Security in Asia: What's different, what's not?

Security in Asia: What’s Different, What’s Not?

Mark Beeson1

AbstractIntuitively, we might expect that security would be broadly conceived in the same way across the world. And yet even the way the security of the state is understood is quite different from the predominant ‘Western’ model in some parts of Asia in particular. Indeed, the constituent parts of broadly conceived ‘security governance’ reveal surprising and illuminating differences about a con-cept we might otherwise expect to be universal. Nowhere better illustrates this possibility than the East Asian region, which has come to be associated with a distinctive notion of ‘comprehensive security’, which embraces a range of fac-tors beyond conventional military concerns. To understand why East Asia is dif-ferent we need to consider the region’s specific history and the contemporary challenges it faces. Paradoxically enough, however, the region may be beginning to demonstrate some patterns of behaviour and security concerns that are reminiscent of an earlier ‘Western’ era, raising important theoretical and com-parative questions in the process.

KeywordsEast Asia, security, history, China, Japan, international relations

Introduction

‘Asia’ is a big place. At the outset, therefore, it is important to emphasize that most of the discussion in what follows is preoccupied with East Asia, or the region we associate with China, Japan, the Korean peninsula, Taiwan and the countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Even this relatively narrow conception of Asia contains a remarkably diverse group of states with every conceivable form of government, level of economic development and security challenge it is possible to imagine. As we shall see, though, other formulations of regional identity are possible and have potentially

Article

Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs

1(1) 1–23 2014 SAGE Publications India

Private Limited SAGE Publications

Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore,

Washington DC DOI: 10.1177/1111111113518403

http://aia.sagepub.com

Mark Beeson, Professor of International Politics, Murdoch University, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, 1, 1 (2014): 1–23

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quite different implications for thinking about broadly conceived security issues. Not only are the protagonists different as regional definitions shrink or expand, but so, too, are the issue areas that preoccupy policymakers in different parts of the world. For example—and all its current problems notwithstand-ing—Western Europe remains far less concerned about conventional military security than East Asia does, where unresolved territorial claims have given a surprising and rather deflating immediacy to the sorts of security problems many thought were being erased by the pacifying influence of ‘globalization’ (Gartzke, 2007; Weissman, 2012).

There are, then, major differences in the way regions have developed and the sort of security practices that distinguish them, but these are not always captured in ‘traditional’ security studies. On the contrary, traditional security studies is invariably preoccupied with ‘sovereign states, military power and the preserva-tion of international order’, and is ‘derived from a combination of Anglo-American, statist, militarized, masculinized, ‘top-down’, methodologically positivist and philosophically realist thinking’ (Booth, 2007, p. 28). It is still com-mon to assume that the essence of security threats remains universal, despite an appreciation of the changing nature of conflict, ‘new’ security threats and a grow-ing recognition of the importance of human security (Newman, 2013). Nevertheless, in an East Asian context, where a preoccupation with the security of the state has been a long-standing obsession, the traditional approach looks intui-tively appropriate as a result.

And yet there is much about the historical East Asian experience that is signifi-cantly at odds with the notional Western template. Not only has most of ‘East Asia’s’ history occurred in the complete absence of the Westphalian-style states that form the core of most International Relations (IR) scholarship, but ideas about international order, authority, not to mention the nature and locus of power, have also been very different from their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere. Even now, when the state has become the default expression of geographically demarcated political authority and power across the world, the role states play in Asia in underpinning national security remains different and distinct and shows few signs of disappearing. On the contrary, scholars in the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC), for example, are exploring that country’s immense history to develop a very different understanding of international order (Qin, 2011). Put dif-ferently, China’s material transformation, which induces such alarm amongst tra-ditional security analysts (Mearsheimer, 2010), is also having important ideational consequences. Whether this recognition will generate more accurate explanations of international development is moot, but it does serve as a powerful reminder that our notions about the world we inhabit are socially constructed (Searle, 1995; Wendt, 1999).

Some of the theoretical implications of these initial observations are devel-oped and explained in the first part of the following discussion. The principal aim of the article, however, is to highlight some of the enduring differences that characterize thinking about security in East Asia. I shall suggest that ideas about


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security in the region remain quite different and more broadly based than they do in much of the West, and this has important consequences for security practice and theory. Ironically, however, the preoccupation with state sovereignty that is such a feature of recent regional development threatens to send the region back to the proverbial future, as rather old fashioned-looking concerns about territory undermine the essentially liberal ‘logic of interdependence’.2 Paradoxically enough, therefore, East Asia continues to display some important differences, but also threatens to reproduce some earlier Western tropes—of which we might have hoped to see the last. The final section of the article details some of these prob-lems and draws out their implications for the study of Asian security.

The following discussion is framed in the language of ‘security governance’, or the efforts by states acting alone or even cooperatively to manage or regulate security outcomes. One influential definition of security governance that has been developed in a European context suggests that it is characterized by ‘heterarchy; the interaction of a large number of actors, both public and private; institutionali-zation that is both formal and informal; relations between actors that are idea-tional in character, structured by norms and understandings as much as by formal regulations; and finally collective purpose’ (Webber, Croft, Howorth, Terriff & Krahmann, 2004, p. 8).

East Asia is plainly a very different place to Western Europe, but the frame-work usefully highlights factors that are often neglected in many accounts of the region’s distinctive security practices and concerns. Even if security governance is unrealized, it is a useful reminder that ‘threats’, especially in the contemporary era, are not simply about traditional military challenges to the nation-state. On the contrary, threats are now also very much about the ‘systemic or milieu goals of states, the legitimacy or authority of state structures, [and] national social cohe-siveness and integrity’ (Sperling, 2010, p. 5); a possibility that is especially appar-ent in East Asia.

