on terror waged by the US in response to the heaviest casualty suffered by the nation in a single act of violence inside its territory.
12. At a first glance, most Asian powers seem to have gained some geopolitical mileage out of 9/11 and the resulting war on terror. For Japan, 9/11 contributed to a significant strengthening of the US-Japan security relationship. To be sure, this process was already under way, triggered by China’s rise, and North Korea’s nuclear ambition. But the Japanese Government led by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi could use the US war on terror as the perfect pretext for carrying out far-reaching changes in Japan’s security policy, including deployment of the Japanese navy in the Indian Ocean in a supporting mission to the US military action against Al-Qaeda and Iraq.
13. China also appears to be a winner in the post-9/11 geopolitics. The American preoccupation with Afghanistan and Iraq detracted attention from the “containing China” agenda of the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration. Beijing not only got a reprieve from the hard line US policy favouring Taiwan. The diversion of US strategic attention to the Middle East theatres also allowed China to quietly build-up its diplomatic clout in Southeast Asia, through a diplomatic charm offensive, notwithstanding the fact that Washington itself had pronounced Southeast Asia as the “2nd front” in the war on terror.
14. India perhaps has gained the most from the war on terror, showcasing itself as a victim of international terrorism, making common cause with the US on the terrorist challenge posed by Taliban and Al Qaeda, strengthening its defence relations with the US and winning recognition from Washington as a de facto nuclear power, thereby moving significantly closer to the realization of its aspiration to great power status. Russia also managed to get understanding if not support from the West over its Chechnya problem by presenting it as a front in thr global war on terror. Pakistan and the Philippines have secured increased US military and economic aid, while Indonesia’s armed forces have restored military links with the US.
15. Yet, on closer reflection, many of the so-called gains have downsides and come with costs. Japan is today less secure than before 9/11, not from the threat of terrorism, but from worsening relations with China brought partly about by Chinese fears of renewed Japanese militarism and North Korea’s march towards nuclear weapons capability, caused by heightened insecurity after it was dumped into the “axis-of-evil” camp with Iraq and Iran.
16. China has lost some influence in central Asia, where the US acquired a number of military facilities for its strike on the Taliban. This foray into China’s backyard undermined Beijing’s painstakingly effort to develop a regional alliance of like-minded states through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, dedicated to fighting China’s three central strategic concerns: “terrorism, separatism and extremism” and Beijing has developed the Shanghai group into a potential challenger to US hegemony in the region.
17. But China’s real problem could be the strengthening of the US-India security partnership. The US decision to accord India the status of a de facto and legitimate nuclear power is a considerable setback for Beijing, which had joined hands with Washington to punish India for its nuclear tests in 1998. Moreover, the de-hyphenation of India and Pakistan in US strategic policy undermines China’s geopolitical strategy in South Asia, which has been centred on backing Pakistan as an equal of India.
18. What about the US itself? The US today enjoys closer security relations in Asia. For the first time in history, India and Pakistan are simultaneously strategic partners of the US and are prepared to follow its lead in world affairs. But America’s diplomatic gain is mainly at the government-to-government level. Its standing at the popular level in Asian societies has taken a beating, notwithstanding the goodwill generated by its extraordinary relief effort in the wake of the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Sympathy for the US after 9/11 attacks and declaratory support for its global war on terror has been undermined by the brute and unilateral exercise of US power, as evident in its attack on Iraq.
19. Moreover, closer security ties between the US and Asian countries that are based on mutual need do not translate into genuine and heartfelt respect for American leadership in world affairs. Here the US has lost much ground as a superpower which could be trusted to make strategic choices backed by prudent calculations of costs and benefits of military action.
20. To sum up, the post-9/11 geopolitics of Asia consists not of winners and losers, but mostly losers. The biggest winners in the post-9/11 era are not states, but those societal forces who espouse and support the terrorist cause. They have been rejuvenated by the excesses of the global war on terror, from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib to Beirut. It’s the war on terror, rather than terrorism itself, which has worsened Asia’s security environment.
21. A third challenge to Asian security comes from its unresolved regional conflicts, especially the China-Taiwan, Korean Peninsula and Kashmir. These conflicts are in many respects holdovers from the Cold War. But their dynamics have changed in important ways. First, as I will discuss shortly, Kashmir and now the Korean conflict are now nuclearised. Second, the rising power of India and China make the Kashmir and Taiwan conflicts more directly linked to global security.