Putting Asia in Its Theoretical and Historical Place

Some of the most influential theoretical explanations of ‘security’ are famously parsimonious. The sort of structural realism developed by Kenneth Waltz (1979) in particular has profoundly influenced thinking about the nature and goals of state behaviour. One of the reasons that Waltz’s ideas have had such an impact is not simply because they provide a methodological template for the sort of ‘rigor-ous’ social science research that is so prevalent in the United States (US) in par-ticular, but because they offer an insight into some aspects of state behaviour. For all the claims made about the impact of ‘globalization’, states in general plainly are still the most consequential actors in what we might loosely describe as the ‘international system’ (Bell and Hindmoor, 2009). The people who determine state policy are clearly interested in preserving both the state itself and—it is not unreasonable to infer—their own positions at its helm. So far, so uncontroversial,


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perhaps. Things start to get a little more complicated when we think about particu-lar states, their relative capacities to act, the purposes to which such potentials are put and the kinds of people that run them. These are generally questions with which neorealists are not overly concerned and it is one of the main reasons that important differences among states and regions are overlooked.

And yet one of the most important theoretical innovations in broadly conceived security studies over the last few decades has been the ‘constructivist turn’ in particular (Ruggie, 1998; Wendt, 1999), and a more general appreciation of the importance of non-material factors in shaping security outcomes. It has become increasingly obvious that national attitudes to security and the policy priorities they generate are the consequence of complex, dialectical processes in which ‘international interaction affects domestic struggles within states over the defini-tion of the collective interest’ (Legro, 2005, p. 21). In other words, even such realist staples as the ‘national interest’ are socially constructed artefacts and reflections of very different trajectories and experiences of development (Weldes, 1996). As a consequence, as Reus-Smit (1999, p. 27) points out, states not only develop different ideas about the purposes to which state power might be put, the structures of governance are institutionalized in significantly distinctive ways too. If we want to understand and try to account for continuing difference in state behaviour, we need to take historical contexts and the variations in state forms they generate rather more seriously than realists do.

The potential importance of differences in the internal architecture of states for security outcomes has long been recognized (Huntington, 1968). What is striking about recent scholarship, however, is the attention given to questions of culture and identity in explaining national variations in security practice. The seminal contribution of Peter Katzenstein (1996), Jepperson, Wendt and Katzenstein (1996) and Katzenstein and Sil (2004) in particular has significantly broadened debates about security in ways that help explain the continuing differences in security practice and thinking in Asia. The key point to emphasize here is not that norms or identity will necessarily trump material factors—although they are plainly more likely to exert an influence in an era of declining inter-state conflict (Pinker, 2012)—but that they provide a part of an explanation for variations in security policy and attitudes around the world. The interest in ‘strategic culture’ offers one way of thinking about why militaries respond differently to supposedly universal and timeless threats (Alagappa, 2001; Johnston, 1995). Once again, his-torically contingent contexts provide a compelling part of the explanation of con-tinuing difference. In this regard, Asia’s history is more consequential than most.

Asia’s Alternative History

Because so much IR theory is predicated on a limited, comparatively recent Western historical experience, there is a real danger of overlooking or underesti-mating the significance and the contemporary legacy of the larger part of human

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history. China is known among other things for being the world’s oldest continu-ing civilization, not to mention a source of some of the most important innova-tions that distinguish the modern world. It is a testimony to the powerful influence of Eurocentricism that such historical patterns and influences are frequently dis-missed or underestimated (Hobson, 2012), even when the focus of analytical behaviour is East Asia or China itself. And yet it would be remarkable if some aspects of China’s unique history were not reflected in the way its leaders and general population thought about themselves. We have, after all, become accus-tomed to the people and leaders of the US believing that they have a unique his-torical mission, which helps explain, if not legitimate, their prominent role in recent international history (Smith, 1994). Why would we expect China (or any-where else for that matter) to be any different—especially at a historical moment when they have the wherewithal to actively promote a vision of themselves on the international stage (Zhang forthcoming)? It is important to recognize that one reason we are collectively and so heavily influenced by American IR theory is not simply because there are a lot of excellent IR scholars in that country, but because the US is the hegemonic power of the era and has a capacity to exert an ideational influence that other countries simply cannot match (Smith, 2002).

Such considerations assume a renewed importance in the current era for a num-ber of reasons. First, many believe the US to be in at least relative decline, partly as a consequence of its domestic economic and political problems, but primarily because of the remarkable ‘rise of China’ (Brzezinski, 2012; Layne, 2012). Under such circumstances, we might expect to see a concomitant decline in the US’s ‘soft power’ and the growing influence of alternative narratives about historical develop-ment and the future of the international system. That is precisely what appears to be happening (Bremmer, 2012), which is why Asia’s alternative historical experience potentially assumes such importance. If Asia’s past is unlike the West’s there is no reason to suppose that its current or future developmental experiences will necessar-ily replicate the West’s either. Before we consider the possible implications of this claim, it is worth spelling out just how different Asia’s past actually was.