22. In the immediate to medium-term, the North Korea nuclear proliferation issue will remain the most important challenge to East Asian security. Tensions over the Taiwan issue seems to have cooled off for the moment, but it remains the most serious long-term strategic issue between the US and China. The Kashmir issue is also a long-term challenge to Asian security, to the extent that the improved climate between India and Pakistan is the result of external pressure by the US in the context of the immediate needs of the war on terror. None of the conflicts show any sign of peaceful resolution.
23. A fourth challenge to Asian security today is the security of energy supplies. Asia is fast becoming the locus of global energy security with China and India being two of the fastest growing consumers of oil and gas. Competition between China and India over overseas energy resources has been overplayed, but nonetheless remains a source of friction in their geopolitical relationship. The security of Asia’s strategic sea lanes through which the oil imports must pass is another concern, as these sea lanes, especially the Straits of Malacca, are vulnerable to piracy and terrorist attacks. Others, like the Strait of Hormuz, are vulnerable to disruption and closure during a major international conflict, such a US-Iran confrontation. Attempts to boost global energy security through the construction of oil and pipelines is fraught with dangers and uncertainties, because of political rivalries among the concerned nations and the instability of regions through which these pipelines must pass.
24. Already, concerns about energy security are reshaping the military forces in the region. The Japanese navy today is much more active in the Straits of Malacca, ostensibly in a supportive role for US deployments to Afghanistan and the Gulf, but also spurred by concerns about the safety of its energy supply lifeline through the Straits. Energy security is also driving the Chinese navy’s blue water ambitions and could be a factor in its interest in seeking access to naval bases in the Indian Ocean, thereby prompting concern and response from the Indian navy.
25. The Central Asian region is caught up in the global scramble for energy resources. The Caspian region is increasingly important to the supply of oil and gas for world markets, with oil resources comparable to the North Sea. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, by 2010, the Caspian Sea region could export up to 4 million barrels of oil and 680 million cubic meters of natural gas per day, which although modest relative to the 45 million barrels per day produced by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries members, “still helps to diversify global energy supply, which ultimately contributes to global energy security.” Indeed, “the full potential of the region’s energy resources remains unknown.”
26. A fifth challenge to Asian security today stems from the spread of nuclear weapons. It is no exaggeration to say that we have now entered the 2nd nuclear age. There are important differences between the 1st nuclear age, ushered in by the US nuclear attack on Japan at the end of World War II, and the 2nd nuclear age. Although the 1st nuclear age started in Asia, its main theatre was the Europe and the Atlantic. The 2nd nuclear age is centered in Asia, with the region accounting for the emergence of all the three nuclear weapon states outside of the five recognized powers. A second difference is that the 2nd nuclear age features a wider range of states and regimes, from relatively strong nations like India to nearly failed states like North Korea. This leads to a third difference, the 2nd nuclear age is much more linked to concerns about regime survival, hence politically much more complex and challenging to deal with than its predecessor. The complexity is further underscored by the Bush administration’s policy of regime change, involving the possible use of military force. It would have been unthinkable in the 1st nuclear age for the US to enforce a policy of regime change in its nuclear adversaries, the Soviet Union and China. But this is entirely in the realm of possibility in relation to North Korea, Iran and other would be proliferators in the region.
27. Let me now turn to the issue of regional cooperation. Traditionally, Asia had been inhospitable to multilateral security cooperation. Until the 1990s, the only regional organizations in the region were sub-regional entities, ASEAN in Southeast Asia, and the far less coherent SAARC in South Asia. But the end of the Cold War led to a new momentum towards regional cooperation, with the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum on an Asia-Pacific basis and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Eurasia.
28. ASEAN offers a useful model for the developing world, but mainly in terms of its considerable success developing mutual comfort and accepting a long-term commitment not to resort to war as a means of dispute-settlement. ASEAN, or other regional organizations in Asia are more suited for a confidence-building role than becoming problem-solvers. The ARF has expanded its membership, but not its agenda, which is still confined to dialogues and soft confidence-building measures, rather than more concrete measures of preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution as originally envisaged. Concerns about sovereignty and non-interference have constrained both ASEAN and the ARF from moving towards measures to address new transnational issues, such as pandemics, environmental pollution and transnational crime, beyond sharing of information and best practices. It remains to be seen whether ASEAN’s current efforts to build a Security Community and draft a Charter will succeed in overcoming the non-interference mindset.