For hundreds, if not thousands of years China was the dominant force in what we now think of as East Asia. The cultural legacy of this domination can still be clearly seen in the influence of Confucianism in Japan, Korea and Vietnam in par-ticular (Rozman, 1991). In this pre-Westphalian world, the central organizing prin-ciple of the region’s ‘international relations’ was the tribute system. China’s dominance was ritually acknowledged by its neighbours in a formalized and gener-ally stable regional order in which Confucian values provided integrative elements of a common social structure. Even more importantly from a comparative theoreti-cal perspective, however, the tribute system was marked by formal inequality, but informal equality in practice (Kang, 2010, p. 2). In the ideal-typical Westphalian system, by contrast, the picture is reversed: formal equality but a markedly hierar-chical and unequal state system. The point to emphasize here, therefore, is that there is nothing inevitable or ‘natural’ about the form ‘international’ social rela-tions will take, and that other possible orders are not only possible, but may offer,


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durable decidedly less violent alternatives to the dominant Western model (Ringmar, 2012).

Although China has had long-standing commercial ties with what we now describe as Southeast Asia, and the Chinese diaspora has exercised a dispropor-tionate economic influence, China’s historical influence has been much less sig-nificant than in Northeast Asia (Reid, 1999). But it is important to note briefly that even in the south, pre-Westphalian IR and domestic politics were very different from the European experience (Wolters, 1999). In the Southeast Asia that existed before European colonialism forcibly imposed the inter-state system upon it, power was much more personalized, borders unknown or imprecise and loyalty to a powerful leader paramount (Tarling, 1998). When seen against this common historical backdrop it becomes easier to understand why so many of the region’s post-independence leaders were authoritarian ‘strong men’ such as Indonesia’s Sukarno and Suharto, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, Marcos in the Philippines and Mahathir in Malaysia. Even more importantly for the purposes of this discussion, however, was the fact that leaders of post-colonial Southeast Asia had to construct independent nation-states where none had existed before and where there was limited capacity to fulfil the dual challenges of political and economic develop-ment. In such circumstances the prevalence of authoritarian rule and the preoc-cupation with internal stability becomes more understandable (Beeson, 2012; Croissant & Wurster, 2013).

Asia Inside and Outside

One of the guiding assumptions and major limitations of realist and neorealist conceptualizations of ‘security dilemmas’ is that they are overwhelming focused on the relationships that exist between ‘like units’ (Booth & Wheeler, 2008). However, not only is there an enormous difference between the size, capability and political rationalities that distinguish individual states across the wider East Asian region, but the nature of the actual security dilemmas that states face are different too. The underlying assumption in most theories of state security is not just that it is ‘the state’ that is the main focus of analytical and policy attention, but that the principal source of threats to the state is external. In reality, this has sim-ply not been the case in contemporary East Asia. True, there have been major wars on the Korean peninsula and in Vietnam, but it is noteworthy that these were pri-marily driven by extra-regional powers and did not directly threaten the existen-tial position of other states.3 Despite the region’s supposed reputation as being ‘ripe for rivalry’ (Friedberg, 1993/94), the historical reality is that apart from the ‘Confrontation’ between Malaysia and Indonesia in the 1960s, and the border war between China and Vietnam in the 1970s, the region has been remarkably stable. As a consequence, the region’s militaries have often faced inwards rather than outwards when contemplating security threats and this has important implications for the way security is pursued and the way we (ought to) think about it.


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The implications and importance of the region’s inward-facing militaries can be seen most vividly in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines (Beeson & Bellamy, 2008). In all these countries the military has played a prominent role in post-colonial history, sometimes helping win independence, as in Indonesia, and acquiring a certain initial authority in the process. As one of the most powerful institutional forces in countries that often had limited state capacity, the military frequently played a prominent role in national development that has only recently begun to decline (Alagappa, 2001). Indeed, in Thailand and the Philippines in particular, the military has launched numerous coups, which not only threatened the development of democracy and civilian control of the military itself, but also have presented a much bigger threat to domestic security than any outside aggres-sor. In other parts of the region—most notoriously in Myanmar, perhaps—the military’s influence and control has been even more entrenched and difficult to dislodge. It remains to be seen whether recent changes will actually overturn the long-established patterns of civil–military relations in that country (Huang, 2013).

The point to emphasize is not just that the region throws up a variety of responses to the problem of how to control or even utilize organized violence, but that they are overwhelming domestically focused. In this regard, East Asia generally bears out the more general point about the declining levels of violence in the interna-tional system (Pinker, 2012). The logic of war and conquest does, indeed, appear to have undergone a profound long-run historical change and states can take advan-tage of this reality to focus more on internal problems. As we have seen, this is not inevitably a progressive or positive outcome as far as the actual role of the military is concerned. Nevertheless, what merits emphasis here is that such changes are frequently manifest in unpredictable, internal, varied ways that are not easily explained by parsimonious theorizing. No country illustrates the limits to overly generalized theorization and universal assumptions more than Japan.

The Japanese Anomaly

Japan’s experience is worth highlighting in some detail for a number of reasons. First, and most importantly for the purposes of the present discussion, Japan’s historical experience is unlike that of any other country (with the possible exception of Germany), and consequently represents an inexplicable aberration for most theories of security and IR. Atypical as Japan’s experience may have been, however, a second reason for paying it particular attention is because some of Japan’s distinctive ideas about, and approaches to, security have been taken up by other Asian states—not the least of which has been its long-standing strategic rival, China. The key questions to consider in a Japanese context are whether there are wider comparative lessons to be drawn from its experience, and whether it will actually remain something of an aberration. In other words, is Asia actually returning to some sort of inevitable historical pattern as realists have long claimed?


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History Matters

One of the most striking things about the contemporary strategic context in Asia is just how much the past continues to inform the present (Beeson, 2014; Cronin, 1996). The sources of the animosity are not hard to discern, even if their continu-ing impact remains surprising. It is important to remember that Japan was the first Asian country to successfully industrialize and become a ‘great power’ of the sort that had previously been exclusively associated with the West. One of the princi-pal expressions of Japan’s growing international stature and its adoption of the ‘Western standard of civilization’ (Gong, 1984). Unfortunately, this meant repli-cating the sort of aggressive imperialism that had been the hallmark of European expansion (Beasley, 1987). The disastrous consequences of Japanese imperialism are well enough known to need little repetition here, but a few simple points are worth keeping in mind as they have enduring consequences.

First, Japan’s contemporary relations with its neighbours continue to be poi-soned by its actions in the first half of the twentieth century. The impact of the brutal invasion of China in the 1930s and Japan’s role in the region during the Second World War reverberates to this day—even if some of the damage is self-inflicted (Hayashi, 2013). While China’s endless demands for a genuine acknowl-edgement of remorse on Japan’s part may seem extreme and self-serving more than 70 years later, the actions of present day nationalists in Japan—including the current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (Soble, 2013)—are telling reminders of the domestic importance of these historical issues in both countries. The contrast with Europe—and just about anywhere else in the world, for that matter—where the legacy of twentieth century conflict has been much more effectively managed, is striking and informative (Lind, 2010).

Second, Japan’s delusional attempts to establish a form of pan-Asianism in Southeast Asia during the Second World War may have been destined to fail, but they highlight just how much has changed in the thinking of Japanese elites in the post-war period. In the aftermath of Japan’s devastating defeat, its post-war gov-ernment under the leadership of Yoshida Shigeru developed the so-called ‘Yoshida doctrine’, which emphasized keeping a low international profile whilst concen-trating single-mindedly on economic reconstruction and development (Chai, 1997). As policy paradigms go, it was stunningly successful and led to Japan re-emerging from war-time devastation to become the second largest economy in the world within a couple of decades. Significantly, Japan went on to become the centre of a region-wide capitalist renaissance, in precisely the way American for-eign policy elites had hoped (Schaller, 1982). Geopolitical considerations led the US to underwrite both Japan’s economic redevelopment while simultaneously guaranteeing its security—effectively reinforcing the efficacy of the Yoshida doc-trine. Ironically enough, Japan was ultimately able to achieve the sort of regional economic domination through foreign investment and aid packages that it had failed to achieve through force of arms (Hatch & Yamamura, 1996).


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For some observers, Japan’s post-war experience is emblematic of the rise of a new ‘trading state’, in which governments can concentrate on exploiting the opportunities provided by globalization without being so preoccupied with secu-rity (Rosecrance, 1986). Before considering whether such optimism remains mer-ited, it is important to note that the manner in which Japan achieved its unprecedented reconstruction was also dramatically at odds with the conventional Western economic wisdom. The ‘developmental state’ (Johnson, 1982), which Japan pioneered and which has been widely emulated in the region, is not only predicated on a different view about the role of government and its relationship to the private sector, but it is also an expression of a distinctive view of the nature of security too.

Comprehensive Security

One of the most original and distinctive ideas to have emerged from the East Asian region as far as comparative security studies is concerned has been the emergence of ‘comprehensive security’ (Alagappa, 1998). The specific concept emerged as a consequence of the first of the ‘oil shocks’ of the 1970s, when Japan’s reliance on external especially energy supplies and the potential vulnera-bility of its continuing economic development was brutally exposed. A govern-ment-sponsored report into the economic crisis that the OPEC-induced energy price rises triggered outlined the basis of a ‘comprehensive’ approach to security in which economic security was accorded the sort of importance that had previ-ously been solely associated with traditional military issues (Ravenhill, 2013).

While a relatively recent set of events may have triggered a ground-breaking reassessment of security questions in Japan and the specific discourse of compre-hensive security, it is possible to trace this ideational and policy shift to earlier patterns of governance. Thinking about security in Japan (and elsewhere in the region) has been profoundly influenced by the challenges of late development in an international order dominated by extant, economically and militarily powerful Western states. In such circumstances, national security was seen as being criti-cally reliant on not just the acquisition of a comparable military capability, but also on the underlying technological, educational, organizational and attitudinal orientations that might underpin overall national development (Heginbotham & Samuels, 1998). In this regard it is striking that the Japanese reformers that initi-ated the Meiji revolution were influenced by Friedrich List rather than Adam Smith, and instigated unapologetically mercantilist policies that were deigned to simultaneously develop the interconnected economic and strategic spheres as a result. In short, national security was dependent on a strong economy as well as a strong army; it was impossible to have one without the other. As Richard Samuels (1994, pp. 3–4) points out, ‘The Japanese were never taught to make a distinction between national defense objective and economic interests and indeed reject such


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arguments as naïve whenever they are presented. Instead, technology and produc-tion, as well as territory, are each seen as national interests than can and must be protected’.

Plainly, the world is a very different place from the one Japan’s reformist elites confronted in the nineteenth century, but it is remarkable how distinctive Japanese approaches to economic development, foreign policy and security questions have been and—to some extent, at least—remain (Vogel, 2006; Wolf, 2013). There is no doubt that a form of neo-mercantilism influenced Japanese policy during its post-war high growth phase when it became the dominant economic force in East Asia. It is also clear that there were specific geopolitical circumstances that facili-tated this approach: without American support and the reassurance of its security guarantee, a relentless focus on economic development and technological upgrad-ing might have been far less plausible. What makes this especially noteworthy is that Japanese notions of comprehensive security have become influential through-out much of the region—including China. Before considering the implications of this development, however, it is important to note briefly a number of other fea-tures of the Japanese experience that remain highly distinctive and which have potentially important comparative significance.