29. The SCO having been inspired by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), has adopted some fairly strong confidence-building measures and has declared its commitment to fight “terrorism, separatism and extremism” in the region. Its strategic importance has been enhanced by the recent rise in oil prices, which has led some to see it as a regional bloc to challenge US dominance in central Asia. In reality, however, the SCO members face numerous internal and external challenges, including the problems of democratisation, radical Islam, and ethnic strife. Inter-state disputes cloud the prospects for regional cooperation over energy resources. And the SCO members have divided allegiance when it comes to the larger powers, with the prospects for a new “great game” rising in keeping with the growing competition over the energy resources of the region.
30. Let me conclude by offering the caveat that I am not in the business of making predictions about the future of Asian geopolitics. Like life, Asian security is marked by both challenges and opportunities, negative and positive trends. But what is important is that there need not be an euphoria about a rising, prosperous and peaceful region, or an Asian century. Asia will assume an increasingly critical role in the future world order, but this would not have a linear trajectory or single outcome. Asia is not fated to be peaceful and prosperous or divided and dangerous. Much will depend on human agency, and the ability of its leaders, regional organizations and civil society actors to put forward visions of progress backed by efforts to steer the region out of the immense challenges it faces.
31. Although Asia is not a coherent region, there is a winning combination here in the natural resources of Central and Southeast Asia, the human resources of China and India, the creative genius of India, the manufacturing might of China, and the technological sophistication of the region’s early economic leaders, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Thinking of new ways and mechanisms that go beyond traditional sovereignty mind-sets, so as to harness these resources for national development and common regional good is Asia’s principal challenges in the 21st century, a challenge to which this conference should dedicate itself.
32. I thank you for your attention.
Amitav Acharya
(Keynote Address to the The 12th SPF ISSYK-KUL Forum, "CENTRAL ASIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUSINTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DYNAMICS", Organized by
Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Japan, Asian Dialogue Society, and International Centre, Goa, India, 5-7 November 2006, The International Centre, Goa, India)
1. I would like to thank the Sasakawa Peace Foundation of Japan and the International Centre, Goa, for inviting me to deliver the keynote address of the Conference. I have been asked to reflect on the main geopolitical challenges in the “Asian-Eurasian” region. Since regional definitions are necessarily arbitrary and the “Asian-Eurasia” is an unconventional and uncertain formulation, I will simplify matters by focusing on the geopolitics of Asia, a more familiar regional concept, but at the same time highlighting, where necessary, its implications for the wider Eurasian area. I would identify five issues of central concern in the emerging Asian geopolitics.
2. The first has to do with the strategic implications of the rising powers of Asia today. A major and historic shift is occurring in the Asian power structure which will shape the geopolitics of the 21st century. For the first time in its history, the region is witnessing the simultaneous rise of three major powers: China, India and in a different way, Japan. What are its implications?
3. To begin with, the unipolar moment in post-Cold War period, if it was ever there, is closing fast. And the region’s multipolar power structure of Asia is causing pessimism. According to pessimists, multipolar structures are far less stable than bipolar or unipolar ones. The larger the number of powerful states, the greater the scope for unpredictability in their security relationships and hence mutual misperception.
4. Asia’s emerging multipolarity, with a rising China and India and resurgent Japan and Russia, the latter due to the jump in oil prices, has invited comparisons between East Asia today to Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. Then, the rise of Germany upset the balance of power and its challenge to the prevailing status quo maintained by the other European nations was said to have been a major contributing factor to World War I, despite high levels of economic interdependence among the European nations. I am not a believer in this comparison. There are major differences between Europe’s past and Asia’s future. Today, economic interdependence is much deeper, and there are far more avenues of international cooperation, including institutions, available for mitigating conflict among nations. The destructive potential of major power wars are so much greater as to induce a measure of caution among these power in contemplating waging them. Today’s wars are more likely to be asymmetric and less system-threatening. This is no cause for celebration, but should temper the hyper-pessimism of scholars and analysts who believe that post-Cold War Asia would be a natural candidate for a major conflagration.
5. The rise of China has been a central concern for geopolitical analysts. In conventional geopolitical thinking, China is cast as the revisionist power, which is bound to challenge the status quo maintained by the US favouring its continued hegemony. A related concern here is that China might develop regional “spheres of influence” involving its weaker neighbours, such as the Central Asian republics or the Southeast Asian states. Some American analysts have spoken of a Chinese Monroe Doctrine in Southeast Asia, akin to the US Monroe Doctrine of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which sought to exclude European colonial powers out of Latin America and sanctioned US intervention in the internal affairs of regional countries.