Japanese Exceptionalism

It might be objected that Japan’s history is so exceptional that it is not possible to draw any generalized conclusions from its experience when thinking about what, if anything, is distinctive about security in Asia. While there is some merit in this argument—only Japan, after all, has been subjected to nuclear attack—it has a material and symbolic importance in the region that at the very least highlights questions that need debate rather than dismissal as aberrations.

The first issue Japan illustrates is the importance of extra-regional powers in determining the course development at different levels. The entire story of East Asia’s remarkable post-war development cannot be understood without placing it in the context of the Cold War and the impact and content of ‘American hegem-ony’ (Stubbs, 2005). The fact that it was the US that defeated Japan made an enormous difference that can be overlooked at this distance. The imposition of the so-called ‘peace constitution’ that restricted Japan’s military activities, and the simultaneous toleration of the developmental state tradition as long as it under-pinned successful capitalist development, were critical elements in Japan’s dis-tinctive postwar trajectory (Tabb, 1995). Even more distinctive and remarkable, perhaps, was the general repudiation of militarism by much of the Japanese popu-lation. Understandable as this may be given the traumas inflicted by the war, it is still a striking development and a reminder of the socially constructed, contingent and unpredictable nature of the norms and attitudes that emerge in response to apparently universal imperatives (Katzenstein, 1996). Indeed, the willingness of Japan’s leaders to continue ‘outsourcing’ responsibility for national security to a


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foreign power is another noteworthy feature of the Japanese experience (Samuels, 2007), but one that is not entirely unparalleled.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Germany has also had an ambivalent attitude towards military matters. It also existed for some time in a period of what Peter Katzenstein (1987) described as ‘semi-sovereignty’. Of late, however, Germany has reas-sumed its position as the most important state in Europe (Rachman, 2012). In Japan’s case, by contrast, not only has it been eclipsed as the region’s preeminent economic power, but its foreign and strategic policies have remained relatively ineffective, low profile and subordinate to the US—or they have until recently, at least. Before we consider what impact recent changes in the region may have on Japan and the rest of East Asia, we need to look at the country that has done more to overturn the established order than any other.

The Rise of China: Back to the Future?

For some observers of a realist disposition, the rise of China presages inevitable and inescapable conflict (Mearsheimer, 2001). According to ‘hegemonic transi-tion theory’ (Chan, 2008), changes in the established distribution of material power lead dissatisfied ‘revisionist’ states to challenge the dominant or hegem-onic power of the era as they seek to reshape the international order to reflect their preferences and further their interests. Transition theory has suddenly achieved a new prominence as scholars try to make sense of the likely implications of China’s undoubted and remarkable transformation (Beeson, 2009a).

Before we try to make sense of what this might mean, however, there are a couple of important comparative points to be made that Japan’s experience high-lights once again. It is important to remember that Japan also dominated the region economically and until relatively recently was considered to be on track to overtake the US as both the biggest and the best economy in the world (Vogel, 1979). Crucially in Japan’s case, however, there was no inevitable concomitant assertion of national power economically, much less militarily, as a rising power sought to displace an established one. On the contrary, the US was able to exploit its historical strategic domination to impose policy changes that the Japanese gov-ernment would have otherwise resisted, and which led directly to some of Japan’s current problems (Brenner, 2002).

China, by contrast, is a very different proposition, with a history of actively resisting American hegemony—to the point of outright conflict in the case of the Korean War. Even now, however, when ‘China’ is deeply integrated into a global capitalist economy largely shaped under American hegemonic auspices, it remains deeply ambivalent about the hegemonic role of the US and willing, at times, to resist it (Deng, 2001; He & Feng, 2012; Li, 2009). Not only is authority in China ‘fragmented’ in ways that belie the clichéd ‘communist’ monolith of popular par-lance (Lieberthal, 1991), but the powerful domestic actors such as the Peoples’ Liberation Army continue to play an important, if opaque, role in shaping national


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policy priorities (Swaine, 2012a). It is reasonable to ask, therefore, whether the realists might actually be right about the inevitably of competition and even pos-sible conflict between rising and declining powers.

The Limits of Liberalism

The great hope and expectation of many liberal scholars and analysts of globaliza-tion has been that East Asia’s growing economic interdependence would trans-form the strategic environment in East Asia as it had in Western Europe. Although there are important differences in the East Asian and European experiences—not least, the very different role played by the US in actually encouraging region-wide cooperation in Europe (Beeson, 2005)—for decades now there seemed to have been some justification for this optimism. After all, the peace and stability that had come to characterize the region really did seem to mark a secular change in the thinking of regional elites and the organization of strategic relations within the East Asian region as a whole (Weissman, 2012). The emergence of ASEAN itself and the institutionalization of specific cooperative security organizations such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) seemed to confirm the growing maturity and efficacy of the region’s evolving security architecture. Some scholars argued that the IR of the region was becoming sufficiently deep, institutionalized and regular that it was possible to talk about—in Southeast Asia, at least—the emergence of a regional ‘security community’ (Acharya, 1998, 2001).

The basis for such a community was thought to be a ‘transnational region com-posed of sovereign states whose people maintain dependable expectations of peaceful change’ (Adler & Barnett, 1998, p. 30). Even if we put aside very real doubts about quite how widespread such ‘dependable expectations’ were in the heady post-Cold War days when the ‘Asian miracle’ was in full swing, there are real doubts about the existence of such expectations now.4 Even more importantly, however, it is debatable whether such sentiments exist in quite the way they may once have even at an elite level. For a region which continues to be associated with the protection rather than the pooling of national sovereignty this is— particularly as far as any putative security community is concerned—a crucial but potentially fatal point. If East Asia’s leaders have not made the sort of shift in thinking and sense of collective purpose and identity that has existed—until recently, at least—in Europe (Bruter, 2005), then the prospects for regional secu-rity cooperation are less bright.

China represents the definitive test case in this context. Not only is China now the East Asian region’s biggest defence spender (Wallace, 2012),5 but it is invari-ably seen as the principal threat to the regional security complex established under the auspices of American hegemony. It is not hard to see why. After all, it is only 30 or 40 years since China was seen primarily as a source of destabilizing revolu-tionary ideology that threatened to undermine the fragile states of Southeast Asia in particular. And yet, what has been most remarkable about China’s foreign


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policy until very recently, has been just how much of a ‘responsible stakeholder’ it has already become.6 Not only had China’s diplomats become much more adept and comfortable in the multilateral institutions of which they were an increasingly prominent part, but they had actively embarked on a regional ‘charm offensive’ which seemed to mark a decisive break with China’s past policies and an embrace of the prevailing international order that had effectively been ‘made in America’ (Ikenberry, 2001; Kurlantzick, 2007).

For many commentators, therefore, the changes in Chinese foreign policy seemed confirmation of the power of ideas and the transformative effect of par-ticipating in multilateral diplomacy. In short, Chinese diplomats had been ‘social-ized’ into the ways of the West, and multilateralism was increasingly seen by Beijing as a mechanism through which to pursue national interests and even com-bat American hegemonism (Johnston, 2008). Crucially, however, despite China’s expanding role in regional and even international institutions, it ‘has exhibited a preference to date for strengthening the traditional Westphalian conception of sovereign national economic development within the existing Bretton Woods sys-tem, rather than replacing it’ (Chin & Thakur, 2010, p. 127 [emphasis in origi-nal]). In other words, far from abandoning a ‘realist’ preoccupation with state strength, Chinese officials have used multilateralism to reinforce national auton-omy (Chan, Lee & Chan, 2012).

In this regard the desire to preserve national autonomy has actually been facili-tated by the region’s extant institutional architecture. Despite the existence of a growing regional institutional architecture that in some respects mirrors the European experience, the reality is rather different. For all ASEAN’s association with the ‘Asian peace’, correlation is not causation. Conflict, especially the inter-state variety has declined everywhere, and it is consequently difficult to know how much credit ASEAN should get for this happy outcome. What we can say is the so-called ‘ASEAN way’ of consensus, consultation and voluntarism has been adopted by other regional organization to ensure the ASEAN states’ participation and maintain the polite fiction of ASEAN being in the regional ‘driving seat’ (Beeson, 2009b). The most consequential outcome of this process as far as secu-rity governance is concerned is that the region’s premier security organization—the ARF—has replicated the sort of non-binding, consultative style that has been the hallmark of ASEAN and its limited capacity to influence the behaviour of its members (Emmers, 2003). Given that the ARF includes all of the major powers from around the region as well as the US, it ought to have been in a position to address key issues such as tensions on the Korean peninsula and the worsening territorial disputes between China and Japan and China and a number of ASEAN states. In reality, ASEAN’s reputation for issue avoidance has been inherited by the ARF which has conspicuously failed to address, much less resolve, the region’s principal security concerns (Emmers, 2009; Jones & Smith, 2007).

As far as China is concerned this is not an unwelcome outcome. On the one hand, China wants to participate in, and if possible utilize multilateral organiza-tions to pursue its own interests and cultivate its image as a good international


14 Mark Beeson

citizen. On the other hand, however, it does not want to have its autonomy overly restricted by binding, legally enforceable agreements and institutions of a sort that have generally been avoided in the East Asian region (Kahler, 2000). In this regard, the ARF is a perfect vehicle for China in that it facilitates participation without obligation: China’s long-standing reluctance to multilateralize its territo-rial disputes is a telling reminder of the limited impact multilateral forums have had in attempting to address what is arguably the most pressing set of regional problems. Indeed, China’s intransigence is undermining ASEAN solidarity as regional states assess the relative importance of China’s economic significance against its increasingly aggressive pursuit of what it takes to be its legitimate his-torical claims (Storey, 2012). It is not necessary to judge the validity of such claims to recognize that they have the potential to destroy not just the region’s hard-won reputation for security cooperation but the very basis of continuing peace and stability in East Asia.7

Europe Revisited?