6. But the problem with this line of geopolitical analysis is that China is behaving like a status quo power. In many respects, it is more willing to conform to established principles of international relations than the United States under the current Bush administration. Examples of such behaviour include respect for international law, multilateralism, and non-intervention in the internal affairs of states. China’s growing participation in global and Asian regional institutions is further testimony to the flaws in the “revisionist power” label sometimes attached to it by observers. There is little evidence to suggest that an increasingly globalising China will behave like a revisionist power which would use war to alter the international status quo.
7. Similarly, the prospects for a Chinese Monroe Doctrine in Central and Southeast Asia is flawed, whether one looks at it from a traditional realpolitik thinking or a modern liberal institutionalist perspective. China’s influence in its periphery will grow and will certainly feature countries which are desperate from its assistance due to their political or economic isolation from the outside world, such as Myanmar or Laos. Occasionally, China, like all great powers past and present, will secure allies to secure its strategic interests and advance its power projection capabilities. But even if one assumes that establishing any sphere of influence is a Chinese goal, and there is no proof of this, China also faces significant countervailing power in its neighbourhood such as Russia and the US in Central Asia, and India, Japan and the US in Southeast Asia. As the case of North Korea demonstrated, Beijing’s authority and influence can be defied by its most needy neighbour. And China is neither able nor willing to dominate regional institutions involving its neighbouring states, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
8. On the other side of the coin, some analysts foresee the reemergence Sino-centric Asian regional order which would be based on a benign Chinese hegemony akin to the old tributary system. This is even more far fetched a notion than the idea of Chinese sphere of influence. Once again there are major differences between the geopolitics of the old Tributary system and contemporary Asian security. One has already been alluded. The old tributary system had no challengers comparable to Japan and India today. Second, hierarchy and deference which marked the old tributary system may sound culturally attractive notions of geopolitical behaviour, but today’s world is based on the Westphalian principles of sovereignty equality and non-intervention, principles China itself acutely believes in.
9. In other words history is not an accurate guide to how Asia’s security order will evolve in the 21st century. History can predict both positive and negative outcomes; it’s a source of both optimism and pessimism. But the future geopolitics of Asia will derive mainly from contemporary realities and forces, although the lessons of history should be a guide for all of us in not repeating the mistakes – misunderstanding and miscalculation – that had led to past conflicts.
10. The role of India has received increasing attention from strategic observers and justly so. India is seen as both a future economic powerhouse and a strategic “swing player” in the Asian balance of power. Moreover, its political model of parliamentary democracy has earned it an international respect denied to China with its authoritarian system. But India’s rise cannot be taken for granted, despite its obvious natural and human resource richness and record of political stability. To realise its full potential as a major Asian power and global player, India must overcome problems in its domestic governance, manage if not resolve its myriad internal conflicts, and find the appropriate balance between those societal and political forces who would like to embrace economic reform and globalisation and those who see it as a threat. These are not impossible challenges, but they call for a realism which must be injected into the projection of India’s obvious potential for regional and global leadership.
11. A second challenge to Asian geopolitics comes from the war on terror waged by the US in response to the heaviest casualty suffered by the nation in a single act of violence inside its territory.
12. At a first glance, most Asian powers seem to have gained some geopolitical mileage out of 9/11 and the resulting war on terror. For Japan, 9/11 contributed to a significant strengthening of the US-Japan security relationship. To be sure, this process was already under way, triggered by China’s rise, and North Korea’s nuclear ambition. But the Japanese Government led by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi could use the US war on terror as the perfect pretext for carrying out far-reaching changes in Japan’s security policy, including deployment of the Japanese navy in the Indian Ocean in a supporting mission to the US military action against Al-Qaeda and Iraq.
13. China also appears to be a winner in the post-9/11 geopolitics. The American preoccupation with Afghanistan and Iraq detracted attention from the “containing China” agenda of the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration. Beijing not only got a reprieve from the hard line US policy favouring Taiwan. The diversion of US strategic attention to the Middle East theatres also allowed China to quietly build-up its diplomatic clout in Southeast Asia, through a diplomatic charm offensive, notwithstanding the fact that Washington itself had pronounced Southeast Asia as the “2nd front” in the war on terror.
14. India perhaps has gained the most from the war on terror, showcasing itself as a victim of international terrorism, making common cause with the US on the terrorist challenge posed by Taliban and Al Qaeda, strengthening its defence relations with the US and winning recognition from Washington as a de facto nuclear power, thereby moving significantly closer to the realization of its aspiration to great power status. Russia also managed to get understanding if not support from the West over its Chechnya problem by presenting it as a front in thr global war on terror. Pakistan and the Philippines have secured increased US military and economic aid, while Indonesia’s armed forces have restored military links with the US.
15. Yet, on closer reflection, many of the so-called gains have downsides and come with costs. Japan is today less secure than before 9/11, not from the threat of terrorism, but from worsening relations with China brought partly about by Chinese fears of renewed Japanese militarism and North Korea’s march towards nuclear weapons capability, caused by heightened insecurity after it was dumped into the “axis-of-evil” camp with Iraq and Iran.
16. China has lost some influence in central Asia, where the US acquired a number of military facilities for its strike on the Taliban. This foray into China’s backyard undermined Beijing’s painstakingly effort to develop a regional alliance of like-minded states through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, dedicated to fighting China’s three central strategic concerns: “terrorism, separatism and extremism” and Beijing has developed the Shanghai group into a potential challenger to US hegemony in the region.
17. But China’s real problem could be the strengthening of the US-India security partnership. The US decision to accord India the status of a de facto and legitimate nuclear power is a considerable setback for Beijing, which had joined hands with Washington to punish India for its nuclear tests in 1998. Moreover, the de-hyphenation of India and Pakistan in US strategic policy undermines China’s geopolitical strategy in South Asia, which has been centred on backing Pakistan as an equal of India.
18. What about the US itself? The US today enjoys closer security relations in Asia. For the first time in history, India and Pakistan are simultaneously strategic partners of the US and are prepared to follow its lead in world affairs. But America’s diplomatic gain is mainly at the government-to-government level. Its standing at the popular level in Asian societies has taken a beating, notwithstanding the goodwill generated by its extraordinary relief effort in the wake of the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Sympathy for the US after 9/11 attacks and declaratory support for its global war on terror has been undermined by the brute and unilateral exercise of US power, as evident in its attack on Iraq.
19. Moreover, closer security ties between the US and Asian countries that are based on mutual need do not translate into genuine and heartfelt respect for American leadership in world affairs. Here the US has lost much ground as a superpower which could be trusted to make strategic choices backed by prudent calculations of costs and benefits of military action.
20. To sum up, the post-9/11 geopolitics of Asia consists not of winners and losers, but mostly losers. The biggest winners in the post-9/11 era are not states, but those societal forces who espouse and support the terrorist cause. They have been rejuvenated by the excesses of the global war on terror, from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib to Beirut. It’s the war on terror, rather than terrorism itself, which has worsened Asia’s security environment.
21. A third challenge to Asian security comes from its unresolved regional conflicts, especially the China-Taiwan, Korean Peninsula and Kashmir. These conflicts are in many respects holdovers from the Cold War. But their dynamics have changed in important ways. First, as I will discuss shortly, Kashmir and now the Korean conflict are now nuclearised. Second, the rising power of India and China make the Kashmir and Taiwan conflicts more directly linked to global security.
22. In the immediate to medium-term, the North Korea nuclear proliferation issue will remain the most important challenge to East Asian security. Tensions over the Taiwan issue seems to have cooled off for the moment, but it remains the most serious long-term strategic issue between the US and China. The Kashmir issue is also a long-term challenge to Asian security, to the extent that the improved climate between India and Pakistan is the result of external pressure by the US in the context of the immediate needs of the war on terror. None of the conflicts show any sign of peaceful resolution.
23. A fourth challenge to Asian security today is the security of energy supplies. Asia is fast becoming the locus of global energy security with China and India being two of the fastest growing consumers of oil and gas. Competition between China and India over overseas energy resources has been overplayed, but nonetheless remains a source of friction in their geopolitical relationship. The security of Asia’s strategic sea lanes through which the oil imports must pass is another concern, as these sea lanes, especially the Straits of Malacca, are vulnerable to piracy and terrorist attacks. Others, like the Strait of Hormuz, are vulnerable to disruption and closure during a major international conflict, such a US-Iran confrontation. Attempts to boost global energy security through the construction of oil and pipelines is fraught with dangers and uncertainties, because of political rivalries among the concerned nations and the instability of regions through which these pipelines must pass.
24. Already, concerns about energy security are reshaping the military forces in the region. The Japanese navy today is much more active in the Straits of Malacca, ostensibly in a supportive role for US deployments to Afghanistan and the Gulf, but also spurred by concerns about the safety of its energy supply lifeline through the Straits. Energy security is also driving the Chinese navy’s blue water ambitions and could be a factor in its interest in seeking access to naval bases in the Indian Ocean, thereby prompting concern and response from the Indian navy.