It is uncontroversial to observe that whatever happens in China will now pro-foundly influence the entire East Asian region’s economic and geopolitical devel-opment. It is remarkable how little consensus there is about what may happen in China itself, however, and how this may influence its foreign and strategic poli-cies. Political-economists often point to the transformative effects of ‘globaliza-tion’, and emphasize how much China’s economy and even society has been changed by integration into the global political economy (Steinfeld, 2010). And yet, Chinese capitalists have not replicated the European experience to demand political liberalization (Tsai, 2007)—or not thus far, at least. Even more strikingly, for all the attention given to China’s international political and economic integra-tion, nationalism remains a powerful force (Gries, 2004). Indeed, the great para-dox of China’s undoubtedly expanding civil society and growth in social activism is that it is actually inflaming nationalist sentiment in ways that make the con-struction of a coherent, predictable foreign policy increasingly problematic in a country which is still coming to terms with its new position and trying to decide quite what to do with its new power (Breslin, 2013).8

The prominence of nationalist sentiment in China and elsewhere in the region, especially when combined with growing tensions over territorial claims, has led some observers to draw parallels with nineteenth century Europe, and even with the situation that prevailed before the First World War (Rachman, 2013). China’s seemingly inexorable rise and its increasingly assertive foreign policy behaviour are triggering various forms of ‘hedging’ and balancing behaviour amongst its increasingly nervous neighbours (Medeiros, 2005–06). Such behaviour not only seems to confirm the fears of those who argue that a redistribution of material power in the international system inevitably undermines the status quo, but it helps explain recent shifts in American foreign policy too (Le Mière, 2013). What


Security in Asia 15

is less clear is whether the US’s alliance system could trigger the same sort of catastrophic escalation that occurred before the First World War in the event of deterrence actually failing.

It has long been the received wisdom in the US that the hub-and-spoke strate-gic architecture it established in East Asia following the Second World War has been responsible for the relative stability of the region (Art, 2003). Whatever the merits of this claim—the US has, after all, been the principal protagonist in the region’s only two major wars during this period—the recent ‘pivot’ to the East Asian region is plainly a response to a rapidly evolving international strategic environment. On the one hand, the US is finally escaping from two disastrous wars in the Middle East and can focus its attention elsewhere. On the other hand, the rise of China was clearly providing a major challenge to American dominance of the region even before the eruption of the recent maritime disputes. One of the most significant consequences of the US’s attempt to re-establish itself as an ‘Asia-Pacific power’ has been the simultaneous revitalization of its bilateral alli-ances around the region. Even more remarkably, former foes such as Vietnam have also demonstrated a desire to establish closer security ties with the US as its relationship with China deteriorates (Barnes, 2012).

There are, then, widely noted parallels between East Asia’s historical develop-ment and Europe’s, although in this case it is Europe of the nineteenth, rather than the twentieth century (Friedberg, 2000; Joffe, 1995). Although the US’s role as an ‘offshore balancer’ is rather different to that of Britain’s in the nineteenth century, some see this as a natural evolution of American grand strategy (Layne, 1997). More recently, a number of scholars have argued that the durable balance of power that Europe developed in the nineteenth century actually offers a model for main-taining stability in East Asia in the twenty-first. Developing a similar regional ‘concert of powers’ would, the argument goes, allow China’s inevitable rise to be accommodated peacefully. For Hugh White (2012, p. 6) Asia’s alternative futures are not American or Chinese supremacy. They are escalating rivalry, or some form of great-power accommodation that constrains that rivalry. America’s real choice is not between dominating or withdrawing from Asia: it is between taking China on as a strategic rival, or working with it as a partner.

Whatever the merits of White’s claims, the recent pivot suggest there is little appetite among US policymakers for accepting a diminished role on the region (Clinton, 2011). The net consequence of the US’s decision to reassert itself, how-ever, as noted China-watcher Robert Ross (2012, p. 81) points out, is that ‘by threatening China and challenging its sovereignty claims over symbolic territories, Washington has encouraged Chinese leaders to believe that only by adopting bel-ligerent policies will a rising China be able to guarantee its security’. Unsurprisingly, China’s strategic elites do, indeed, see the recent shift in US policy as an effort to contain them (Swaine, 2012b). In this regard, the evolving strategic context in East Asia looks rather more like the bipolarity of the Cold War than a concert powers.

Whichever historical analogy proves more apt, the contemporary reality is rather deflating and arguably at odds with what seemed until recently to be the


16 Mark Beeson

most immediate and very tangible security threats confronting the region (Dupont, 2001). Self-evidently, the continuing economic development upon which the legitimacy and political authority of the region’s elites continues to depend would be profoundly affected by any actual conflict. In this regard the liberals do have a point: the economic and political risks of conflict have made war and conquest completely irrational. This is not to say, of course, that this rules conflict out. An even more unambiguous threat to continuing development and stability is climate change and the damage being inflicted on the natural environment across the region—a clear and present danger if ever there was one (Dyer, 2010), but an issue that is being sidelined by the growing preoccupation with more ‘traditional’ threats to national security. Indeed, for all the talk of transnational threats and opportunities at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is remarkable how the strategic calculus of the region’s elites continues to reflect the thinking of their counterparts in the twentieth and even the nineteenth centuries.

Concluding Remarks

It is now widely accepted that East Asia’s economies are still organized in ways that are significantly different from those of the so-called Anglo-American economies. Likewise, the political structures and practices of the region—even where they are democratic—are often quite unlike those of com-parative states elsewhere. This is not such a surprising outcome when we think about the very different circumstances in which East Asia’s recent political and economic development has occurred. Being on the receiving end of European imperialism and having to fit into a pre-existing international order dominated by the West are major handicaps and challenges that are bound to influence developmental outcomes and ideas about how to overcome them. It would be surprising if ideas about, and the practice of, security were not distinctive as a consequence too. The question now is about the extent and durability of such differences.