25. The Central Asian region is caught up in the global scramble for energy resources. The Caspian region is increasingly important to the supply of oil and gas for world markets, with oil resources comparable to the North Sea. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, by 2010, the Caspian Sea region could export up to 4 million barrels of oil and 680 million cubic meters of natural gas per day, which although modest relative to the 45 million barrels per day produced by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries members, “still helps to diversify global energy supply, which ultimately contributes to global energy security.” Indeed, “the full potential of the region’s energy resources remains unknown.”
26. A fifth challenge to Asian security today stems from the spread of nuclear weapons. It is no exaggeration to say that we have now entered the 2nd nuclear age. There are important differences between the 1st nuclear age, ushered in by the US nuclear attack on Japan at the end of World War II, and the 2nd nuclear age. Although the 1st nuclear age started in Asia, its main theatre was the Europe and the Atlantic. The 2nd nuclear age is centered in Asia, with the region accounting for the emergence of all the three nuclear weapon states outside of the five recognized powers. A second difference is that the 2nd nuclear age features a wider range of states and regimes, from relatively strong nations like India to nearly failed states like North Korea. This leads to a third difference, the 2nd nuclear age is much more linked to concerns about regime survival, hence politically much more complex and challenging to deal with than its predecessor. The complexity is further underscored by the Bush administration’s policy of regime change, involving the possible use of military force. It would have been unthinkable in the 1st nuclear age for the US to enforce a policy of regime change in its nuclear adversaries, the Soviet Union and China. But this is entirely in the realm of possibility in relation to North Korea, Iran and other would be proliferators in the region.
27. Let me now turn to the issue of regional cooperation. Traditionally, Asia had been inhospitable to multilateral security cooperation. Until the 1990s, the only regional organizations in the region were sub-regional entities, ASEAN in Southeast Asia, and the far less coherent SAARC in South Asia. But the end of the Cold War led to a new momentum towards regional cooperation, with the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum on an Asia-Pacific basis and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Eurasia.
28. ASEAN offers a useful model for the developing world, but mainly in terms of its considerable success developing mutual comfort and accepting a long-term commitment not to resort to war as a means of dispute-settlement. ASEAN, or other regional organizations in Asia are more suited for a confidence-building role than becoming problem-solvers. The ARF has expanded its membership, but not its agenda, which is still confined to dialogues and soft confidence-building measures, rather than more concrete measures of preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution as originally envisaged. Concerns about sovereignty and non-interference have constrained both ASEAN and the ARF from moving towards measures to address new transnational issues, such as pandemics, environmental pollution and transnational crime, beyond sharing of information and best practices. It remains to be seen whether ASEAN’s current efforts to build a Security Community and draft a Charter will succeed in overcoming the non-interference mindset.
29. The SCO having been inspired by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), has adopted some fairly strong confidence-building measures and has declared its commitment to fight “terrorism, separatism and extremism” in the region. Its strategic importance has been enhanced by the recent rise in oil prices, which has led some to see it as a regional bloc to challenge US dominance in central Asia. In reality, however, the SCO members face numerous internal and external challenges, including the problems of democratisation, radical Islam, and ethnic strife. Inter-state disputes cloud the prospects for regional cooperation over energy resources. And the SCO members have divided allegiance when it comes to the larger powers, with the prospects for a new “great game” rising in keeping with the growing competition over the energy resources of the region.
30. Let me conclude by offering the caveat that I am not in the business of making predictions about the future of Asian geopolitics. Like life, Asian security is marked by both challenges and opportunities, negative and positive trends. But what is important is that there need not be an euphoria about a rising, prosperous and peaceful region, or an Asian century. Asia will assume an increasingly critical role in the future world order, but this would not have a linear trajectory or single outcome. Asia is not fated to be peaceful and prosperous or divided and dangerous. Much will depend on human agency, and the ability of its leaders, regional organizations and civil society actors to put forward visions of progress backed by efforts to steer the region out of the immense challenges it faces.
31. Although Asia is not a coherent region, there is a winning combination here in the natural resources of Central and Southeast Asia, the human resources of China and India, the creative genius of India, the manufacturing might of China, and the technological sophistication of the region’s early economic leaders, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Thinking of new ways and mechanisms that go beyond traditional sovereignty mind-sets, so as to harness these resources for national development and common regional good is Asia’s principal challenges in the 21st century, a challenge to which this conference should dedicate itself.
32. I thank you for your attention.
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