In the political and economic sphere, many of Asia’s differences are attributed to ‘late’ development. It is tempting to apply much the same logic to security issues. After all, the preoccupation with sovereignty, the frequently inward- looking role of the region’s militaries, and even the creation of new forms of cross-border cooperation such as ASEAN, were all products of a distinctive his-torical context that was characterized primarily by Asian disadvantage and the need to adjust to unforgiving geopolitical circumstances. Even in Northeast Asia, the consequences of European intrusion were invariably traumatic and revolution-ary, overturning international and domestic orders that had existed for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. It is also important to remember that the one country the successfully rose to the challenge posed by the West—Japan—not only cre-ated the circumstances for its own downfall and subordination to an extra-regional power, but inflicted enormous collateral damage on its neighbours in the process.


Security in Asia 17

It is hardly surprising, under such circumstances that domestic sovereignty and security remain such a priority across much of the region.

What the East Asian experience suggests, therefore, is that security governance has important national and regional variations that are contingent and path-dependent. This is not to say that things cannot change, but even where states face apparently common challenges, the nature of their responses will be shaped by different state capacities and policies. The very different historical response of Japan and China to the common challenge of European expansion in the nine-teenth century is a very important example (with long-term strategic conse-quences) of this possibility. In the contemporary era the varied responses to seemingly global forces, pressures and influences in East Asia are a reminder of the enduring importance of mediating local institutions, interests and ideas (Acharya, 2009). Put simply, history matters: it helps account for the different practices and behaviour that distinguish one state or even one region from another. East Asia is not Western Europe or North America, for that matter, and the way we understand it should reflect that enduring reality.

As Charles Tilly (1984) pointed out, there plainly are ‘big structures and large processes’ at work, and ‘huge comparisons’ to be made. East Asia is reminiscent of nineteenth century Europe in some ways, but that does not mean we can extrap-olate from the European experience to explain East Asia’s past or present, much less its future. The world is a different place and so are—at least some of—the states that run it. European-style imperialism is thankfully out of fashion. True, some powers are much more consequential than others, but even US hegemony has a negotiated and at times, incomplete quality that distinguishes this era from others (Mastanduno, 2002). At a time when American power is in relative decline this is likely to be become an even more important influence on the future evolu-tion of the international system and the pursuit of security. Significantly, realist predictions about the future of the international system have not—thus far, at least—been realized (Waltz, 2000). Given the difficulty, uncertainty and limited pay-offs to be derived from the application of organized violence in the contem-porary system, this is not an entirely surprising outcome. For all the parallels with nineteenth century, the dangers of inter-state war are now so immense and the possible benefits so uncertain that it has become increasingly rare (Mueller, 1989; Pinker, 2012). War is still possible in East Asia, but its origins are unlikely to be calculated elements of a grand strategy.

Finally, even if it is argued that the evolving agenda of ‘new’ security threats has some universal elements that—rightly, in my view—revolve around notions of human rather than state security, this does not mean that they will be addressed in similar ways around the world. Again, this is partly a question of capacity, but it is also a question of whether elites take certain issues seriously. In East Asia’s case, there is little evidence of a profound shift in the thinking about our practice of security: it remains an overwhelmingly state-centric affair. The transnational nature of threats such as runaway climate change has done little to alter this thus far. On the contrary, such threats may well intensify the preoccupation with


18 Mark Beeson

domestic security and inhibit more pluralistic and cooperative forms of security governance and political reform. As ever, the outcome will ultimately be deter-mined by the wholly unpredictable interaction of the local and the global in his-torically specific contingent circumstances.

Notes

1. Mark Beeson is Professor of International Politics at Murdoch University. Before joining Murdoch at the beginning of 2013, he taught at the University of Western Australia, Griffith, Queensland, York (UK) and Birmingham, where he was also head of department. His recent books include: Institutions of the Asia-Pacific: ASEAN, APEC and Beyond (Routledge, 2009), Securing Southeast Asia: The Politics of Security Sector Reform (with Alex Bellamy; Routledge, 2008), Regionalism and Globalization in East Asia: Politics, Security and Economic Development (Palgrave, 2014, 2nd Ed.), and China’s Regional Relations: Evolving Foreign Policy Dynamics (with Fujian Li; Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2014). He can be contacted at: [email protected]

2. Economic interdependence is thought to fundamentally change relationships between states making wars of conquest in particular and conflict more generally less attractive and more costly (See Fravel, 2010; Gartzke,2007; Russett and Oneal, 1998).

3. Cambodia is arguably an exception here as it suffered heavy American bombing during the Vietnam War.

4. Even before the recent spike in regional tensions because of ongoing territorial disputes, there were few signs of identification with the East Asian region and widespread concern about the implications of a rising China among much of the region’s populations (See Whitney & Shambaugh, 2009); Hall & Smith, 2013).

5. It is also important to note that China’s defence spending is still dwarfed by that of the US, which also retains a major technological and experiential edge over China.

6. The phrase was first used by Robert Zoelick (2005) to describe the US epectation that China would play a ‘responsible’ (i.e., non revisionist) diplomatic role in keeping with its growing material position.

7. Although China’s claims look implausible that does not make them any less consequential or difficult to resolve, especially when the Chinese government is being cheered on by an increasingly prominent and outspoken community of ‘Netizens’. Informed observers still hold out hope for resolution through dialogue, however (See Fravel, 2011).

8. One of the problems facing China’s leaders as they attempt to construct a coherent foreign policy is not simply deciding priorities, but trying to accommodate the often-competing views of the many actors that are vying to influence policy (See Jakobson & Knox, 2010).

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Security in Asia: What's different, what's not?

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